Finally Retired

Retired at last! Following farewell drinks with friends, family and staff (no tears) on Friday 20th July, we finally closed the door (without us having to lock-up) and headed home, redundant. I must say we were touched by the number of friends who turned up to wish us well. We were delighted that five of our grandkids shared the occasion with us. It also served as an opportunity to welcome the new owners and introduce them to local business people. Our best wishes go to new leaders of Nerang Real Estate, Andrew and Kirsty Parkes. We wish them all the success and pleasure that we have enjoyed over the fifteen year term of our custody of the business. We had a great team and we hope they will flourish under their new leaders.

Today, we are in Mooloolaba. We have just had lunch with Murray & Lorraine Patchett who have been staying in our unit for the past week, prior to them leaving for Newcastle and then home to Wellington. Murray and Tony sat next to one another right through highschool and he was Best Man at our wedding forty four years ago. We've only seen each other once since then, although we have exchanged letters and Christmas cards every year. It was great to catch up. Sadly, Murray nowadays is wheelchair bound due to MS but remains as positive and full of humour as ever.

We plan to stay here for a couple of weeks and expect to catch up with more friends during that time before returning home to pack and prepare for our departure for Europe on 25th August — we have a one night stopover in Japan and dinner with Kazumi, then on to London for five days before heading into France. Destination in France is still unknown — it will depend on our shopping list of prostpective barges for sale. We reckon it could take several weeks and possibly criss-crossing France more than once before we decide.

We've seen several barges we really like and even made offers on two that my cousin, Paul Pritchett a boatbuilder from NZ inspected on our behalf while he and Pat were on holiday in France recently. However, on both occasions we missed out because the sellers accepted other offers, yet neither is unconditional so there is still a possibility that one or both may come back to us with an agreement to sell. Fingers crossed, as it would be wonderful to finalise the purchase before we leave and have a barge ready for us to move aboard as soon as we arrive.

Once we're underway we'll post regular updates on our website to keep anyone and everyone informed as to where we are, where we intend to go next, what we've been doing etc. So, start planning a visit! I promise you will find a week cruising a canal in the beautiful French countryside one of the most relaxing and enjoyable spells in your life. You will be expected to hop on a bike occasionally to fetch a loaf of bread, some cheese, or a bottle of wine from a nearby village, of course.