Maggie & Mal's Adventures in North Cyprus, the UK and Beyond
The boys were heavily into their jobs and challenges…you can see the lira signs appearing before their eyes!
Sol is writing and taking pictures of 20 Natural History things he can see in North Cyprus. His bougainvillea one, Grandad decided he would post in his newspaper and he received a few good comments on it. Well done Sol.
The boys spent a lot of time in the pool, they love it. They also volunteered to help with the gardening (extra pocket money!) and Mal had them up and down the drive with buckets of water as well.
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OK, so we managed to get back home courtesy of Easyjet (additional tickets we had to purchase), so decided it was time to see how Atlasjet perform. We have heard so many stories but hoped they had sorted out teething problems. I have tickets to take the boys back in August, stay a week in the UK and then return on my own. Of course, because Rhys picks us up and has to drive from Cardiff, we booked them to and from Heathrow. We know that Atlasjet are not doing the Heathrow or Gatwick flights. It will be a very long way for Rhys to drive but we don’t have any option. Boys in the car and off we went to Atlasjet in Girne. It is very easy to find by the big roundabout between Girne and the Lefkosa road.
We went in there, waited 10 minutes until it was our turn. They re-issued all our six tickets for August. OK, to Stansted and not Heathrow but at least we have seats, unlike my journey to the UK when 60 people did not get on the plane. They also re-issued my ticket from the UK to Ercan, which some uninformed people are saying they won’t do. It was easy and the girls in there were very pleasant…sorted!
Back home and all in the pool. In the evening Grandad cooked us a barbecue.
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A day for the boys in the pool, playing cards and then a film. They also have a jobs rota, the same as they do at home and they earn their pocket money. It means that we can spend more time with them as all the jobs are out of the way.
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We packed up the car and returned our hire car to Gatwick (different airport, so more expense!) We met up with Rhys who had the four boys who were coming back for a month. I suppose thanks to Easyjet at least we are getting back to the TRNC, even if we don’t have secure tickets to take the boys back home again- Hopefully we can get some sense out of Atlas jet when we get back.
The boys were really good and the Easyjet flight was a pleasure with such nice flight attendants, what a change from CTA. Margaretha collected us from Larnaca. Of course the boys wanted to get in the pool straight away and were so excited tht we didn’t go to bed until 3 in the morning!
Mal and I spent the day packing and cleaning up the caravan. We have now booked new tickets on Easyjet so that we could get back home and also take the 4 boys with us! CTA have really let us down with all the tickets we have bought. So much for trying to support the TRNC economy. Not that anyone seems to care!
We had to leave Torin’s early as we were to return our rental car to Stansted again. Always sad leaving any of the kids. Long story about this hire car swap, but we won’t be using Easycar or Budget again. Hertz for us from now on.
As we were back in Kent so early we stopped at Brogdale in Faversham as they had their Cherry Festival on. Brogdale has the largest collection of fruit trees in the world and before going to Cyprus, we used to be members. It was a lovely day and Mal is as mad on cherries as I am. I even bought him a kilo back from Cyprus! So, there were all the tastings of the many varieties. We also went on the orchard walk, knowing that you can pick them off the trees…..mmmmm! Cherry heaven! The orchard walk is very informative. We discovered that they grow their pears on quince root stock. One of the pictures shows quince leaves at the bottom and pear at the top. Well worth a visit if you are ever in Faversham.
There were also a lot of stalls there so a good day out. We had some good Indian food, loads of cherries and finally we watched the gun dog display.
It was still very warm and sunny and so we stopped at Minnis Bay and had an ice cream.
We watched the World Cup Final in the evening.
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