Pete Tibbitts used to work with me when our Halifax Treasury team was very small. I think it was just Pete, Glenn and myself working as developers at the time. Pete was a young-un, so obviously he moved on after a while and took up a career as an IBM consultant. That mostly seemed to involve developing apps for the DVLA in Swansea. Well, he decided that it would be nice to take a break from the rat race, so he blagged himself a career break from IBM and has headed off to spend a year traveling around South America. He’s currently in Columbia, blogging about the people he meets and learning Spanish. I must admit I’m a bit envious!
My brother (Ant/Antony/Spike) bought himself a few properties in Portugal a year or two back. There are self catering apartments such as the Nina apartment in Sao Martinho do Porto, which is a very nice little seaside town, and Clementine apartment in Nazare nearby, among others. He has also started managing flats for other folks who buy out that way. As the portfolio of his own and managed properties grew, it seemed like a good idea to set up a web site. So I did.
If you’re thinking of heading out in the direction of Portugal (particularly the Silver Coast), please take a look at the web site. Hopefully you can find a nice place to stay. If you’re thinking of buying your own property in the area, why not drop him a note? He knows the area well and is friendly with a few estate agents, so he might be able to provide some useful guidance.
Now I just need to get myself out there and find out for myself whether Sao Martinho do Porto is as nice as everyone says it is!
In January 2009 Leanne and I made our way to the South Pacific. Our first stop was just over a week in Chuuk where we were diving the wrecks of Truk Lagoon. This is where the Americans sank about 50 Japanese ships during World War II. Most of these ships are at safe sport diving depths, and now they have become a fascinating tourist attraction for divers from all over the world. The best feature of these wrecks is that somehow they still have most of the artifacts that sank with them. This includes tanks, tools, guns, ammunition, ceramics, bottles and just about anything else you could imagine people needing on a ship. Finding all of these items on the ships gives a real feel of what it might have been like to be on them, and sometimes the horror of the attack that caused them to sink.
In January 2009 Leanne and I headed to the South Pacific for a bit of a diving holiday. After just over a week diving the wrecks of Truk Lagoon we moved on to Palau, where we were able to see all sorts of big life: turtles, sharks, mantas and napoleon wrasse.
Photos from our holiday in Sharm El Sheikh, November 2007.
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My wee bro Antony married his very-long-term girlfriend Jenny on 7th October 2006. I didn’t take many photos of the event, but here I present some of the better ones.
Dom’s one of my earliest friends, if not the first. Well … our mothers were pregnant at the same time, working in the libray in Hull. On June 15th 2007 Dom got himself hitched to Isabel in Albacete, Spain. Leanne and I made our way over there and made a week of it, staying in Alicante for a couple of days before travelling to Albacete. It was a wonderful wedding, enjoyed by all and somehow we managed to make it all the way through to 5:30 in the morning, at which point Dom was dumped in the fountain in the hotel courtyard. Actually he was allowed to take off his trousers first, which I think was quite generous.
Last week, Andy came down in order to pay a visit to the Chelsea flower show. He’s a member of the RHS, so we were able to head down on the Wednesday, which is one of the RHS-only days. We were hoping that it might be slightly less crowded than the general public days, but it was pretty packed full of folks. Given a bit of patience around the edges of the gardens it was still possible to get some decent positions for taking photos of the displays.
Read on to view the gallery…