Bandit Country

 After a decidedly lazy start to a glorious, sunny morning, I unplugged the car, which had been charging overnight. I ran my little program and found that the car is still averaging out at 2p per mile. Long may this continue.

At nine, I had the call with the cousins. There was no general theme for the call, but we did hear a lot about Sam's trip to see Paul Young and how she became really emotional when she had the opportunity to meet him. It did make us chuckle when Helen started to refer to her as Mrs Young.

Once the call was over, set up the feeder for Jasper and headed off for the day. We went up to Odiham to visit Jan and John. It would be the first time we had seen them for months. The traffic was a bit slow around Chichester, but other than that, we had a good run. I noticed when I parked the car that it almost filled the parking space, and it is clearly a bit wider than the Karoq had been. 

We settled down for some coffee and an initial catch-up. We were eager to hear about their recent river cruise along the Douro in Portugal. They commented on how different it was from the Moselle. It was quite rocky, and most of the stops required a coach to get to the various locations. They also commented on some of the engineering, with one lock raising the ship by 115 feet (it is the deepest lock in Europe and one of the highest in the world). They were not as lucky with the weather as we had been. Overall, they enjoyed the cruise (and have booked two more), but think the Moselle was the most scenic.

We drove across to "The Falcon" in Rotherwick for lunch. It wasn't as busy as it had been on our last trip, but that could be because it's Saturday rather than Sunday. We had a super lunch. Di opted for the Sea Bass while I started with a Caesar salad, and followed up with local sausages with colcannon mash. We didn't linger over a dessert as Jan had some Tarte au Citron and strawberries waiting back in Odiham.

We chatted all afternoon, shared photos, and reminiscences. We talked about plans, diet, exercise, and ailments. We finally said our goodbyes and headed into the early evening sun. We had an excellent trip home, taking about 70 minutes. I plugged the car in for an overnight charge, and we went in to be greeted by Jasper, who was delighted to see us and followed Diane around like a shadow.