Boxing Day with the UK Gibsons

Definitely needed a run this morning so I got up about 7:30 and headed out for a 5km run to and around a nearby park. Home for shower and breakfast and then it was time to reload the car and farewell the O’Brien family. We had such a wonderful time with them and felt very lucky to have friends who were so willing to welcome us into their home and include us in their very busy Christmas gathering.

We took a quick drive by the Brighton Pier for a look at this iconic area and then it was on to Ashington and my cousin Jenny’s for a family Boxing Day lunch. Jenny and James live in a gorgeous house in a very typical English country village. I haven’t seen Jenny since Ian and I were in England in ’94 and

‘95 and I have never met her husband, James, or their children. My cousin Marianne was also there with her partner Gary and so was my dad’s twin brother, my uncle David. It was so wonderful to see them all again and we had such a great afternoon together. We had a beautiful meal for lunch and then just sat around chatting and playing board games. It was so good to catch up on everyone’s news and it seemed like no time at all before 6pm came around and we decided we should get on the road and get to our hotel that we had booked into for the night in Crawley.

It was only half an hour up the road but as we are now remembering, nothing is quick in England when it comes to getting from A to B as the roads wind around and there is no quick, direct route anywhere! It was very dark and bit foggy by

this time and very limited street lighting so we were glad we had a GPS to guide us. However even the GPS came unstuck when it came to finding our hotel which had no signpost at all to direct us off the road and down a dirt road to its entrance! We were starting to wonder what I had booked us into but after a phone call to the hotel and detailed instruction on how to get there we finally made it and found it to be quite a large, modern hotel – can’t understand why they don’t have any signposts and the guy on reception says he gets calls daily from people asking for directions. By now it was 8pm so Ian and I headed out for pizza for dinner and after eating this in our hotel room it was time for bed.