Vix at 37 weeks.

I am due to fly back from overseas a week or so before the baby is due, so hopefully he/she will not be in too much of a hurry to make an appearance!

Once I am home I’ll be there for Christmas and the New Year.

We are now all settled back in the UK, renting a place in Cirencester, which is a lovely market town in the Cotswolds.

It is very nice to be back in the UK, with all the convenience that goes with it compared to France, and there’s even meant to be a good chance of a white Christmas this year.

In my defence it has been a very busy few months, I have started a new job, Vix is expecting a baby and we are moving back to the UK in September.

We will try to post a little more regularly as time permits.

The past week has had some great swell, most of which I missed unfortunately, but the weekend looks like it might be ok. This photo is at Perranporth on Thursday.

(Photo from magicseaweed)

Summer is just starting to make itself felt here and walking around the old town of Antibes I thought I’d take a few photos of the area where we are living.

They were all taken with my phone so please excuse the quality, but hopefully they show how nice it is here at this time of year.

In another few weeks the summer hordes will descend and it will be so busy that getting around becomes more of a chore than a pleasure.

For now though it is warm enough to walk in the evenings, and see more and more yachts arrive for the summer season.

I will also be in Cornwall for a few weeks this spring, giving a chance to catch up with friends and family, and of course enjoy a few pints of Cornish ale.

During my time in Antibes I had the chance to do quite a bit of mountain biking, mainly in the Valmasque Park above Antibes. There are some great trails there and I am looking forward to exploring further afield later in the summer.

I managed a week or so in Antibes before building up a few more BA air miles on my way back to Miami to take a MCSE bootcamp. An intensive two weeks later I was on another plane on Christmas Eve flying back to Cornwall for my first Christmas there in quite a few years.

Following the festivities Vix and I headed home to Antibes and got ready for a ski trip to Isola 2000. Isola is a ski resort in the Alpes Maritimes around 1.5 hours drive from the airport in Nice. Since January 1st all bus fares on the Côte d’Azur have been reduced to 1 euro; so from Antibes to Isola was a grand total of 2 euros each!

We were lucky enough to have good base of fresh snow fall just before we arrived and we had blue skies nearly everyday so had a great time. If anyone is thinking of heading up there try and make it during the week if you can as the slopes were nearly deserted, the weekends however get quite packed with a lot of day trippers from the coast. I have also heard that February is very busy as it is the French school holidays. I will try and post some photos from our trip there, as soon as Antonia gets back from Thailand with them.

I have put together a few photos from our travels which were taken by Nikki Simpson who is one of the stewardesses on Dream.

This is the Croatian town of Rovinj which we visited during one of our first trips of the summer in June.

After out first few trips in Croatia we headed around to the South of France and spent a month or so in the western Mediterranean before heading south to Corsica and the city of Bonifacio which is perched on the cliff overlooking the Straits which bear its name.

At the end of July we headed East to Turkey and Greece. Starting in Gocek, Turkey we cruised the South West of Turkey including the town of Marmaris (see right); before we headed through the Greek Islands.

After Greece we headed back to the Adriatic and for another two trips in Montenegro and Croatia. Montenegro is developing itself into a favourite tourist destination, especially for Russians and the beaches and resorts are a lot of fun.

In between we had a few days in Venice which is one of the most beautiful places in the Mediterranean. I have now been to Venice a number of times and it is still one of my favourites.

We had a chance to explore some more of the canals and back streets and found some more great shops, restaurants and bars.

It was September by the time we left Venice and there were some beautiful sunsets over St Marks square and the Campanile di San Marco.

Whilst in San Remo some of the crew and I went mountain biking in the hills above the town. There are some world class trails there with the peaks rising to 1299 metres. We cheated a little and got a lift most of the way up but then rode some very technical downhill on the way back to sea level.

After leaving San Remo we headed south to Gibraltar for fuel (and fish and chips) and then on towards Ft lauderdale. Due to adverse weather we stopped in the Canary Islands for a day or two and then found our plans changed so set off from Las Palmas, Gran Canaria to St Maarten in the Caribbean. About four days out from St Maarten our schedule changed again and we turned northwest to Nassau in the Bahamas. We managed to get a little bit of fishing in whilst waiting for the high tide in Nassau and then it was a great relief to tie up in the Atlantis marina on Paradise island.