A holiday within a holiday.

On 18 December we flew out of the United States. Our permission to visit the country was about to expire and we have to spend at least 90 days outside North America before we can return. We left Gregory, our motor home, in storage in Florida. All the water tanks are drained and the engine battery is disconnected. Hopefully the motor will start without assistance when we return in March.

We flew to London, via Reykjavik. Why via Reykjavik? Because we plan to break the return journey there for a few days in Iceland.

Bill's brother Nigel had arranged for a taxi to meet us at the airport and take us directly to his home in Shaftesbury, Dorset. We had some difficulty contacting the driver, Peter. He likes to use Whatsapp, so we had set this up and tested it while we were in Florida. But something went wrong at Heathrow, because we both sent messages and none of them were delivered. Luckily Peter knows Nigel well and saw a resemblance in Bill, so all was well.

Nigel would have met us himself, but he is in New Zealand. It's a long story.

So we settled down to spend 3 months based in Nigel's house and with the use of his car. After almost 7 months of nearly non-stop travelling it has been very restful. We know each morning where we will spend that night. We have the luxury of unlimited Internet data, and can even watch TV if we so wish. We have done a lot of reading.

We can walk to a supermarket in 4 minutes, and Shaftesbury is a typical English country town**, with stone buildings, narrow streets and still-cobbled Gold Hill, whose image is the subject of many chocolate boxes, jigsaw puzzles and TV commercials which want to deceive the consumer into thinking that the product is traditional.

**Mike Theilmann has taken issue with this comment.  In his opinion Shaftesbury is head and shoulders above most other English country towns in charm and location.  Quite exceptional in fact.  (We've corrected your spelling of Shaftesbury, Mike.)

It's been cold outside, but the house is centrally heated and very cozy. There is a wood-burner in the lounge which adds a pleasant view of glowing embers to the room as well as heat.

Compared to life in the months charging about North America we have been quite slothful, but we have spent time with friends and got about a bit. Dorset has many country lanes that were created in horse-and-cart days. The established houses, dry-stone walls and hedges constrain the width of the roads, sometimes severely, and are more effective than road signs at enforcing the speed limit.

Typical Dorset countryside.  The cleared area on the valley floor is a long, thin ploughed field, not a road or a river.

The black diagonal stripe on the white circle indicates that the open road speed limit applies in the side lane.  That's 60mph, but you'd have to be insane to drive that fast.

A relatively major road - it has two full lanes and a centre line!

Not all the roads are claustrophobic.  This is in the New Forest, Hampshire.

But there are other hazards - New Forest ponies roam free ...

... and this donkey just didn't care.

At Fovant, near Shaftesbury, some Army units have carved their badges in the chalk hillside.

The river at Weymouth.

Further afield we have visited Eve's sister-in-law near Birmingham and Bill's son and his family in Meltham, Yorkshire. Future plans include Cornwall, Winchester and London.

Today we are not going anywhere. It is snowing. Nothing, of course, to compare with the effects of the Polar Vortex in Canada and the USA, but more than the UK can properly cope with. Yesterday cars were abandoned in Cornwall, on a road we are planning to drive next week! It is forecast to clear up today, but I don't think so.

It was still snowing when the picture was taken.

A scene from the Sub-tropical Gardens at Abbotsbury.  Try and picture them under today's snow.

Nigel will return later this month, and we will have his company for about 3½weeks. We are very much looking forward to that.

Due to the relaxing effect of a warm, cosy house, we have added only a couple of posts to the blog. We will make an effort to bring it up to date. Tomorrow. Maybe.