Lazy days and slack blogging have led to five in one.

Friday was the day we left Ireland, maybe for the last time, who knows. Bright and early start at 4:30am to be on the road by 5:30am to Dublin. It was a wet beginning to the day and we completed the last of the packing and threw the last into the car. Said our goodbyes again to John and set off.

The satnav led us easily to the Stena Line terminal in Dublin only to find out that due to high winds our ferry had been held up for an hour before docking. That did not bode well for our crossing, neither did the fact that they started boarding early and made no announcement, only found out by watching a line of cars driving around us, being as we paid extra for premium lounge and first on/off. Anyhoo it all worked out well we were not delayed by much and we arrived at Holyhead in good condition as the crossing was in moderate seas only, breakfast remained where it was.

Coventry came into view in short order and was good to be home.

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Saturday was walking day, in the morning Penny and I walked into town and back then in the afternoon we walked to the Farmhouse Restaurant for a meal. Lilia and Elise took their scooters and we all had good fun watching them do it.

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Sunday, there was a surprise baby shower for niece Jen. Al and I dropped the girls off and we went to the National Motorcycle Museum at Solihull. This was a project started in the 1980's to showcase Britain's history of motorcycle production and they ended up with around 350 bikes from the 1900's to the 80's. It came to an abrupt end in 2003 when a fire destroyed the collection, however they rebuilt the buildings and approx 200 of the lost bikes, then they added lots more to have the magnificent collection they have today. For those not interested in bikes I won't bore you with details, for those who are see the gallery of pictures.

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Monday, Pen and I went in search of Robin Hood in Nottingham, not only did we find out there was no such person but there was no Nottingham Castle where the sheriff lived. The castle was another example of Oliver Cromwell's vandalism as he had it pulled down after the civil war.

Nottingham is quite a pleasant place with a good mixture of old and new with lots of space and a light rail system, as well as a Costas coffee shop.

In place of the castle there is a large house, well more of a huge stately home really, they have an exhibition of militaria from the Sherwood Foresters a famous English regiment which had it's origins in Nottingham. The second exhibition is about the history of Nottingham and the castle and was very interesting, guess you had to be there......(:-)

With all the hoo hah in the UK over the "Storm of the Century" we felt and saw very little impact in the midlands anything that happened was in the south. On our trip to Nottingham we saw not a tree out of place, we were safe.

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Now we are up to date, today we did our usual trip to Stratford and Leamington.

Stratford has a Costas, say no more.