Best of 2014

What I have loved (and, frequently hated) about this year is that I have captured and recorded a photo for every day of the year – just one left to go for tomorrow! I’ve put them all in one place if you want to have a rapid look!  It’s been interesting, and flicking back through it has certainly helped me remember just how much we crammed into the year, as well as the highs and lows that came our way.  It made pulling together my favourite moments easier than in 2013, as for once I had to hand the whole year!  It’s certainly been a busy year – 39 flights (34 with BA of course)!! It has been rather nice to be firmly parked in the UK in December!

January

Cold, work-heavy and generally not my favourite month!  Despite working 7 days a week for parts of it, Mr P excelled in activity planning and we had some gorgeous morning walks in the sunshine before I had to turn the laptop on!  There was a lot of rain but I was smug as I had a lovely new pair of Hunter wellington’s for Christmas that meant I could splash in the puddles like a child! This is Lepe Beach in the solent early one morning – by the time we’d finished our walk it was absolutely heaving with people, just like a summers day!

February

This month we spoilt ourselves – Mr P had a big birthday and so we thought it was suitable justification! In fact we have used his birthday as a reason (were it needed) for all the travel we did this year as they were all places on his bucket list!

We headed for the desert, first class and with a celebrity selfie!  We almost didn’t go to Qasr al Sarab but a good friend said we must accept the 3 hour drive and go there!  How right she was – it was an amazing start to what was an incredible time in Arabia.  5* luxury in the middle of one of the worlds largest deserts – epic!

Not wanting to get the holiday blues is always a key focus on return to the UK, especially in the winter.  This year there were incredible storms of Valentines day, but February 15th dawned bright and sunny – so off we went to the beach again, to see the damage the storm did to Hurst Castle spit and watch a few World War 2 bombs be blown up before it was safe to walk along again…

March

Now it was my excuse for birthday treats!  I was commuting to Leeds much of the time and so we had to fit fun into weekends only! We arranged to meet friends on one of the weekends I was home and we had a gorgeous walk in the sunshine, them Mr P impressed and took me away for the night – staying and eating at 36 on the Quay in Emsworth which really was fantastic! Another highlight of the month was a weekend of yachting in the solent – it really felt like spring, we didn’t even have to wear our waterproofs! Incredibly lucky with the weather (and more importantly to be able to borrow a 50ft yacht for a weekend)!

April

Another excuse for a mini-break, this time our 4th wedding anniversary.  Much as it sounds like a cliche, Venice was superb!  Not only is it a good time to visit, before the crowds and the heat, but more importantly prosecco is a local drink – so celebrating really wasn’t that expensive at all!! This holiday was Mr P’s surprise birthday present so I had a great time researching it in advance of him knowing my plans.  I found a gem of a hotel – Novecento – gorgeous! Venice is such a great place for not making plans and not checking your watch! We pottered around for 4 days and loved every minute.  I’d really recommend the backstreets and getting away from the crowds and ‘obvious’ attractions!  One of our favourite places was a quirky bookshop that I am impressed we managed to find!

May

This is a month when I do very little apart from work!  There were 3 definite highlights of the month – 2 weddings and then the end of the month coming round!  Not much more to say about the month really – it left my brain in a bit of a mush!

June

June had some real highlights but a massive low patch, but we are still here so that’s good!  The highlight of the month was my first visit to Ireland in a long time and most importantly attending the Clipper Race homecoming festival in Derry, something that my husband set up before he changed jobs.  It was fantastic to see his legacy and meet all the people of Derry he has raved about for so long, and who I can’t speak of highly enough.  Quite incredible!  We spent a few days in a little cottage on Lough Swilly and really relaxed and enjoyed exploring the local area.  A gorgeous trip, I can’t wait to go back!

July

In July I did next to nothing as a result of being off work.  For once however, something good came out of something bad and each and every day I was off work the temperatures reached a sultry 30 degrees celsius, so there was little I could do apart from sit myself in the garden and ‘cope’ with my predicament!  Not much happened in a whole month, and I was ready to go back to work and catch up on the 634 emails that I hadn’t already deleted while I was off!! Mr P took the lead this month, doting on me but also cycling the length of the South Downs Way (100 miles) in a day on his mountain bike to raise money for the British Heart Foundation.  A massive achievement! It was a long day for me too – 4am drop off in Winchester and 5pm collection from Eastbourne!  I made do with watching the daily progress of my sunflowers!

August

If I am honest, I can’t really tell you where August went to!  I had a week in Zurich with work and we enjoyed a day at the Red Bull Air Race, but beyond that it seems to have just disappeared into normality!  The highlight of the month was a few days in Cornwall at the end of the month!  Mr P had been sailing and I headed down at the end of the regatta – we saw friends, had a lovely sail in a Cornish working boat and spent time with my parents and grandparents.  We also treated ourselves to a night at the Old Coastguard in Mousehole which is a gorgeous spot and just the sort of hotel/pub that I like!  August was also the month that the WW1 memorial poppies started being planted around the Tower of London.  Quite incredible, even in those early stages!

September

This was the month that I sailed!  Previously we sailed every weekend but recently I either haven’t wanted to or haven’t had the chance!  September however was all about the sailing! We spent a fantastic week in Sardinia at the Swan World Championship, sailing with friends on a 48ft yacht. Great racing, great team work and off the water, great fun!  Bitten by the bug, on our return we did more sailing – this time we borrowed a dinghy from friends and took part in ‘Bart’s Bash’ – the biggest global sailing race, raising money for the Andrew Simpson Foundation and reminding us all what a great grass-roots sport we are lucky enough to be part of.

October

This was our much longed for month!  It brought with it a week in Greece!  My first visit, after years of trying to fit in a trip, Mr P took me to the Peloponnese and it is fair to say that my love affair with Greece (and our gorgeous hotel the Kinsterna) has begun!  We were spoilt rotten by the hotel staff – it was quite divine.  Well off the beaten track it is a hidden gem, 5* but with no arrogance whatsoever.  Quite sad to leave the hotel to go exploring, but this part of Greece is gorgeous, and in October empty, but still blessed with good weather!  The end of the month brought with it a day trip to Washington DC!  My learning from this was 2-fold.  Firstly – fully-flex business class tickets are a godsend – the M3 was shut, but I bumped myself onto a later flight with a quick call to the travel agent!  Secondly – upstairs on the 747 is great for maximising sleep on the red-eye, private jet esque!  BA have also just opened a new lounge at Dulles which is definitely up there as one of the best I’ve visited!

November

A lot of time was spent away from home this month!  Firstly in London – although this was timed well as that meant both of us were in town and we could not only see the Tower Poppies completed, but we could also hunt the Paddington Bear’s that are dotted round the city to mark the new film, all the while avoiding the commute for once!  Later in November I ‘did’ the east coast of the USA – flying out to Miami (with American in their new business cabin) and then bouncing my way up the coast to DC again (and coming home in the A380).  In the middle of the month though, we had our real treat – a long weekend in Vienna visiting Mr P’s oldest friend!  We have already decided we need to go back in the summer!  I didn’t know until we got there how much I liked Christmas markets, but as luck would have it we arrived on the opening weekend of the Christkindlmarkt and of course enjoyed this immensely!

December

As months go, on the quiet side – and firmly based in the UK which made a nice change!  The highlight of the month was getting away to see both our families over Christmas, in the run up to the festive season we had a rotten time so it was really rather restorative to de-camp down to Cornwall for Christmas to see my parents and then up to Cheshire to spend time with Mr P’s!

A busy year indeed, many treats, but a year that I am glad has almost come to a close.  Looking forward to seeing what 2015 will bring us!

Happy new year! Ax