December 2020 Christmas letter

Well, hands up who would have predicted that year. In common with most of the world, lots of things were cancelled, and we didn't go on our planned holiday. We've spent far more time at home than we've ever done, and we're looking forward to / hoping for some degree of normality resuming when the vaccine is distributed. 

If you happen to be passing by, want to say "hi", and government rules permit, please do get in touch - we always enjoy catching up with friends. The Family Browning would like to wish you all a [voice from off-stage: hold on, there's far more to say about our year than that]... 

2020 all started off so well (on a personal level at any rate, not so great for the bits of the world that were on fire). With Jen and Dan having got married in December, the Australian cousins were over, and the kids especially enjoyed playing together and doing exciting things like going to see the Lion King. We hope it's not too long before Kathryn, Sean and the children can get back over. 

Eilidh's swimming pool cake

In mid January, we took a trip to IKEA (the second of the year already, as we didn't have enough space in the car the first time round for everything we wanted!). Nothing much unusual in that; in fact, you could say it was a usual Browning day of trying to cram lots in - the girls' dance classes in the morning, squeeze in IKEA, go to the Hearts game in the afternoon. Eilidh came out of the dance class complaining of a sore wrist, which persisted throughout the day. It hurt every time Hearts scored (which was depressingly few and far between in "season" 2019-20), so it was unfortunate that Hearts won 4-0 that day. With the pain getting worse by teatime, a trip to A&E was in order, which revealed a fractured wrist and the requirement for a stookie. Obviously that in itself was bad news for Eilidh, but the double jeopardy bad luck was that she was due to be having a pool party the following weekend for her birthday. In the end, it all worked out OK, as she had an impromptu film night with her friends, before reconvening after four weeks and a quick healing process to party at the pool. So two birthday parties this year for Eilidh, though she probably would have rather done without the broken wrist. And one IKEA office chair which has had rather more use this year than was anticipated! 

Dance costumes

February saw Craig go away with the Explorers to the annual Sub-Zero camp, although the camp was wet rather than cold, so wet in fact that hundreds of Scouts and Explorers either had to abandon camp or sleep in a barn. The following weekend, we went to the church holiday in Ayrshire, enjoying a peaceful, though wet, weekend.

Iona's Trolls cake

As February drew to an end and gave way to March, there were murmurs that the schools' Easter holidays might be extended by a few weeks. Italy had gone into lockdown, but surely nothing like that could happen on our shores… The first weekend in March was the girls dance show. They did us proud, with one routine each of ballet, tap and jazz. One show down, and one acro show to go, scheduled for May… Through March, Gwen was also busy practising for a concert, Craig was busy building a new high sleeper bed as part a room redecoration for Iona's birthday, and while all that was going on, we had men in redoing our bathroom and en suite. All was finished bar the snagging the week before full lockdown, and a socially distanced birthday party for Iona was held the day before full lockdown. It was a conveniently sunny day, which allowed us to play games outside, and one of the competitions we did was to see how well each of the kids could wash their hands!  By the end of the day, we’d had quite enough of the song “happy birthday”. Gwen's 40th birthday party, which was due to take place at the Dalmahoy the following weekend, was one of our first casualties from a Covid point of view, quickly followed by our Easter trip to Sallachy. The former was replaced by a family zoom afternoon, while the latter, like most of the country, was replaced by a staycation. Alas, our long-weekend in Sweden at the start of May (part of Gwen’s 40th birthday present) also bit the dust, and couldn't be replaced by any number of trips to IKEA. Our rebooking for the same weekend in 2021 is looking touch-and-go at the moment. In the meantime, having not celebrated turning 40 yet, Gwen is quite content remaining 39 for another year!

Finally got them working!

It's fair to say that the first period of lockdown was one of the busiest periods of our life. In contrast to the media narrative of the country sitting around in their collective pants on furlough, Craig was working from 6:30am to 9am, before feeding and homeschooling the girls until 1pm, and then working until late. Gwen's work adapted to the virus conditions, with the majority of consultations being moved to phone, and very careful procedures being followed if a patient needed to come to the practice / a home visit.  Those hours when Gwen got away from the surgery were spent relieving Craig on the home schooling front. 

Throughout all this, Craig's Scouting barely missed a beat. The Explorers were straight online and onto Zoom, and virtual camps became the order of the day. The girls' camping experiences this year have comprised large tents, small tents, hammocks, tents on the trampoline and in the bedroom and dens in the bedroom. It's fair to say that the neighbours were left somewhat bemused by Craig leading online campfires, but this practice was put to great use after he put together an audition tape to be one of the participants in an international campfire festival, for which he and his glamorous assistant won a prize! (For anyone who's still not seen it and wants a reminder of warmer times, it's still available on YouTube.) 

Ice creams in Fife

April, May and June were all much the same. With movement being severely restricted, we settled into a broad routine of a walk on one weekend day, and a cycle on the other. Things began to open up a bit in July, the week before our planned holiday. The original plan had been to spend the first week in a holiday house in Wales with Gwen's parents and the Peplers, to celebrate Brenda and Roger's 80th birthdays, with the second week camping elsewhere in Wales. Wales itself didn't come out of lockdown until during the first week of our holidays intended holiday, but the Peplers and us managed to find a couple of rental cottages within a few miles of each other in Northumberland with generous refund policies if Covid interrupted proceedings. Other than having to pre-book our day-trips (and having to be in separate cottages), Covid didn't really impact our holiday at all. We visited Alnwick Castle Gardens (but not the castle itself, which announced they would open in the "main holiday season", ie English school holidays, not Scottish ones, grrr), Lindisfarne, Bamburgh Castle and a couple of Roman forts at Hadrian’s Wall, as well as having some the time on the beach and some walks. 

Wild hammocking in Applecross

In the second week of the holiday, we made the getaway up to Sallachy, where again, other than the local swimming pool being shut, we weren't really impacted by Covid. Walks, cycles, kayaking and trips to the beach were the order of the day, with a particularly interesting couple of days spent wild-camping in hammocks in Applecross. In those days, we found out that the reason that Eilidh's and Iona's pretty pink and purple hammocks were relatively cheap is that the holes in the bug net are small enough to keep out dragonflies, but not far more deadly midges! The result of that was that the second night involved Iona sharing Craig's hammock and Eilidh sharing Gwen's. Impressively, everybody managed to get some sleep in. Even more impressively, when we returned to Sallachy, we found that Iona had managed to acquire 17 ticks, more than half of the family's total. 

The blue one that Craig's in is going down like the Titanic!

As July changed to August, we were awaiting an update from Auntie Jenny and Uncle Dan on a new addition to the family, and on 1 August, baby Matthew made an appearance into the world; a wee cutie with two doting big cousins who can’t wait to properly play with / babysit him!

The girl's first Munros - Mayar (closely followed by Driesh)

On Craig's birthday weekend / our wedding anniversary, we went wild camping in Corrie Fee in the south of the Cairngorms. Some absolutely ferocious midges made their presence felt in the evening-time, making being outside the tent for any length of time very uncomfortable indeed. Never before has Gwen had a coughing fit by just opening her mouth to breathe and inhaling thousands of minibeasts… Despite this, we had a very satisfying weekend, which included going on a hike, with the girls climbing their first two Munros; we were very proud of them (we are anyway, but we were extra proud that day!). 

Corrie Fee - beautiful, but home to a gazillion midges

Wonder of wonders, schools went back after the summer holidays (in fact during the summer - they cut the holiday short by a week), and we joined in with thousands of parents across the world in being very grateful to teachers!

Ready for some open-water
swimming 💦

The girls were delighted when swimming pools reopened, though we did manage a couple of open water swimming outings, which are a different kettle of fish altogether from a family swim in the local pool. Face-to-face Scouting and dance classes also resumed in September, as it looked like things might be beginning to return to a semblance of normality. And then, abruptly, things started to get worse. We got pretty lucky with our timings. Our October holiday plans were to go down south to stay near (but not with) Brenda and Roger, and after a very nervous wait to see the day before we were due to travel what Nicola would let us do, we were on our way. Our trip to Splashdown water park was amazing, with Covid meaning a restricted number of customers, and therefore virtually eliminating queues! Ditto our trip to Paultons Park theme park, which had the added bonus of being on a school day. In some instances, we didn't even have to get off the roller coaster before having another turn. Our other day trip was to Portsmouth Historic Docks to see the Mary Rose and other ships, where we virtually had the run of the place! 

Body boarding and snorkelling

We also did some cycling in the New Forest, including meeting up with the grandparents for a picnic, and a beach day similar to what we'd done in the summer, except with some body-boarding thrown in for good measure to replace the sunshine (which we're not sure constituted a like-for-like swap).

The final weekend of the October holiday comprised a weekend with the Jenkins in caravans at a holiday park, shared accommodation sadly not being an option this year. The Andrews had been due to join us too, but sadly found themselves constrained by the Merseyside lockdown. 

And that, sadly, was about that for the year. Iona decided to stop doing gymnastics at the initial lockdown, and after her dance class was disbanded, decided to stop that too. She's still in Beavers and her swimming lessons, and we'll investigate other exciting pursuits for her in the new year. Meanwhile, her favourite hobby is "building school" aka lego; what once was called the family room (converting to a guest room) has officially become known as the "lego room" in 2020. On days in deep lockdown, cries of boredom were few and far between; more frequent were complaints that there were only 12 waking hours in a day, and schoolwork, walking or cycling deprived her of precious lego time. Her new favourite method of transport is the skateboard!

Eilidh finished Cubs at summer, gaining her Chief Scout's Silver Award, and moved up to Scouts. She's in P7, and getting ready to move up to high school! She's still enthusiastically dancing (Gwen has enjoyed surreptitiously spying on the zoom classes and hearing lots of unfamiliar French words amidst burpees and abdominal crunches), loves swimming (she is definitely faster than her mum now), is learning the oboe through school, and gets up to all kinds of creative activities at home. She's set up a wee website and published some of her stories on it, and, both on her own and with her friend (and here), has set up a couple of YouTube channels. Here's a humorous wee 30-second creation of theirs:

Gwen's had a very busy year in work, both in the surgery and in teaching trainee GPs. The pandemic necessitated a new way of working in general practice and a whole load of learning and service redesign. Teaching sessions before the summer were cancelled so that all focus was on the front line. However, since the summer, she's spent many hours transitioning many of the materials so that they could be delivered online. In the rare occasions when she's not having to be a doctor, teacher, chef or cleaner, she has been conscientiously keeping fit at gym classes (or in their absence, swimming or borrowing a body pump bar for home), and she's enjoyed helping to plan church services. 

Craig has also had a busy year at work. He's now in his 20th year at Mercer, but recently had the exciting confirmation that he's been accepted by Edinburgh University to return there in September 2021 to study a Masters degree in Climate Change Finance and Investment. So big changes ahead in 2021. His football-playing has been curtailed somewhat by the pandemic, as has his football watching. The girls were alarmed by the extent shouting at the telly on Hallowe'en as Hearts put Hibs to the sword in the delayed Scottish Cup semi-final. The final on Sunday 20 December promises to be just as loud! (Edit: it was, but more disappointing 😢) Just in the last week, Craig received noticed that he is being given an award (the Silver Acorn) for exceptional service in Scouting for over 20 years, a very proud moment indeed.

Shepherds and sheep in the 
online church Nativity

Overall, it's fair to say that we count ourselves very lucky. We're both still working when we know that so many others have been impacted, and none of us have (to our knowledge) had the virus. We give thanks for our health and pray for continued good health, and that of our extended family and friends. The Family Browning would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and every good wish for a happy and healthy 2021!

December 2019 Christmas letter

It seems to come around so quickly. It happens, then before you know it, it’s about to happen again. We’re talking, of course, about Hearts’ record of defeats at Tynecastle over the last 12 months. The girls have been accompanying Craig on an alternating basis into Edinburgh to get some quality daddy-daughter time. It hasn’t been all bad, with a cup final and two semi-finals generating some extra excitement (of sorts).

The year started, or rather 2018 finished, with Eilidh becoming a mummy! Not a phrase that we expected to be writing this early in her life, but in this case, it’s because she’s a gerbil-mum! That Santa Claus has a lot to answer for!

Regular readers of this blog (if such a person exists) will know that January is the time when we celebrate Eilidh’s birthday (because that’s when it is). This year, reaching the grand old age of nine, Eilidh decided that she wanted to have a sleepover, and in a foolish moment, we agreed. We started by taking the group to Honeypot Creative Café, where they made bath bombs and painted pottery. Back at home, it was the usual pizza and film, before sending 7 girls off to bed for an early night. (Two of the three events in the previous sentence happened successfully.) By means of indulging in sophisticated surveillance techniques (listening outside the bedroom door), we were able to overhear plans being concocted to set phone alarms for 3am, at which point intervention was required and phones confiscated.

February started with Gwen and the girls going to the Strictly Live show in Glasgow, having received tickets for Christmas. It was the first time for both girls, and will be something they remember. Of course, with February being one of the coldest months of the year, it meant Craig had a compulsive urge to go camping. This year, the SubZero camp coincided with the arrival of Storm Erick, which meant that not only was everybody cold, but we sustained £800 worth of damage to tents! Fortunately we had insurance to cover it.

Later in the month, we headed to Ayrshire for the Church weekend away. We were staying a short distance away from the main group and decided to cycle to and from the main event each day, an idea which seemed reasonable enough looking at Google Maps, which accurately portrayed a simple enough journey but didn’t mention the steep hills or the driving rain which started on the first morning the second we left the house!

Into March, and Eilidh sat dance exams in modern jazz and tap. Or took dance exams at any rate – there wasn’t much sitting involved in it! A couple of weeks later, she got the results back saying that she’d passed both with flying colours (or distinction, to use the technical term)! Eilidh’s first Cub camp of the year came later that month, a fairly chilly and damp affair – but there were wetter and colder to come! But first, Iona’s birthday and Easter!

Iona also went to the Honeypot Creative Café with friends to have a science party to celebrate turning six, where they made slime (what else?!) and a volcano out of clay, baking soda, food colouring and vinegar. Another consequence of Iona being six is that she is now old enough for Beavers, which she duly started after the Easter holidays.

In a change to usual traditions, Easter started with a Christmas present – tickets for Disney on Ice in Glasgow. It was a great way to start the holiday, before we were joined at Sallachy by the Peplers. We were really lucky with the weather as well, to the extent that we needed to buy suncream for our trip to Landmark!

This photo was taken in Scotland!

After Easter, we entered a bit of a camping extravaganza, with Eilidh being invited on a sixer and seconder Cub camp (before actually being made a seconder), then the whole family going away camping in the Peak District with Gwen’s cousins, with some bank holiday weather more reminiscent of the Christmas holidays than the early May weekend! The next weekend, Craig was away on a hike and camp with the Explorers, before a rare weekend with nobody doing anything was followed by Eilidh going on the Cubs’ District camp. Another weekend off took us into June, when Craig had a rather soggy camp with the Explorers, which provided a stark contrast to the equivalent camp one year previous when we’d been enjoying a heatwave!

Cycling from Linlithgow
to the Falkirk Wheel

As summer began to make itself known (and then unknown again a bit too quickly for our liking), Iona took part in her gymnastics display show.

Well deserved ice cream
at the Falkirk Wheel

Craig had planned for the second half of the year to start with a veterans’ football tournament. However, due to not being able to get an old enough squad together, the nearly-forty-year-old found himself playing in the main tournament with the young whippersnappers!

Gwen and Eilidh chilling
on the canal in Ghent

With summery weather being scarce in the months which pass for summer in Scotland, we decided to take ourselves off on holiday to that well known sunspot – Belgium. Having decided to camp in Spain last year in the hope of some sunshine, we weren’t holding up too much hope. However, our arrival on the continent coincided with a European heatwave, and our tent became uninhabitable after 8am or before 10pm as it was so warm! On a couple of days, the temperature topped 40C, which we countered with going to a water park, and being in air-conditioned buildings in Brussels. We did a trial run of bringing chocolate home, but by the time we got it from the shop to the car, it had pretty much melted! A highlight for the girls was the Walibi theme park, which we think has provided Iona with some inspiration to grow a bit, as she was too short for some of the rides! We also  kayaked along a canal into Ghent, did a canal tour of Bruges, went to the Waterloo battlefield, and got lost cycling in an enchanted forest! On the way home, we had a sobering morning driving via some of the war memorials and museums in the Somme.

Back in the UK, we spent a few days in Lymington with Brenda and Roger. We enjoyed a paddle boarding session in the outdoor salt water swimming pool, did some cycling and chilling out in the New Forest (Craig’s enthusiasm for hammocks extends beyond the night-time camping), and went to the New Forest Show. On the way back north, we stopped off at the Slimbridge bird sanctuary to meet Auntie Lynne, James and Ethan.

We got back to Scotland just in time for Craig’s birthday, which wouldn’t normally get a mention, but then again, he doesn’t normally turn 40! He decided to have an action-packed day, so we spent the day at Foxlake Adventures, doing a low-ropes course (no harnesses, but the obstacles are over a pond!), wake boarding, and doing the “ringo” (an inflatable which we all lay on together and then got wheeched up the pond).  

After a day at the Fringe before the end of the school holidays, it was back into Scouting season! Craig had two consecutive weekends away, first with the Scouts in the Lake District and then locally with Explorers from West Lothian as they vied for selection to an international camp next year. The following weekend, Iona had her first “Nights Away” experience in Scouting with the Beaver Sleepover (which Craig also helped at).

Facing a September weekend with no camping, we took ourselves off to London for the long weekend to visit the Peplers. A highlight of that weekend was going to Legoland on the Sunday, which fueled the girls’ imagination! Iona, in fact, is now desperate to open up a Legoland in Scotland, and is busy working out all the practicalities; she has found a plot of land near Armadale and is sorting out who’s going to sell popcorn, who’ll work in the shop, and how she will design all the robotics it’s going to have!

There was time for Eilidh to go on a Cub camp at the end of September in Northumberland and for Craig to go on an expedition with the Explorers before we went up to Sallachy for the October week. It was lovely to be joined for the first weekend by Auntie Wendy.  We had a relaxing few days walking, cycling and kayaking, and somehow managed to avoid the worst of the rain – and even got enough sunshine in parts for Gwen and the girls to spend a couple of hours paddling up to their thighs! We ended the holiday week by going north to south – down to the Borders for a weekend with the Andrews and the Jenkins.

In November, Eilidh went on a sixer and seconder camp in her own right, having been made a seconder after the summer holidays. She came back even paler than usual, having been proud to have experienced the temperature drop to -2.5. Craig, having decided that he’d spent enough weekends with Scouts and Explorers for the year, decided instead to spend the weekend with other Scout leaders, running a training course.

As we wind down into winter, we we’ve been trying to get a bit into winter mode. Over the course of the year, Gwen has tried a little bit of ice skating (to the extent that she’s started joining in beginners lessons but still can’t skate!). This is no mean feat, given that she has only been on the ice a handful of times in her life, and the last time (around 10 years ago) ended up with a broken elbow! We’ve seen Frozen 2, been to the Christmas Market / rides in Edinburgh, and been to two Christmas concerts; it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

There’s still plenty to come this year though, with the excitement of Auntie Jenny’s wedding in between Christmas and New Year, and hopefully lots of time to see and play with Australian cousins.

Gwen has continued playing for Meadows Chamber Orchestra.and is also teaching Eilidh to play a little bit of the piano! She’s been enjoying regularly going to Bodypump and having a swim when it ties in with the girls’ activities.

Eilidh and Penny setting up camp

Some of Eilidh’s other highlights of the year include writing a book (as part of a challenge for Cubs) about a girl being made homeless– look out for it on Amazon! She also camped out in the garden with her best friend.

She finished playing the violin in the summer, but has taken up the Oboe and choir through School. She and Iona have also started “acro” class (acrobatic dancing), which looks even more energetic than their normal dancing. She was able to try out skiing through the school for a few weeks, and has just completed the “Learn to Swim” programme, to the extent that she’s now giving Gwen tips on swimming technique!

Iona is developing her swimming and moved up a level through the year. She also got the chance to do some fencing through the school, which she loved and was right up her street! She’s started learning the recorder at home, and is continually using her imagination to come up with schemes and grand plans! As well as Legoland Livingston, she’s expressed an interest in building a rocket at home, because otherwise it will be too expensive to go to the moon!

Craig would find loads to do in his spare time if he had any. He still manages to play a little football, and gets a short swim in while Iona’s in her lesson. His remaining exercise usually involves sprinting for the train, and he can frequently be seen running up George IV Bridge in Edinburgh at the end of the working day!

From all of us, we’d like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and prosperous New Year!

December 2018 Christmas letter

Wow, what a year 2018 has been! Snow when we didn’t expect it, lots of hot sunshine when we
didn’t expect it, and lots of rain (in Spain) when we didn’t expect it.

Eilidh’s 8th birthday in January saw us have a short party lunch in the house before taking a minibus-load of her friends to the local Scout campsite so that they could do crate climbing. Climbing up (attached to a harness) as they stacked milk crates on top of each other to make towers 10+ feet high was a new experience for most of them, which they seemed to enjoy.

Craig finished 2017 by taking on a new role in Scouting – as Explorer Scout Leader (14-18 year-olds), and stepped down to Assistant Scout Leader, on a once-a-month basis. The winter consequence of that change was that the annual overnight Brass Monkey camp in the local campsite was followed up the next weekend by the two night SubZero camp in very cold conditions just outside Glasgow.

With all this cold-weather camping and outside partying going on, Gwen was keeping herself busy doing concert rehearsals in cold church halls. One concert in January and two in February set the tone (if you’ll forgive the musical pun) for a year of performance for the female members of the family.

March saw the biennial dance show for the girls, with Iona making her stage debut and Eilidh not letting the occasion faze her; the Friday evening and Sunday matinee and evening shows meant a demanding schedule, which they coped with well and we were of course very proud of them.

With dancing performances out of the way, it was time to think about Iona’s birthday, which this year was on Palm Sunday. We had a party in our neighbouring Scout Hall on the Saturday, with a magician in attendance to wow the children. It was lovely to have the cousins Bronwen and Imogen there, as they, Eleanor and James joined us for the week leading up to Easter when we all retreated up to Sallachy on the Sunday afternoon until the Friday. That meant that Gwen celebrated her birthday up north, with a nice lunch in Plockton.


With birthday and Easter celebrations over and done with, a joint Cub and Scout camp on the outskirts of Edinburgh saw Craig and Eilidh disappear together. We were fortunate to get some lovely weather over the weekend, a precursor of things to come as it turned out (and as you’ll know, unless you spent the middle part of the year on Mars).

As the year progressed, we managed to find things to keep us busy (something we’ve never found difficult!). Craig embarked on some introductory mountain leader training, Gwen had a weekend away with friends in Lindisfarne, and Eilidh had another Cub camp. As spring was ending and summer began, Gwen had a couple of concerts, while the skills Eilidh picked up at her Saturday morning musical classes were demonstrated at a concert featuring her playing the violin and singing in the choir (but not at the same time!).

With World Cup fever striking the Browning household (it felt like all 32 nations must have been
supported for some reason at one point or another!), Craig felt he had to get away from all the
football and go camping with the Explorers!

As June gave way to July and temperatures increased, Gwen decided that the decidedly un-Scottish weather was insufficient for her, and so went to Bath for Lynne’s hen weekend. At points, the temperature there genuinely wasn’t that far off what you find in an actual bath, and air-conditioned buildings were the order of the day, if you could find any.

And so to our summer holiday, which was three weeks this year. A fantastic chance for a busy family to relax and recharge their batteries, you might think. You’d be wrong (or perhaps only get partial credit for your answer).

A case of very unfortunate timing led to an invitation to Gwen’s cousin’s wedding being received after we booked a ferry to Spain (and back again). With other commitments the other side of the holiday (of which more later), there was no scope for alterations in the plan, and our presence had to be substituted with a visit to the Gibsons’ the day before the big day; it was lovely to see a different branch of the family, albeit slightly sad to have to a miss a special occasion. The next day (after calling in to Buckfast Abbey and leaving without sampling the monks’ “tonic”), we found ourselves in Plymouth – a good job, as that was where our ferry was sailing from. The Plymouth-Santander sailing is about 22 hours, so it was like a mini-cruise, and the girls really enjoyed it.

We arrived in Spain to glorious sunshine, and drove the couple of hours along the north coast to our campsite on the Costa Verde (which means “Green Coast” in English). After getting the tent pitched, hanging the hammocks (we’ve all got one now!) and relaxing by the pool, we settled in for nine days of sunshine. Alas, the reason the Costa Verde got its name is due to the stunning greenery between the Picos de Europa mountains and the coast, but such vegetation requires not only sunshine but rain as well; lo and behold, this oh-so-important precipitation fell (at some times in Scottish quantities) on six of our nine days. Thanks to Gwen’s mild obsession with weather apps, were able to plan our days east and west along the coast to avoid the worst of what fell.

The Costa Verde has some very interesting history / prehistory. We explored a reconstruction of
cave painting, went fossil-hunting and stood in real dinosaur footprints. We had a couple of good
family cycles, and managed to spend some time at the beach and have a lot of giggles with a
bodyboard. Our final day in Spain was spent at the Guggenheim museum of modern art, before getting the ferry back from Bilbao to Plymouth. Sadly, the ferry’s swimming pool, which had been an attraction on the way over, had been drained and not refilled yet, as all the water was sloshing out on a rough sailing earlier in the week!

England’s south coast. Some nice places. Some very nice places. Some not-so-nice places. No decent roads linking them. The Spanish road network puts England’s to shame. The 3.5 hour drive from Plymouth to Gwen’s parents in Lymington would have been 2-2.5 hours for an equivalent distance along Spain’s north coast. Nevertheless, once there we were able to unload some camping and cycling gear, re-load the car with wedding finery, and head back west to Bath for Lynne’s wedding to James. With Gwen as a bridesmaid and the girls as flower girls, lots of forward planning had to be done to get dresses and kilt down to Lymington beforehand (in May!), in order for the logistics to work; there certainly wasn’t any spare room in our car! The wedding itself was lovely, but wow, it was genuinely too hot to go outside! Lynne and James make a very happy couple, and young Ethan buzzing around put a smile on everyone’s face.

The next day, we packed up our things, and headed back east to London, where we arrived in time for Imogen’s 5th birthday party (which was on Sunday 5th if you’re losing track of days, like we were!).

Her actual birthday was on the Monday, and the eight of us went to London Zoo for the day (nearly losing two of the girls in the lion enclosure!). Having had Imogen’s birthday on the Monday, it was time to celebrate Craig’s birthday on the Tuesday (told you it was a busy trip). We got six free tickets for the Tower of London courtesy of Craig’s work, which was enough for the four of us and the two cousins to go. At the end of the day, thanks to Eleanor who had looked after a bag of smarter clothes for Gwen and Craig, we nipped into the nearest department store for a quick change, said goodbye to the four girls, and had a night out to see the Thriller stage show.

The following day, it was back down to Lymington to swap our wedding clothes back for the camping equipment and bikes, and to spend a few days with Gwen’s parents. The Thursday of that week was our 10th wedding anniversary (I know – we find it hard to believe too!). We spent the afternoon at a beach near Bournemouth, before checking into a nice hotel (without kids, who’d gone back to Lymington) and meeting up with some of Gwen’s school friends for some early evening drinks, and then enjoyed a very nice local seafood meal.

On our way back up the road, we went via the Welsh border to see Gwen’s other cousins, before
staying the night in Wrexham, making Wales the fifth country of our holiday, after Scotland, England, Spain, and French territorial waters!

Having a later holiday than usual cut down our opportunities to see shows at the Fringe, but we did manage to squeeze in a few shows, both as a family and as an all-too-rare night out.  Craig had his summer camp with the Scouts in Northumberland in mid-August, while at the end of the month, the weekend of Eilidh’s Cub summer camp and Craig’s Explorer water-sports-based camp coincided, leaving Gwen and Iona the space to have a girlie weekend.  There was another important event during August – Iona started school! She’d been ready for it for a while, and has settled in very well.

After that, it was back to the stage, for Iona’s gymnastics show. Just one show this time, but she did very well. The senior gymnasts were doing flips from the top of human pyramids that literally made the audience gasp – some truly spectacular stuff!

There was still time In September for Craig to have another Scout camp, this time in Fife. Craig had been double-booked by the Scouts that weekend – he’d also been asked by West Lothian Scout District to run a campfire at the local campsite’s 60th anniversary celebrations on the Saturday afternoon. He picked the girls up from Gwen in Edinburgh at Saturday lunchtime, took them to the anniversary event in the afternoon, and then took them home for a babysitter to look after them and give them dinner while Gwen performed at a concert and he went back up to Fife; a busy weekend indeed!

The final quarter of the year has flown by for us (as we’re sure it has for everyone).

We were able to get up to Sallachy for the school holidays, and were joined by Buck and Catherine for the first weekend of it. On the Thursday, we came part-way down the road, stayed over in a hotel, and then continued down to Dumfries to spend a long weekend with the Andrews and Jenkins families.

November saw a final concert of the year for Gwen, as the year drew to a close.


Iona is still enjoying her dancing, gymnastics and swimming, and her Saturday morning music
classes; she’s looking forward to starting Beavers in April. Eilidh is enjoying Cubs, dancing and swimming. She stopped her Saturday morning violin classes but still goes to the choir, and Gwen has been teaching her some piano at home. She has just started learning the Oboe through school.
Gwen is now the longest-serving partner in her practice, and has been joined by some new permanent GPs to form a new team of five. Craig is still working at Mercer. Craig managed to snap up a children’s season ticket next to his seat at Tynecastle, and the girls take it in turns to have some special “Daddy-time” at the matches.

As always, if you ever find yourself passing through or near Livingston, please give us a shout. The Family Browning would like to wish all our friends and family a very Merry Christmas and every good wish for a happy and prosperous 2019!