Sunny Sundays!

This has been, in many ways, an odd month. The first weekend, which we spent in England, seems like such a long time ago! Ok, so the fact that a month has passed in the blink of an eye is not in itself a strange thing, seems to have become the norm a bit. It's more just the sense that I can't seem to remember where it went that I find a bit unsettling. Although, I do have a nagging suspicion that I'm repeating myself :-).

Back to that weekend though! We ended up renting a car this time, and that got off to an interesting start. An Italian car in England, left with the language set to French. And trust the Italians to have hidden away the setting somewhere so weird that I can't even remember it now :-). After a long week it did rather put me off a bit.

The rest of the weekend in contrast was just lovely!! The weather was fantastic! Probably felt even better than it was, given that spring was all around, compared to the frigid end of winter in Norway.

I managed to pack in a trip to Brighton! A first, and hopefully not my last. Though my visit was extremely brief, I was rather charmed by the fun mix of casual and bustling and the proximity of waves with their crests being snatched off by the wind :-).

I can't help but relapse into a spot of nostalgic reminiscing about my sunrises and sunsets spent on the bridge wings of the Trident at this point :-D. Thinking back, that is probably what I miss the most from all the years spent offshore. Yes, all the travelling and visiting new places had its moments, but the dreary regularity of long distance travel did get very tiring. And the massive amounts of time off was a big plus, but that came at a price. It was the few minutes each day spent watching the unending play of the water and wind that I look back on with no buts attached :-).

I suppose meeting an old friend from the boats may have had a bit to do with that! But yes, Brighton was fun! As was the supposedly clandestine cake baking :-D. We even managed a longish run in the sunshine! All in all a big tick. Except for the continuing distress of the rental car situation in the UK :-P.

Then there was the other weekend away in the middle of the month, to Trysil! Over the period of my stay in Norway, it has become pretty much my favourite place to go for a weekend (or more :-)) of downhill. A couple of years ago we even managed two trips in the same season! Or maybe it was the year before. But last year I didn't go at all!

Now, I feel my snowboarding skills have come a fair way in these last few winters when I've had my own board. So it was great fun to spend two full days practically racing down the hillsides non stop in the best weather possible :-). Yup! There's not a whole lot that can beat a weekend of almost constant sunshine in weather just warm enough to keep you from freezing on snow covered hillsides!

In the end it served as a rather nice way to sign off on the winter. And even though it was just the week in Geilo around Christmas and this weekend, I feel rather satisfied with my snowboarding this season. I suppose it's been one of those years where there never seemed to be the promise of a lot of snow.

And then as if on cue, the weather warmed up brilliantly to give us the first day of temperatures hitting 20 degrees this year! Only for spring to then choose to turn over and hit the snooze button! It actually snowed yesterday! Loads! Yes, it was the kind that was more wet than anything else and disappeared by evening, still, for a day it looked like we had been transported back in time by a month!

So those were a few highlights I suppose, and in between there has been planning for the summer. Many lazy evenings and quiet days at work blending into each other. Not the worst thing really :-).