1991, February – bus tour of Andalucia
Flight to Seville, then seven days guided bus tour of the hills, rivers and farmland bordering Spain’s southern coast. Moorish legacy in the architecture of Córdoba’s Mezquita Mosque-Cathedral and Granada’s Alhambra palace (the main reason why we chose this tour – spectacular). Photograph of us outside one of the churches visited during the early part of the tour; no photographs of the Alhambra palace as Ian accidentally dropped the camera into one of the fountains while photographing it and ruined the film in the camera.
1991, May – cruise around Scotland and across to Norway
National Trust for Scotland’s annual charter of a Fred Olson ship – this time the Funchal. From Rosyth, bus pick-up at the Waverley Bridge. Resident entertainment was the Aberdeen trio Scotland the What? Photograph of gulls in a feeding frenzy, with St Kilda in the background. Too rough to land on the island, but we circumnavigated it – spectacular cliffs. Photo of Joyce coming to the sundeck in better weather, but still well wrapped up. Then on to Norway, very rough on the way back, but even that did not stop the National Trust hardies from queuing for a full Scottish breakfast; as a younger passenger remarked, ‘With that lot in charge, no wonder we won the War’.
1991, July – Center Parc, Nottingham
Return visit for a week – Jeremy and Sandy with us; again much time in the subtropical swimming paradise. Photograph of a typical chalet.
1991, November – Kenya
Fascinating three weeks. Robin and Frances were working as doctors in Kenya and Joyce’s cousin, Paul Saunderson, at a leprosy clinic in Addis Ababa. Paul offered to take us all in the Mission Ambulance Land Rover on a guided tour of Kenya. We asked travel agents Abercrombie and Kent, who had served us well in the past, to book accommodation for a circular anti-clockwise tour from Nairobi, first to stay with a missionary-teacher in Narok and then to resorts at Lake Naivasha and Nakuru and back to Nairobi.
On arrival at their office in Nairobi, we found they had booked the tour clockwise, which did not matter except that we would be a week late in reaching Narok and had no way of letting Mary Wight know.
In the meantime, splendid hotel at Lake Naivasha (photo of lunch in the garden) and much observation of wildlife. When we arrived in Narok, Mary shrugged and said ‘African time’ and was not the least put out.
The others then went back to their work and we hired a car for another ten days (two photos of the car), staying at Baden-Powell’s home, Tree Tops (two photos – made famous because Elizabeth was there when she became Queen on the death of her father) and the Ark, both with spectacular wild-life viewing (two photos).
