Back to the UK for Grans 100th

The first three weeks of January saw us heading back to the UK for delayed Christmas celebrations with family and friends as well as celebrating Ben’s Gran who has reached the epic age of 100! We flew over New Year’s Eve which meant a toast in the sky to see in 2025 and celebrate the amazing travels we have had in 2024! 

Family and Friends

This always feels like a whirlwind of a trip, but we did have exactly 3 weeks back and had such a lovely time catching up with everyone. Mel’s Mum had a full house at the moment as she has one of Mel’s sister and husbands living back with her so lots of family time, good food and catching up by the fire - not to mention card games and for those of you that don’t know how to play ‘presidents and arseholes’ it’s a good one.

What we hadn’t anticipated was quite how cold it was actually going to be. The first week saw it barely getting above freezing, frost covering the ground most days. We made it to a few places, Plymouth to visit Ben’s brother (and some old university stomping grounds), Dunster, London, Cirencester, Banbury and Dursley. We did both catch some form of cold/flu when we were back but appears half of the UK were down with some form of illness so just had to carry on, flu tablets and all! 

Our UK house 

We started to undertake the project of renovating our house in the UK (as landlords it got to the stage where it needed some serious TLC after 8 years of renters and thankful Mel’s Uncle is helping to oversee the work). Being unemployed we thought we could at least deal with the garden ourselves… but alas after 5 days of manual labour in the garden turns out we aren’t cut out for this… bruises, scrapes, and aching backs! 

The Big 100

January 21st 2025 marked Ben‘s Grans 100th Birthday and what a celebration she had. Three days together with her three children, seven grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and a Birthday card from the King. It was so nice to catch up with everyone, many of which, like us, live outside the UK.

On her actual birthday we celebrated with ~30 extended family members, had lots of food, good cake all while seeing photos of Gran through the ages. The day after we visited the nearby Mercedes World, where Gran leapt at the chance to be driven by a pro driver around the track & skid pan, where the driver managed to get her to 100mph. She was then treated to a private tour around the museum where we saw a Palmer Mercedes, 1/5 ever made that won the Targa Florio Race in Sicily in 1924. Gran looked in way better nick! 

What’s Next?

Although the prospect of going back to work is fast approaching we couldn’t complete our trip without a few weeks catching up with our Nephew Mikey who lives just outside Melbourne, Australia. We’re leaving the cold of an English winter and swapping it for the beautiful Australian Summer!