I might be getting a little old for this skiing lark

Just back from our skiing holiday in Saint-Martin-de-Belleville in the Three Valleys. It's a pretty village, transformed into a winter wonderland by fresh snowfall in the three days leading up to our holiday week, and we had a fantastic ski lodge, basically the penthouse apartment of a three-storey block just yards from the bottom of the cable car.

The holiday wasn't without its problems. For Sam, it was a nightmare journey of cancelled ferries, hastily arranged flights, hire cars and snow chains. For me it was a series of painful crashes that meant I came back from holiday with a few bruises and stiff limbs. Perhaps I am getting too old (or too unfit) for skiing?

The first problem was that Condor Ferries cancelled the Friday night sailing from St Helier to St Malo – the high wind and resultant sea conditions meant it was too extreme for the catamaran ferry that they run. The next sailing would be Sunday, which meant Sam would miss two days of his holiday. He cancelled the ferry, booked a flight to Geneva and hired a car for the week.

Condor seem a pretty useless bunch. The ferry from the UK was cancelled numerous times during the summer (mainly due to engine problems) and they really need to get some boats that are reliable and can cope with a bit of rough weather. After hearing of this, we were ready for a rough ride across the Channel on Saturday morning, but it was as smooth as silk. I know P&O run bigger ships with stabilisers, but even so ...

Our drive was 170 miles to Dover and then 600 miles in France. We do the autoroutes, which are fast but expensive, and we can do it in under nine hours with two stops. The BMW, for all its faults, is a great car for gobbling up the miles. You can set the cruise control at 80mph and it will cover 600 miles before it needs filling up.

The weather forecast said it would snow heavily the week before we were due, but Saturday would be sunny. It was actually snowing quite heavily in northern France and again just after Dijon, but we made good time until we came to the small road up the valley to Saint-Martin from Moutiers. Sam, who was a little ahead of us, had warned that he'd had to stop to put on his snow chains and lots of cars were struggling on the snow-covered, steep road. I was doing fine and I guessed that the cars pulled up at the side of the road fitting chains and snow socks were running standard tyres. There was a bus in front of me that was running without chains and I guessed my winter tyres would grip for longer than his. Margaret was very keen for me to stop and fit the snow socks, but my traction control hadn't kicked in once, so I was getting good grip. The biggest problem was traffic and those with chains on that were limited to 20mph. Once we reached Saint-Martin, we turned off the road and drove up through the village, where the snow was much thicker, but made it very picturesque. The BMW was fine; if everyone fitted winter tyres, we'd had few problems in the UK.

The chalet (Le Cochet) had underground parking where it was about -3C and -15C outside. There was a lift up to the third floor and we had three rooms en-suite, a mezzanine with other beds and a large kitchen, dining room and lounge – all open-plan.

Sam's hire car had standard tyres and snow chains for emergency. He'd had to fit them half-way up the hill from Moutiers and had a real struggle to get them on. His hands were freezing and he was glad that another chap had given him a hand.

On Sunday, Sam was out early to get the ski passes and then we set up the skis in the garage (I'd slackened the springs on the bindings during storage and they needed re-setting. I was using Lucy's old Rossignol skis and they needed adjusting for my bigger boot size.

On the ridge above Saint-Martin - that's Mont Blanc next to Sam

Saint-Martin is served by a gondola, which you can take up and enjoy a fairly easy blue down. There's just one run down into the village, but from the top of the gondola, you can take a chair lift which offers a blue/red back down to the top of the gondola or a run into Les Menuires (the next resort up the valley). If you take a third lift, you reach the ridge and can ski down into Meribel in the next valley or further up our valley to Val Thorens.

We got the gondola and I skied the blue down to get used to the skis. It was a bit steep (for me) in places but lovely fresh snow, really good conditions – cold, but beautifully sunny. Next we got the gondola back up, then the chair-lift (St Martin Express), then another chair lift (Granges). On way down a blue run called Grand Lac (which is very steep) I had a crash, caught an edge and face planted. I got bashed on the face, my goggles pushed the contact lens out of my right eye, I cut my nose and bashed my shoulder and arm. With Sam's help, I was able to fish out the contact lens from my lower lid and ski gingerly down with one eye shut. I had another crash on hard ice at the bottom and bashed my hip. I looked a bit of a mess, so called it a day for skiing and had a wander around town, found the supermarket and shops, plus a Huit a 8. I got some provisions and some sympathy from the lady in the supermarket.

Ouch! Feeling pretty sore.

On the second day, there was no way I'd get a contact lens into my right eye, which was half shut, so I got the cable car up and tried a test ski with goggles and insert. I'd tried this before and hadn't liked it, but this time it seemed OK. It took me a while to get my act together (and one small fall), but then we went up the second lift and skied across to Le Menuires via Gros Tougne, La Violette and Bettex. Les Menuires is not as pretty as Saint-Martin but you can ski both sides of the valley and there are lots of runs and lifts. It has a couple of the steepest greens I've ever seen. If I was in ski school trying to snowplough down those I would have been bricking it!

In the evening, we needed some provisions that we weren't able to get in Saint-Martin, so Sam and I went to the supermarket in Moutiers. It was bitter cold and freezing, but the road down was much better than Saturday night and there was no problem with grip. Moutiers is not an attractive town; it sits deep in a valley so that it always seems to be in the shade (certainly so in winter) and the town is dominated by its main road. Sam sort-of remembered where the supermarket was and we found it quite easily. It was as drab and cold as the rest of the town, but it had cheap bottled beer, boxes of wine, some other healthier provisions and logs for the fire. As we were walking around, I kept hearing a tweeting, like birds. Then I saw a small house sparrow hopping around the aisles. I thought he'd come in and become trapped, but then there was more tweeting and I spotted a whole flock of them. I guess they live in the supermarket and in cold, inhospitable Moutiers, it makes a lot of sense.

On the third day, we decided to ski the other side of the valley at Les Menuires. I felt a bit stiff from my fall on the first day and wasn't skiing well. We planned to reach the Pointe de la Masse at 2800m and took Masse 1 cable car and then skied down Vallons to Masse 2, but it was very busy and we bailed out to go back to Les Menuires. There was a steep blue (Les Enverses) and the snow was quite banked and uncompacted. I took another sharp fall and cracked my left arm, broke my goggles and lost my inserts. This one really hurt and I thought I'd broken my upper arm. I was quite looking forward to a ride down in the the Mountain Rescue Ski-Doo, but then I came to my senses, the pain cleared and I realised I wasn't in for a free ride. My goggles strap had snapped open, my inserts were gone and so it was with blurred eyes that I managed to get down to Les Menuires for a hot chocolate (medicinal). I wasn't up for skiing back and so I took the bus back to Saint-Martin with my tail between my legs.

I don't know why I'm skiing so badly this year. It's two years since I skied and I have new skis, but I suspect the problem is my age, but mainly my weight and lack of fitness. I have put on half a stone in weight over Christmas and I'm now 15st 6lbs (216lbs). Before next year, I need to cycle, ski and skip. If I was two stones lighter, I'd bounce better. As it is, I'm feeling pretty sore!

Arthur's first taste of apres ski

When I got home, Margaret, Arthur and I had a walk around town, popped into the supermarket for bread and sympathy from the nice French lady and then went for apres ski at Dahlia cafe. This was Arthur's first apres ski, but no gluhwein for him. He was very happy to have a look around though.

The next day, I felt so beaten up and sore that I stayed in the chalet with Margaret and Arthur. It was nice to spend time with them and see some more of Arthur. Margaret has been playing the part of chalet maid and (on account of the cold and snow) hasn't been out of the chalet apart from with me. She has been enjoying her time with Arthur and, despite having a cold and cough, he is a very accommodating child, happy and content to play on his own for a while with his toys. He can sit up and roll over, also crawl on his hands and knees, but prefers to have things brought to him. To wave, he clenches and unclenches his fist or rolls his fingers and this is also an indication that he's about to do something “naughty” like crawl over and play with the logs. Margaret has been teaching him to throw a ball, which is a game he loves, but now he throws anything he has in his hand. She may have created some trouble!

It was Sam's birthday and I don't think he's entirely happy being 34. They skied across to Courchevel in the morning to do a run called 'Indiens' which is Lucy's favourite and were back for lunch at 1.30 with Margaret, Arthur and me. That's pretty good going as Courchevel is the furthest of the three valleys, so it's a lot of lifts and runs. Lucy was pretty pooped, but we ate at L'Alp restaurant – nice, but with the most minimal menu I've ever seen. You could have burger or plat de jour and one choice of pudding. I had plat de jour (Chinese chicken and noodles) and it was good but not in the Savoyard tradition. Arthur was getting a bit fractious by the end so we took him home and then Margaret and I went down into town, did some souvenir shopping, ordered a rotisserie chicken for dinner and got another bag of logs (the fire uses a lot of logs!).

On Thursday, I still felt too beaten about to fancy skiing. I really worried about falling again. Sam and Lucy went out in the morning and had tried to ski along to Val Thorens, but the first piste had been rough with lots of moguls and they'd decided it was no fun. After skiing in Les Menuires, they'd headed home after lunch. I went out in the afternoon for a ski on some blues above Saint-Martin and then we skied across to Les Menuires (down those scary greens) and had a beer in the sun. Sam skied back, but I was happy not to have fallen, so I hopped in the free ski bus.

It's amazing how quickly the week goes by. It's our last day and we decided to drive up to Val Thorens and ski there for the day. At 2400m, Val Thorens is 1000m higher than Saint-Martin and it was much colder when out of the sun. The snow is thicker, but has been blown off the higher points, so off-piste skiing is still not really practicable. We had a good morning's skiing, but I kept to very easy slopes and then we stopped for lunch. In the afternoon, the wind had really picked up and had blown soft powder snow over the pistes. It was bitter cold. Sam and Lucy had decided to ski back as it was the last day and I drove down happy to have had two days without crashing.

Getting home is always a slog. For Sam and Lucy and Arthur, it was a very early start to get back to Geneva, drop off the hire car and catch a 12.30pm flight back to Jersey. We set off about 7am. It was cold – as low as -15C after Albertville and a little foggy. But we made good time and once the sun was up it was a lovely day (although it remained below freezing pretty much the whole journey). We caught an earlier ferry (which was full of rough Scots on a coach home and Romanians heading for work in the UK). We got home at 9.30pm, so a pretty good run all in all.

10 new things in 2016

The year I can't find 10 new things I've done for the first time, will be the year I'm officially past it. Thankfully, I managed it this year (although it was a bit tight). Here's my list:

1. Played Santa

This is probably the most scary thing I've done for a long time. I took over from Pauline as chair of governors in September and so, when I was asked if I would be Father Christmas at the school Christmas Fair, I couldn't really say no. I was able to borrow an outfit from Amanda at The Lovely Little Tearoom, which was a great help as I think the one used by PFSA is a little threadbare.

Testing out the Santa suit in the kitchen

Anyway, I turned up, nipped into the disabled toilet and came out as a full Santa Claus. I didn't have a grotto, just a space in the corridor leading to the library and my collection of elves was gleaned from Year 6. Some of the elves needed keeping in check but, apart from forgetting to collect money, they didn't do a bad job.

Despite my worst fears, no child disputed that I was the real Santa. One said he'd seen me at the garden centre in Spalding that morning and he seemed a little disappointed that I hadn't recognised him. There were just two terrified children – one I was able to cajole into not crying, but she wouldn't look at me, and the other was my granddaughter, who refused point blank to go anywhere near this odd chap. She had to have her book delivered by a less-threatening elf.

The children didn't seem very mercenary. Most said they'd be happy with anything; a few had some specific wishes (including some things I hadn't heard of); one little girl was hoping for a SIM card for her mobile phone and one boy wanted a drone so he could take aerial videos and start his own YouTube channel.

2. Walked coast to coast

I've covered this in a few blogs already and it was a major undertaking. It took two weeks out of my year and I also did a few practice walks in Rutland, Norfolk and around Toneham. The walk is really unusual because the terrain is so varied. It's massively popular and brings in lots of foreign tourists. It's a shame the paths aren't better maintained and also better marked (route finding was sometimes difficult). David and I had a very companionable walk, drank far too much beer each evening and finished with a sense of achievement and relief. Glad I did it and would recommend it to anyone else.

End of the walk at Robin Hood's Bay.

3. Played Telefunken

Telefunken is a card game beloved by Lucy's family. It's a form of contract rummy that's really popular in South America where is was possibly introduced by Germans working for the electronics company Telefunken, that was setting up a factory. There are a number of rounds in which you have to achieve certain groups or sequences of cards. The winner of each round is the person who gets rid of all their cards first and the other players accumulate points for the cards they are left holding. Lucy loves the game and is very competitive.

We played it first one evening in Baldock and I scored fairly well, but Lucy won. Over Christmas we had another go and I got such a big score in the first round that I was never going to win. Tom won that one because I unloaded some cards that he wanted and Lucy has still not forgiven me. For me, it was third time lucky. I won my third game of Telefunken when all the cards seem to fall right for me. I even got a “Batatarso” at the end, which is where you put down all your cards at once without anyone else having put any down. In that case, the other players get double scores for the cards they are holding. I've always enjoyed card games, so it's one to play when people come to stay. Margaret hates playing board or card games, so it's not one we can do together.

4. I joined the Lib-Dems

This is a fall-out from the EU membership referendum. I've previously been a member of the Liberal Party (so I could drink in the Gladstone Club in Northwich), the Labour Party (so I could attend discos at the Labour hall) and The Conservative Party in recent years. I think I'm a natural conservative, but the referendum result really shook me; I discovered that I didn't live in the country I thought I did. A negative “out” campaign, full of lies and misinformation, preyed upon people's fear of immigration, racism and xenophobia and was countered by a pathetic “remain” campaign, who were convinced they were going to win and concentrating on scaremongering. What's done is done and who knows where we will end up? What is clear is that the values we care about don't protect themselves, so the imperative is: get involved (and that's why I'm in the Lib-Dems).

5. Went to Tolethorpe Hall.

The Stamford Shakespeare Company has built an open-air theatre at Tolethorpe Hall and they put on a couple of Shakespeare plays each summer and also one family-orientated performance. Richard Harrison, from my Probus club, has a brother in the company and this year they were putting on Alan Bennett's version of Wind in the Willows (Richard's brother was playing Badger). We had a picnic on the lawn beforehand and the performance was really good. It would be a great location for Shakespeare, especially something like A Midsummer Night's Dream or The Tempest.

6. Grew raspberries

When I took over the allotment, I wanted a soft fruit section. I've got gooseberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants, which we always struggle to eat, but no raspberries (which we would never struggle to eat). Sometimes I just don't think things through properly. Anyway, this year, I bought 12 canes of late raspberries and put them in not really expecting to get a crop. They did really well, shot up and produced a small number of berries (just enough for your breakfast yoghurt) well into October. I've cut them right down now and I'm hoping for a really good crop in 2017.

7. Jumped over an año vieja

Tom was booked by AP news to shoot the fireworks in London for new year's eve and was going to take Lucy along to see the show. We said we'd look after Julia. However, the job was cancelled a few days beforehand as AP were taking a Sky News feed instead, so Tom, Lucy and Julia came to ours for new year. I often get a little maudlin at new year and I have an inclination to dwell on the past rather than look forward optimistically. So Lucy's latest South American tradition that we were invited to try suited me rather well. It's an año vieja (old year in Spanish) and the tradition is that you build a doll (a guy) and it contains all the bad things from the past year. You then have a few drinks, set fire to it and jump over the burning embers of the previous year. In Ecuador, they would also stuff the doll with bangers to add an extra thrill as you perform your jump. The doll normally has the face of an unpopular politician or celebrity stuck on and we chose Theresa May and Nigel Farage as our 2016 baddies.

8. Became chair of governors

Pauline Coakley stood down as chair of governors at the school after 13 years. I don't think it was an easy decision and it was hard to find someone to replace her. In fact, I think I was the only governor willing to do it so, unsurprisingly, I got the job. I am not sure how long I'll do it; so far it seems quite hard work and pretty thankless. I don't think I'll manage 13 years, but perhaps three would be a reasonable contribution. I need to start considering some succession management or, perhaps, if we take academy status, the role will become redundant.

Apethorpe Palace

9. Visited Apethorpe Palace

Until a year or so ago, I didn't realise there was a palace at Apethorpe. I think my sister and I walked past it on a training walk I did with her when she was tackling a 25-mile walk for charity at Blenheim Palace and she was wondering if we'd get a glimpse of the place. We didn't – it is very well hidden. This year John Douglas from our Probus Club organised a visit to the palace. There's a short period each year when it is open to pre-booked groups, so it was a good opportunity to see the place. It's an amazing old house, with rooms still pretty much as they were when Elizabeth I visited the place and when James I stayed there on a regular basis. Amazing to walk in the footsteps of history.

The palace has no electricity and no plumbing. It had been bought by a Libyan businessman, who was denied entry to the UK after the shootings at the Libyan embassy, so it stood empty and deteriorating for years. The caretaker stayed on, unpaid, and it was his work that saved the place from ruin. Eventually, his story became known and English Heritage was able to acquire the building, stabilise its structure, do some renovation and have no sold it to a French businessman who lives in part of the building. The covenant with the sale means he has to open it to the public for a certain period each year when English Heritage guides take you round. It's a fascinating place.

10. Saw the Albion Band.

When we were young (in our 20s), we had a couple of LPs by the Albion Band, an electronic folk rock group, a sort of 1970s version of Bellowhead. There was one song that we and the children used to dance around to. I think it's called The Primrose, but we knew it as Whip Bum because our dance was more like a chase where you got a gentle kick up the bum if you weren't fast enough. The Albion Band long since broke up, but three of the original members and a woman singer get together each Christmas to release a CD and undertake a short tour. Some years back, they were playing at the Key Theatre and I booked tickets. On the night, Margaret didn't feel well enough to go, so we gave them to my sister. This year, for our Christmas present, she bought us tickets to their Christmas concert at Stamford Arts Centre. It was a nice evening, just the thing to get you into the Christmas spirit.

2016 in 3,065 words

Well 2016 has been and gone and most people will feel that it's good riddance to a pretty bad year. Interestingly, this time last year, I was saying much the same about 2015.

In reality, 2016 has been an interesting mixture of good and bad. There were many good things such as the birth of my second grandchild, Arthur; Lucy getting a place at Cambridge to do her PhD and Max achieving a distinction in his Masters (we're still waiting to see if he can secure funding for his PhD).

The bad things were mainly outside my bubble: the UK (extraordinarily) voted to leave the EU, the USA elected Donald Trump as its President and a civil war in Syria reached new horrors with a dreadful siege of its second city Aleppo. Of course, history contains many Aleppos, but modern technology means we are able to watch it almost live via reports posted on social media and by videos taken on smartphones. Just imagine Stalingrad recorded on a thousand iPhones …

Sometimes (well, quite often), I felt that I didn't want to watch the news; it just made me gloomy.

Aleppo was taken by Syrian government forces in December, aided by Russian air power and weapons technology, but the civil war drags on with millions of refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Europe. This country will be a running sore for the next 50 years. It has the remnants of an authoritarian democracy, ethnic groups seeking autonomy, modernists and various extreme religious factions (including one seeking to re-establish a caliphate).

We have no idea how good (or bad) President Trump will be, but few people in the centre or left of politics feel that he will be a general force for good.

Leaving the EU is a tricky one – there was no plan in place for leaving the Union, so we voted on a question with no idea of the consequences of a 'no' vote. We still don't have a plan and the government is refusing to give even a strategic vision of what they want to achieve. Idiotic, meaningless slogans such as “Brexit means Brexit” have been quoted in every attempt at a serious debate and so we're none the wiser about what the country will be seeking to achieve. It's a complete, bloody shambles in honesty.

When we've asked for detail, the answer has been “we want the best deal for Britain” - as if anyone would set out to negotiate the worst deal! With politicians treating us like idiots, I don't step into 2017 with any great optimism.

The good things in the past year have all been within my own bubble and, thankfully, there have been plenty of those.

Arthur Joseph Bertram Rayner arrived on February 22 and we've been able to get across to Jersey to see him quite a few times (Margaret a couple more than me). He's a very happy baby and looked the absolute image of Sam when he was born. He now looks more like Lucy and he's busy learning to crawl. He's got crawling backwards sorted out and it won't be long before he's here, there and everywhere. We are seeing Arthur in mid-January when we head to France for a skiing holiday and very much looking forward to that.

Julia, our other grandchild, celebrated her first birthday on June 26 and now she's walking and chatting away in two languages. Her growth in skills and ability has been lovely to see. We've done a lot of child care, especially since September when Lucy started her PhD and so, of course, I handle her a lot. It has been the most amazing thing has been to feel her change from floppy baby at seven months to suddenly develop a core strength so that she could, at first, sit and turn over; then crawl and walk (start to function like a little human). It's been great to be able to spend so much time with her. Once her PhD is complete, Lucy and Tom will have to live in Ecuador for at least 10 years, so we will see them perhaps once a year. Skype will replace visits and we are going to miss them so much. Of course, that's some way in the future, but all the more reason to enjoy time with Julia while we have it.

Paddling in the sea at Brancaster

One strange thing is that I now feel more aware of my mortality than I did before I was caring for Julia. I have always known that I will die, but I have never worried about it. Once, when I was riding my motorcycle, a car pulled out of a side road directly in front of me. It was impossible to miss him and that's the one time in my left I thought I was about to die. In that split second before impact, I wasn't frightened, just accepting, and I like to think that I'll be ready to die when the time comes (not that I'm in a hurry to do so). I've not worried about death and I've not often thought of death, but since caring for Julia this year, it has been on my mind.

I guess that it's a caring instinct clashing with grim reality. When my own children were small, one of my concerns was: who would look after them in the event that Margaret and I died? It was a question never satisfactorily resolved, but it just lost relevance over the years; although even at 40 years old, I still felt some security and protection from having my father alive and I did have an unpleasant feeling of exposure when he died.

I find myself thinking: how old will Julia be when I die? How much of her life will I be able to be a positive part of? She will be in Ecuador until she is 15 and I will be 77; I will be 80 by the time she is ready to go to university and, if I make it to 90, I might just see her married with children. Actually, most of the time I'm with her, I'm more concerned with getting her to sleep, eat some food, play happily or with keeping her out of the dangerous cupboards. I don't sit there ruminating on life and death, there's not really the time. I would like to see Julia (and all the next generation – Arthur and those still to come - see below) grow up, but I know I have a finite time window.

The big news of 2016 was that Lucy is having a second child and we discovered, between Christmas and new year, that it will be a boy. He's due to make an appearance in May and Lucy will be able to take a year out from her PhD as maternity leave. I keep suggesting Eric as a fine name, but no-one is taking the hint.

The PhD is proving to be hard work, even without a second child on the way. Margaret and I have been doing a day of childcare each (I do Wednesdays and Margaret does Fridays) and Margaret is also doing the washing. Tom and Lucy's house in Baldock is very nice, but it doesn't have any outdoor space, so nowhere outside that you can dry clothes. It's OK with a tumble dryer and clothes-horse by the radiator for the two of them, but babies make a lot more washing.

During the first couple of weeks in June, David Jones and I set off to walk the Coast-to-Coast path (the route made famous by Alfred Wainwright) from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire. It's around 190 miles and takes you through three national parks – the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North Yorkshire Moors. There's a full account in my blog, starting at: http://ericsdailydiary.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/coast-to-coast-walk.html. The walk itself is quite an undertaking, but well worth doing. I'd advise anyone to have a couple of rest days during the trip, not so much for recovery, but to enjoy some of the places en route. It's a challenge to walk from one side of England to the other, but also great to be walking through such varied scenery.

Almost halfway

David is eight years older than me and he did have a bit of trouble with his knee. I had some bad blisters at one stage, but was able to walk those off. On the last day, the final three miles were a killer, it felt as if my leg bones were breaking. Someone suggested it might be shin splints. I'm glad it didn't happen earlier because it made the last leg along the coast path a real slog.

The EU referendum (for me) was a real low point in the year. I hadn't expected an 'out' vote and few people did. To be honest. I've still not come to terms with the result.

On the moral level, it makes me so sad to think that my country has turned away from Europe and the anti-foreigner brigade has won the argument. On an economic level, I find it extraordinary that a trading nation such as ours has turned its back on such a big, open market. What the hell are we thinking? I have no faith in the current government or the useless opposition, so I now find myself on the side of the Scottish Nationalists and Sinn Fein (a strange place for a natural Tory to end up). I’ve also resigned from the Conservative Party and joined the Lib-Dems.

Max and Inna perhaps had a better idea: rather than join the Lib-Dems, they have embarked on a round-the-world trip, taking in the USA, New Zealand and India. Perhaps by the time they get back, the country will have regained its senses. You can read about their adventures on https://notesfromourtravels.wordpress.com/. Being a geography teacher, Max is basically taking Inna on a six-month field trip, ticking off all the key GCSE topics on the way. She probably doesn’t get homework, but I bet she does get tested. They left in September and will be back some time in March.

Max did his MSc in Sustainable Management of Natural Resources at Leicester University and gained a distinction, which was great news. His project was all about tree sparrows, which look like slightly smaller house sparrows with brown caps. It’s a real specialist subject, examining the type of habitat needed if this once-common species is to make any kind of meaningful recovery in numbers. With millions of pounds being poured into habitat protection, it's important to fully understand the effectiveness of that spend. It's not just a case of paying farmers to leave 10 metres uncultivated around the field margin and watch all the birds and mammals return.

He has joined a volunteer group of bird ringers at Stanford Reservoir, Leicestershire, and made that the centre of his study because a decent number of tree sparrows breed there and there is data going back a number of years. I went along with him one late spring morning (it was cold and wet and windy) to help with observations. I sat shivering watching a shivering tree sparrow through binoculars. At least he was sat in the hole of a nest-box and had some shelter from the wind.

I have been involved in some survey work myself this year. With Max’s encouragement, I signed up for the British Trust for Ornithology's (BTO) breeding bird survey and was allocated a section taking in Nene Washes and a bit of the North Bank between here and Whittlesey. You have to walk the survey area in sections and record all the birds you can see and hear. There are two sessions, one in April and one in June. I did the survey with Max both times.

On the first pass, we saw lots of swans, shelduck and woodpigeons and discovered a huge colony of house sparrows living at the Dog in a Doublet pub. There was also very distinctive song that we kept hearing on the sections in the Whittlesey Washes – some kind of warbler, but which one? I took a recording on my iPhone and one of Max’s bird-group colleagues identified them as sedge warblers. They had stopped singing on our return survey (too busy bringing up babies, I guess), but some new birds had moved in. These did a really interesting flight dance and had a very distinctive song. We thought they might be woodlarks for a while, but we identified them as meadow pipit and were quite pleased, when I entered the data, to see that they had been recorded there in previous surveys.

I have also been recording birds in my garden for the BTO garden birdwatch and doing regular recordings (full-species lists) along a section of Toneham. We had some long-tailed tits nesting in the berberis stenophylla in the garden and also some house sparrows in my new sparrow-box, which I put up in spring. Highlights of the year included seeing a sparrowhawk take a greenfinch off the seed feeder and spotting a flock of fieldfare sitting in the hornbeam tree trying to decide which field to try their luck in. Along Toneham, Max saw a kingfisher on one of our recording trips (but I was looking the wrong way and missed it).

The allotment has taken a back seat to a number of more pressing tasks – childcare, walking holidays, Thorney Post and school governors. The best crop was sunflowers, which I grew there for cutting because I don’t like to cut them in the garden, where it’s nice to enjoy them blooming in situ.

We did get some broad beans and runner beans, plus onions and beetroot, but peas were eaten by slugs, pigeons took half my broad beans, frost destroyed one crop of Ecuadorian corn and some other creature stripped the ripe cobs off the replacement crop. Blackcurrants went unpicked, I did get a few raspberries off my new canes and we also had beetroot, courgettes and borlotti beans.

We’ve been to Jersey four times this year, including a couple of weeks spent painting and decorating. Sam and I finished off decorating the two larger bedrooms on the first floor (one blue, one green). We had talked about a ski holiday, but good sense took hold with Lucy only six weeks from giving birth, so we took up paintbrushes instead. Later in the year, I went back and painted the front and helped Sam replace the roof of the playhouse. Margaret and I went across to see Arthur in April and we also had a trip in early December.

My car notched up 200,000 miles this year and it has been the source of much head scratching. BMW certainly makes well-engineered cars, it runs beautifully and uses little oil between servicing despite its mileage. However, the electrics and engine management are a constant nuisance. The car is a BMW 520 Touring and I'd advise anyone to steer well clear of them on the basis that the wiring for the tailgate runs through the hinges and chafes and breaks over time so that power is lost to lock, wiper, lights, etc. This seems to affect almost all cars at some stage of their life and mine started suffering breaks when it was eight years old. Getting it fixed at a BMW garage will cost a couple of thousand pounds and it's annoying to me that such a basic design flaw isn't being put right by the manufacturer.

I keep thinking that I should change the car, especially when warning lights and chimes are going off all the time, but I persist in getting it fixed.

At the moment I also have the Nissan Micra and Max's Ford Fiesta on the drive. I got the Micra back when it lost power and started burning excessive oil. Tom, who had been using it, decided to buy a bigger car and got himself a Ford Mondeo. Andy Bunyan said the Micra was running on three cylinders and it was probably cheaper to source an engine from a scrapped car than try to fix the fault. This is another car which I should probably have scrapped, but instead I told Andy to find an engine and fix it. It took him about three months and cost £600, but we did get it back and it's actually a really nice car to drive. It's 13 years old, so emissions are not as good as a new car and despite it being only 1.2 litres, it costs a fair bit in road tax.

Finally, I've been keeping Max and Inna's car running while they are on their world trip. It was left with a message that it needed an MoT and so first task was to get it MoT'd (plus annual service). It's also needed two new tyres and really ought to have an alloy wheel repaired (the wheel can wait until we're back from skiing and have a little more time). It's not a bad car, but I prefer the Micra. The Fiesta has really low-profile tyres, which are meant to look sporty, but give a really harsh ride. I'm using it to go down to Baldock once a week, so it gets a good run.

I have been enjoying my Probus Club meetings. We have a lunch once a month and a coffee morning (with speaker) once a month. We've had some really good speakers during the year and we've also done a few trips. Margaret and I went to Elgood's brewery in Wisbech and also to the open-air theatre at Tolethorpe Hall to see Alan Bennett's Wind in the Willows. It was a really good night and we all had a picnic in the grounds before the performance started. It's been nice to be able to go to meetings with David and we also had a trip to RAF Wittering, which was a lads-only do. Sometimes it seems hard to find the time to attend meetings, but it has enabled me to meet a lot of new people and make new acquaintances. I knew that would be one of the things I would miss most when leaving work, so it's worth making the effort.