Snow

A few minutes of sun when I arrived in Toulouse, then a blast of hail and a wind that threatened to uproot the nearby road signs. The rain turned to snow by the time I was in St Girons and here it's gentle blizzard. Fires burning and house warming up slowly.

Followed by storms

Back to France on Friday, but it's looking like after months of great weather there, I'm arriving just as a week long rain storm arrives. Is the shit weather following me around?

It's forecast to turn to snow over the weekend, so there's a chance of some good skiing as long as the fresh snow isn't too wet.

Amsterdam and Istanbul

At last we have taken our much delayed honeymoon and we headed off on Thursday for Istanbul via Amsterdam. The weather alas was decidedly Devonian, but it was great to travel somewhere new.

Flight times had made a brief overnight stay in Amsterdam convenient and as luck would have it we also managed to pick up tickets to see Nederlands Dance Theatre who were performing in Amsterdam. We saw an early piece by Jiri Kylian, a premiere of new work by Geoke (which neither of us much liked) and a premiere of a new piece by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, which I liked and Susie loved! She even managed to talk briefly to the choreographers who happened to be at the performance and sitting near us.

In the morning it was off to Istanbul. We'd booked the lovely Sultania Hotel, close to the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace. We unashamedly did all the tourist sites and pampered ourselves.

The Hagia Sophia is immense and all the more impressive as it was built in 537AD.

The Blue Mosque is simply beautiful.

The Grand Bazaar was as you'd expect with lots of vendors hassling us for trade and the goods being a mishmash of quality items and nasty junk.

 We also visited the Spice Market (though there's not so many spice traders these days).

The Topkapi Palace is sumptuous and gives an insight into the luxurious life of the Sultans.

We walked across the Bosporus into Asia, though strangely the Asian side is very European whilst the European side is has many mosques and markets and the Sultan's Palace.

One evening we watched the religious ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes - who spun for 35 minutes in perfect synchronisation with each other (but not the beat of the music) despite having their eyes closed. In their religious trance they never became giddy - quite extraordinary.

We swam, had saunas, hammam and turkish massages at the Hotel, as well as dining on delicious turkish cuisine for breakfast and in the roof top restaurant with panoramic views of the city.

A long flight home and although a lovely sunset from the plane, is was the usual rain, wind and a very hairy landing at Bristol.

More stormy weather

Last few weeks have been a mixture of kitchen refurbishments, roof works and new architecture projects for me, all of which has kept me fairly busy through more appalling weather. Problems with materials deliveries has delayed my trip home to France which will probably have to wait until after our forthcoming trip to turkey in a couple of weeks.

The unrelenting series of storms over the past 2 1/2 months have resulted in the rail link from Devon and Cornwall to the rest of England being washed away by the sea and most of Somerset being underwater.

Today we went for walk on Dartmoor in between the storms, though there were still some snow, hail and rain showers and at times a bitter South West wind.

 Quite a few trees have been toppled by the storms

  

Susie and ruby pretend they are on the bow of the Titanic