Ayoob's World: And to the Summer 2008 :-)

It’s quiet a long time after writing anything over here. The weather is slowly becoming comfortable and nice though it rains sometimes. Trees started flowering, there are lot of daffodils on the way I walk to office. The tree branches slowly turning green from the dryness of autumn. Sun is coming early and going late and is getting late’r every dayJ. Now am able to see more people especially kids outside the homes with skateboards and rollers. Just getting ready to welcome the English summer.

It has been a while after the Switzerland trip, great time in dead cold, Snow Mountains, scenic routes and the skiing time there. A week after that I had been to Cambridge for weekend and had awesome sleep all the time. Went to Bedford Modern School to play TT on a Wednesday, since the season is almost over there were not many people in the tables but had a nice time. Though I had got my racket and balls here, I had not yet played it well over here, and that gap was filled. The only problem was that the school is quiet very far from where I live and it took about an hour for me to reach there by foot, as the bus service time will be over by 7.30pm. But yes the walk and run till the school was good enough warm up. Reaching there, after meeting the officials, I just started to game and was feeling so good to reach back to the table after a while. The facilities were so good in fact that’s the place where the British Olympic TT team practices.

I had taken my badminton racket too with me which is still untouched till now, will be finding for the place for that too soon (hopefully). Abi had been calling for long time for planning the next trip, since the beginning of winter there has been no trips together and yes it is because of the weather and all. But now, it is time to do something and we decided to go to Cotswold, which is a beautiful countryside place and the nearby places. They were a little late to reach Bedford, but now with the new members in the crew including Suru and all we started the drive in that 3 door Corsa. The places were nice and beautiful; the weather was good and awesome, pictures taken were perfect.

The model village, the old towns, nice small streams and everything was too good and we were feeling the return to the backpacking time which was a splendid one last year summer with Sunil and Rahul and we do miss them a lot. Picturesque places, yellow flower farms (Rapeseed farm, I think) were we stopped in between. The lunch from a traditional British restaurant, with Danish pastries, sandwiches and above all the nice hot pot tea, “my favourite where ever I amJ”. It was almost evening when we reached the top of hill near to the Tower, which is one of the most beautifully felt place I had ever been in UK. The sky was in an awesome blue tone, the grass giving a nice green touch to it and the Broadway tower in its elegant posture and brown colour, adding to all the cool wind, the deer’s and sheep’s poaching in the near by grass field made the place just awesome. Everyone liked it and cameras were flashing now and then. Another thing ‘ we had three cameras with us, and all Sony cybershot same model’ the only way we differentiated them was after Abi fell down when trying to throw the ball on us J and his camera got some scratches on it. Around the table with Garlic breads, fries, pastries and ‘the hot tea pot’ just got refreshed. Back home, we dropped them in Watford and drew to Bedford as myself, Suru and Panky were planning for light drive next day.

As planned though we were very late to start, we first went to the waterfall and windmill in Bromham which is just 3 miles away from my place. I actually love that area very much, its such a beautiful windmill in the background of the yellow farm. Last time when I went there, the field was dry and then we went inside the mill and was looking to the details. This time the concentration was on the totality of mill in the background of farm ad the Bedford champs rockedJ there for sometime. After dropping Sharath and Praveen back in Williamson CastleJ, we started our slow pace light, no direction dimension trip. The idea was to drive towards Watford through the countryside roads and finding places to see on the way and drive for that. We started with Elstow, Amptill and such nearby places. Reaching Wrest garden which is the second largest in UK, we felt that relaxing feel seeing the long road with trees on both sides and the football ground on the side and the beautiful palace like structure. We played football for a while there and had good time exploring the place too. Driving further, we had small stops here and there, relaxing, eating and playing football. Reaching Watford by eve 7 was a really funny time, exploring the loo while the weather had turned a bit cold too. Good food and return back. Oh, the traffic on M1 was very troubling. We had to face this while going and returning from Watford, may be the weekend impact. There we had some good food and drew back to Bedford. All together was good time and we are all back in home. The good news actually came after two days in the form of a Parking fine notice and £80 gone.