New Years in Cotswolds

Ceylon - Tea Hills and Coast

We have spent 2 weeks on that little teardrop hanging off the south coast of India used to be called Ceylon.

Weekend on lovely Bredvik

A sunny gorgeous weekend in Sweden. Arriving late Thursday night, breakfast in Kungsträdgården and then working in our respective Stockholm offices. Ferry out to Ahlsvik on Friday night to be met by dad. Lovely, sunny and warm. Felt like August even if it was just mid June. Swimming in the sea, BBQ, fishing and just hanging out with Ulrica's mum and dad.

Easter in Aletejo Portugal

We have spent 10 days in Rural Portugal, Alentejo. Staying at 3 different Pousadas. Alentejo is pretty in the spring with all the wildflowers in the Cork Forest.

April in Sweden

A lovely weekend spent in Stockholm. A great bbq with old friends and colleagues from OMX, a very long lunch at Grand's Veranda (a restaurant with one of Stockholm's best views)with Jenny.

Magnus was also in Sweden but spent the weekend in Jönköping visiting sister Amanda.

New Forest

After work on a sunny Friday we met at Paul's at London Waterloo to catch the train down to New Forest. One and a half hours on the train made more enjoyably by a Fortnum & Mason train snack courtesy of Magnus. We were picked up by taxi at Ashurst, New Forest, for a 5 min transfer to Hotel TerraVina. This is a great hotel at the edge of the forest. The major attraction at this hotel is the wines - as the owner Gerard apparently is the best Sommelier in the world. So a lot of good food with great wines selected by Gerard. Including a good crisp and dry Cornwall!
Returning back at the hotel after a long forest walks looking at the New Forest ponies on Saturday. I had both champagne and a nice bouquet of flowers waiting in the room. Lovely!



Photos by M - with the one obvious exception. You guess....

Skiing in Obergurgl

This year with the not too impressive snow record in the Alps, we waited until the very last minute (5 days before departure) to book a ski holiday. We settled on Obergurgl a high altitude resort i Austria. The village is at 2,000m and you ski up to 3,000m so you do feel the altitude. The availability of hotels were not great this late but we ended up at Hotel Alpina and it was really nice. Especially the spa was great with several pools and many different kinds of saunas. The service was also excellent and they had a very swanky ski and boots room, inclusive of practical heated rails for boots, spa music and marble benches.
We were really lucky with the weather as we had a big powder dump the first day. Real fluffy champagne powder. Needles to say Magnus was happy as a kid about the snow - "I have not ever seen snow like this except in Canada" and "this kind of dry snow is a once in 30 year event here in the Alps". After this we had gorgeous sunshine. Days on the slopes, lazy lunches finishing with a soak in the spa.



Most photos by M

Winter weekend in Stockholm

I had a lovely weekend back home in Sweden with mum and dad. During final approach in to Arlanda airport at midnight on Friday night I had a great welcome. A spectacular Northern Light dancing across the sky.

Catching up with Jenny for some lunch and shopping on Saturday followed by Pitepalt for dinner. Stockholm was beautiful on Sunday - sunny and bright. I went for a walk on Djurgården followed by lunch at Ulla Winblad with mum and dad before catching the evening flight back to London.

Goodbye 2010 and Hello 2011

New Years Eve in East Dulwich at the Barbers. Very nice as always.

Christmas in Sweden

We have spent Christmas in Sweden against all odds. Some sort of travel misery is now to be considered a seasonal tradition. It was not the fog but rather some sort of snow chaos at Heathrow that did it this year. We were due to fly out with BA on the evening of the 22nd, so all day the 21st we kept an eye on the status of the five daily BA flights to Stockholm. Watching them all getting cancelled one after another. When the turn finally came to cancel our flight, we checked every available option in terms of flights and dates (within reason) to find an alternative way of getting to Sweden. Every airline was solidly booked out until the 27th at least. But then… one last check on the SAS website…. and all of a sudden a Stockholm ticket via Oslo (for the 22nd!) show up on the screen. It must have been either a miracle or a serious bug in their booking system as SAS had about 5,000 customers stranded in London waiting to get home. Anyway, we snapped that ticket as quick as lightning and managed to get to Sweden in time for Christmas.


Photo by M

It was -24oC at Arlanda when we touched down on Wednesday evening. We spent 3 nights in Stockholm with Ulrica’s family. Eating plenty of Christmas food and getting to see a large chunk of the extended family on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day we took the train trough a very wintery and white Sweden to see Magnus’ family at his sister’s in Gothenburg for 2 days. We also got to celebrate Magnus’s 40th birthday on Boxing Day.

We have a lot of very pretty and snowy photos from our Christmas trip to Arctic Sweden.


Photo by M

Photo by M

Snow in London

Photo by M
We had a bout 10 cm of snow today in central London. A walk on Hampstead Heath in order to justify drinking hot chocolate and sloe gin under a blanket in the sofa and watch "the day after tomorrow".

Photo by M

Scottish Highlands

Photo by M
We have spend a long weekend in the Scottish Highlands, in Wester Ross - very cold and very pretty. Taking the Caledonian sleeper train up from London to Inverness and driving across to the west coast and lovely little hotel Pool-house. Easily the largest suit we ever stayed in (85 sqm). Snuggle up by the fire with some good wine or look out over the sea and watch out for seals. We had one day of proper hiking in the mountains before the snow hit. It was very pretty with all the snow and we also got to see the North Atlantic at its very angriest.

More pictures here.


Photo by M




Photo by M




Photo by M

Photo by M

Photo by M

Photo by M

Train journey pictures here.


Photo by M