So as the title says, the holiday wasn't quite the complete excercise in relaxation and stress aleviation that we had been hoping.
First things first apologies for missing posting an update last week, we had a break-in at the house in Portugal and our laptops were stolen.
Week 1 in Algoz was lovely and relaxing and awesome. We were able to hang around on 'home move' day before heading to Galé to the new home for a week rather than having 6 hours of 'living out of the car' waiting for 16:00 when we could get into the new house. It was very different from the first one, much more 'urban' it was within 15 minutes walk of a few lovely restaurants, an epic Pastellaria which did home made ice creams and mind blowing cocktails.
Sunday was pretty quiet, it was the 3rd anniversary of losing my Mum, I'd found a church which was open (no repeat of last years leaning on the outside sobbing my heart out and feeling let down - well it was Sunday afterall) where I wanted to light candles for Mum, Dad and Ian we had plans to go and sit on the cliff top take some photo's and then a meal at the fish restaurant within walking distance of the house.
The church was an orthodox one, apparently I broke all the rules by not covering my hair, there was a service in progress with everyone standing and walking round in circles then just leaving and more joining, I was stood next to the candle table but it seemed rude to wander around light them and disrupt whatever was going on. After about 10 minutes we left feeling more than a little uncomfortable, and I'm pretty sure I've cured myself of the need to do that now. I bought some candles and lit them back at the house after the cliff and the meal then we had a relatively early night.
I woke up Monday morning early and came down to put my weekly post on here and realised that while we slept we had been burgled. All our cash and both of our laptops were stolen. Fortunately our passports, credit and debit cards, phones, iPads and my camera were not taken. The Villa rental people changing all the locks on the front and back of the house once the police and forensic man were finished and a couple of follow up trips to the police in order to get the formal report with the crime number and everything on it for the insurance people.
Tuesday we went back to house number 1 for a BBQ with the owner Pete and the lovely Brian and Kay. We had a lovely time and feel like we've made some firm friends who we will be inviting over next time we go there. We were invited to stay over rather than travelling back to House number 2 that night, but by then the fear and paranoia was high that something would happen again and we were not comfortable staying, having too much to drink and just leaving the house unattended; so we went back sober and fear we missed out on an epic night.
I DID get to do my twilight horse ride on the beach on Thursday on a kindly horse named Violet who was very calm and gentle. I've crossed off another thing from the bucket list YAY ME!!
By the time I had to dismount the horse after an hour and a half in the saddle it caused much hillarity that my legs had literally turned to jelly, the nice man who led the treck had to catch my substantial body as I pretty much fell off like a sack of potatoes and then couldn't move for a few minutes. It did give everyone there a good laugh watching my legs shake so hard. I 'm clearly not as out of shape as I thought though as the next day I was okay, a little aching in the thighs from the rising trot but apart from that all good.
We flew home on Saturday, dropped our cases back to our 'real' home and then switched to my car to go pick the dogs up from Poole in Dorset. They were SO happy to see us, I think Craig had fallen a little in love with Winston who is now so much calmer. Both dogs now can walk past other dogs without reaction and we have new techniques for difusing situations to work on. out pups are just so much more calm and confident and hopefully from here on out we will be much more calm and confident dog owners too.
Gareth and I have agreed on a few lifestyle changes we want to put into effect going forwards which hopefully will have us both losing some weight, eating more healthily and cutting right back on the 'bad things' (cigarettes).
Today I'm back in work with my 'loaner' laptop catching up on a vast quantity of email and finally getting around to updating you all.
Got to run, apparently I've only managed to scan in half of each page of the police report that I've emailed to Gareth - got to go fight with technology.
Much love xx
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