Got ours all firmed up:


March 31 - April 5th- Nerja, Costa del Sol (Home Exchange)
June 10th -16th - Jaca, Spanish Pyrenees (Home Exchange)
July 2nd-8th - Norwich, Norfolk (Home Exchange and visiting family with American cousin)
July 9th-10th - Wolverhampton, West Midlands (Showing American cousin my home town and parts of Staffordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire)
July 23rd -30th - Sedgley, West Midlands (Dog sitting)
September 7th-22nd - Oxford (Home Exchange, two long lost friends are visiting)
September 24th-October 2nd - Sedgley, West Midlands (Dog sitting).

October 2nd is also our 40th wedding anniversary so we will be having a 'do' sometime around then, maybe the next Saturday (8th).

Never been so organised in my life. I thought retirement was about not having any dates or deadlines!

Do you have anything planned?

Your summer sounds great, hope you have a great time.

Rosemary

Blimey - got some energy haven't you ? You'll need a rest after that lot!

I never like to plan anything unless its absolutely essential.
Just let it happen thats my motto.
Lifes very boring if you have to plan everything out ahead.
Spontaneity is the spice of life.

Home exchange now that's an interesting idea, tell me more about how to go about this please (but I'm not going to bloody Norfolk).

That's where the turkeys come from, innit ?

Good for you , girl! Well done, that's what it's all about! Having a few problems here with health, so have just today very reluctantly cancelled next week in a nice hotel in Bath. And for the first time ever, nothing booked for Spain so far this year. But I don't blame you a bit, go for it, best of luck!

And I wouldn't want to go to AEG!

What a shame that you have had to cancel the week in Bath, it is my favourite place in the UK, love it.

Rosemary

Summer has arrived in Spain, today. The doors and windows are open and we’re planning ahead, for today. Walking should be the natural choice, but all the places we can walk to have been walked to many times before.

We’re thinking about picking up friends and driving inland to a typical Spanish square in a small village to soak up the atmosphere and some wine to go with it. I’m not going to look at a map but just point the car in the right direction.

Mind you, it’s a public holiday today, St Joseph’s Day, and all the shops are shut. Will the cafes still be open? There’s one way to find out.

It's a lovely sunny day in London too (although it's too early to talk of 'summer'). Yes, a long walk is in order.

We are on a Home Exchange site, it costs about 50 euros a year, I think, we have had offers from all over the world including a beach house near the Great Barrier Reef, an apartment in central New York and a chalet on Reunion Island (had to look at the atlas to see where that was).

We have only exchanged in Spain and UK though (our choice). So far we have been to Cordoba, Granada and Pembrokeshire. You can specify when where you want to go and you can turn down anything not suitable (so you don't have to go to Norfolk if you don't want to).

We usually just clear a space in the wardrobe, lock up valuables and leave instructions on how everything works, but otherwise we just leave the house as it is. You can exchange cars as well if you want, but we never do.

You don't have to have a posh house, just neat and tidy and somwhere where people want to go. Even if all you have is a flat in Salford it is still worth trying as quite often Americans or Australians or expats in these countries want to visit their families.

No money exchanges hands unless you agree together, for example we ageed to pay the cleaner when we went to Pembrokeshire, but we didn't have to agree to this.

Hope this helps!

We do like spontaneity, but we have to organise the Home Exchanges in advance for obvious reasons and it's a good way of getting a cheap holiday somewhere nice.

The dog- sitting is PAID WORK so we agree to as much of that as we can, and obviously that has to be arranged in advance. We also get to live in our friends' four-bedroomed house instead of the one room that we have in our house in Wolverhampton.

Also this year my American cousin is visiting, I have never met her and she wants to meet our relatives in Norfolk, so we have to organise that too.

So - organise, but leave room within that for spontaneity, is my motto.

Ah, so sorry you have had to cancel Bath.

Hope you feel better soon.

Thanks Scampi send me the weblink will you please, could I leave my dog as part of the deal & save on kennel fees too