Successful trip!!!

Blimey, the last few days have passed so fast I can’t actually believe we’re back home again!!!! The last time I wrote to you we were on a flight to the UK for a few days, well, as soon as we landed I had to head into London whilst Petra and Zack headed off to mums with Mrs Midlife, London’s a funny old place for me, sometimes once I actually get there I quite enjoy looking around and checking out all the latest bits and pieces etc in the shops but other times like this particular time the place stresses me out to the limit, I can’t believe how busy the place is and was, sure, it was pretty much home time for everybody as I think I finally arrived at about 5pm but if you stand anywhere and just look around you there’s people everywhere, it’s almost like the underground system is at pretty much maximum capacity, all I could think was Bloody Hell, I couldn’t do this everyday!!!!

When I battled through the crowded underground system and finally arrived at Park Lane the guys were there ready and waiting with a real nice twin turbo diesel X5 for me, I had the old shape X5 a few years ago so I was looking forward to trying out the new version and whilst I’m not going to sit here an type a road test over the 5 days we had it I was really impressed, the old one was good, spot on in fact but the new one’s just, better, it’s much faster, handles better, it’s well laid out and at the end of the day it’s perfect for a young family and no before you ask, I haven’t ordered one….yet!!! big thanks anyway to Steve and the guys at Park lane for arranging it for me, it was much appreciated guys!!

Whilst over in England we managed to pretty much tie up everything we needed to do, Petra had some real nice surprises for me on my birthday including presents, a big cake and a real nice dinner together that evening. We spent god knows how many hours trotting around Bluewater together buying Christmas presents, went out for a few nice dinners with friends etc so all in all it was a good trip over, the only bad thing was that on the way home for some reason or another the idiot that checked us in put us on a later train despite the fact we were there early meaning about an hour delay and then to make things even worse I realised as we got close to home that I’d left our house keys in our car which was parked at the airport 45 minutes drive further south so instead of turning off towards home we had to continue down the motorway to collect the car then drive back home again, just what we needed, not!!!

It’s looking like my poor old Vito is going to be a right off, after a few conversations with the insurance company they’ve come to the conclusion that it’s beyond economical repair so poor old Midlife has been assigned the task of finding us a replacement, life without our van is near on impossible over here, one of my dogs is the size of a small horse so there’s no chance of putting him ain a car, not unless you want it turned into a total mess that is, not only that I haven’t been able to go motocrossing or anything so I really, really can’t wait to find another nice van, they say don’t they that you don’t realise what you’ve got until it’s gone!!!

I’m looking forward to getting back into training again tomorrow, I know I had the flu thing a while back but even in the short time after that until the time we came to the UK I started feeling pretty good, now I’ve got over a months solid training before our 1st test in Portimao so we should be raring to go by then, I can’t wait!!!

In the meantime as I said we’re working on getting the website looking a bit better so keep your eyes peeled for updates, also you can follow my daily antics and comments on Twitter at @67Shakey. Talk to you all soon, Take it easy!!