Last swim

We had intended to take the ferry to Hurst Castle and then walk back but in the end had a lazy start with fresh pastries and nice coffee followed by a last swim on the beach which remained wonderfully quiet.

Packing up seemed to take ages - I’m not sure whether the youngsters were help or hindrance to be honest. There was a lot of faffing around. We stopped near Beaulieu for a picnic lunch then in Brockenhurst for a final New Forest ice cream.

On the journey back -partly to avoid squabbles about music choices - we played a game where we each had to nominate a song that has a link to a the previous song. From Lady Gaga’s Alejandro to Queen’s Radio Gaga to and then Queen/Bowie’s Under Pressure to Sinatra and Bono’s I got you Under my Skin and on and on with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s April in Paris finishing as we pulled up outside the house.

In a final piece of good news, Tom has just accepted a new job with a very cool company working on low carbon engineering. They really support young engineers in a way his current employer is not willing to - and it sounds like a fun place to work too compared to the requirement of silence at his current place and 9 hour days which have stopped him getting to running club and other social and sports sessions in the evenings. A good next move!