Back to Britain – July 2026 (Month 16)

Welcome to July 2026.

This was a month with lots of doggie activity. Klaus and I looked after Molly and Storm for five days, which included me taking them on a long ramble with friend Ching.

We stopped for a pub lunch during the walk which was very pleasant.

Unfortunately at the end of the walk I tripped over a hole, skinned my knee and twisted my ankle. My scabby knee healed over the next week but I still have a painful ankle when running – the perils of getting old!

We really enjoyed having Mollie and Storm to stay with us – it was lovely to have doggies about the house again, although it also meant we didn’t leave them home alone at all which reminds us of the restrictions dogs can cause.

We were also asked to look after Lottie the Miniature Labradoodle as her owners had a day booked at Newmarket Races to celebrate a birthday and their pre-arranged dog sitter was unable to do it. I was going to be out almost all the time but Klaus was happy to look after Lottie – and to do some good photography of her!

Sing Elijah

The reason I wasn’t around to look after Lottie was that I had two full day practices for Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s “Elijah”. This is a special project put on by conductor Leslie Olive with the Suffolk Sinfonia and was something that I and a few other Bury Bach Choir people decided to participate in.

We had the initial rehearsal at Culford School, 10 minutes north of Bury St Edmunds. It’s a private school in beautiful grounds – we had our lunch sitting on a bench outside looking at the gardens.

The practice was quite tough as the room was pretty full. I sat next to a lady Tenor, Jill, who had also been at a small practice I had attended a week before (which was organised by a lady from Ipswich). I’m trying to recruit Jill to join the Bury Bach Choir tenors too!

The photo below is of one of the “pop up” practices in someone’s lounge.

I have sung Elijah before as an Alto, and in German, but the practices have been really good as I am feeling fairly confident in it.

I attended five of the pop-up practices which varied in location and time but were all useful.

The actual concert is on 22 August so we have a few weeks to continue learning it!

Bury Bach Choir in Bath Abbey

The Bach Choir’s summer concert was William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, which was performed in Bury St Edmunds Cathedral whilst we were on our transatlantic cruise, but we were also singing it in Bath Abbey in early June, along with the Bath Bach Choir.

So about 30 Bury people made their way to Bath for the final rehearsal and then the concert. On the Friday afternoon Klaus and I gave chums Clare and Tim a lift to Bath – here we all are with our refreshments at the motorway service station on the way to Bath.

We parked at the Park & Ride and then got the bus into town where Clare and Tim went off to their respective hotels and we walked into the pedestrian area right by the Abbey where we had our AirB&B booked.

This was the bedroom/lounge.

The view from the window of an enormous plane tree. From the kitchen window we could see the Abbey.

We enjoyed an evening meal with Tim and Dawn (another choir friend) before retiring for the night.

The next morning Klaus and I found somewhere to have breakfast and had a bit of a wander round. We visited the Royal Crescent of course.

It was then time for the rehearsal. The first half hour (it felt) was arranging where we would stand to file in in the correct order so that we were sitting in the correct seats. Once we were all in the Abbey seated we found some places where someone was too tall and had to be moved. This was quite faffy but ended up sorted out.

Whilst we were having the rehearsal Klaus teamed up with Penny’s partner Chris and they had a bit of a walk around and then a coffee.

The Abbey is beautiful although the acoustics turned out to be a bit more mushy than we had thought. The practice went OK though.

We gathered in the Guildhall for some snacks before the concert, and Klaus and Chris joined us. The choir Marketing lady had got some random temporary tattoos done and so lots of us put them on our upper arms – and discovered they don’t come off very well (it took me a week to get rid of mine! – and this photo is of it after a week)

Most people just thought we had a Burger King tattoo!

I went back to the AirB&B to change and then it was time for the concert.

It was a really good experience, the music sounded pretty good from where we were sitting, and it was good to finally sing the pieces properly. It was actually easier to sing Belshazzar with the proper orchestra rather than just a piano accompaniment.

After the concert was over we went back for drinks with the Bath Bach Choir people.

The next morning Klaus and I stopped for breakfast just round the corner from our AirB&B at the Pump Room.

We also had a bit of a browse around Bath – this was the Guildhall Market.

More of Bath’s architecture. In the photo below, the symbol is the UNESCO World Heritage symbol as the entire City of Bath is registered.

Whilst wandering around Klaus found this wonderful leather jacket made of really supple lambskin – and bought it.

We had to check out of our AirB&B by 11am but had the tour of Bath in the early afternoon so James and Barbara from choir said we could drop our luggage off at their accommodation as they were staying another night. So we walked to their place and dumped our luggage before enjoying the excellent tour of Bath.

After the tour we returned to James and Barbara’s to collect our luggage and then got the Park & Ride bus back to the car. Both Clare and Tim had alternative arrangements for the journey home so it was just the two of us.

Car show at Culford

The following weekend Mark & Gwenllian came over for a barbecue and to watch the World Cup Football. They brought Mollie and Storm, of course. They stayed overnight and then the next morning we went to the Culford Classic Car Show, which Klaus and I had visited the previous year. It was good to have a look around at the interesting cars and we stopped at the church again for tea and cake.

A visit to Southend on Sea

My sister now has Fridays off so we try and meet up once a month. This time I decided to visit Anna and that we would then have a visit to Southend Pier.

I decided to do the journey in my BMW i3, an electric car with a range of about 80 miles (with a backup scooter motor). I wanted to see if I could do the whole day without using the Range Extender motor, so I drove to Anna’s with the most efficient settings (i.e. no air conditioning, maximum speed 56mph), travelling along the A road via Sudbury rather than the A14/A12 dual carriageway route which is faster but 10 miles longer. I made it to Anna’s with about a 20 mile range and plugged in to her charger when I got there.

After a lunch of sandwiches we unplugged my car (which had charged up about 60% by then) and drove to Southend. We popped in to see my niece who works there as an audiologist and then headed to the Pier.

In the photo below you can see the Pier going into Anna’s head…

Of course one has to have doughnuts at the Pier so we shared a tray of 10 (officially) but we actually had about 16 (some had been eaten before the photo below was taken).

We walked along the pier – the tide was out. Below is the view towards Kent.

At the end of the Pier a sign with the distance to New York. Interesting they also chose Dunkirk as a destination.

We walked back and then headed back to Anna’s, plugging in my car to charge again. I went out for a curry with Anna and my nephew Val and then headed home, this time taking the longer route (A12/A14) for ease of travelling and because I knew I had enough electricity. I got home with 7 miles range but had done the entire round trip of 150 miles just on electricity. Not bad!

The Odyssey

We had heard all about it and as we hadn’t been to the cinema together for more than two years we decided to book a screening at the Abbeygate Cinema which is a small local cinema. They also do meals beforehand in a little restaurant which was really nice.

I bought a big box of popcorn and Klaus ensured he would be OK with his Haribo.

And what did we think of it? It was OK but not as good as the hype. It was very long too – although I didn’t quite manage to finish my popcorn.

So July ended with really hot weather and our garden brown rather than green. Klaus had worked full time all month and, despite a few days when he felt a bit gloomy about work, overall he is happy to be back in the saddle and doing lots of customer visits. He was also heavily involved in working out the strategy for the company for the future. My strategy is to hope that he is able to retire when he feels the time is right and that he continues to enjoy his work and it doesn’t make him ill again!

August looks like a quieter month than July in the diaries but we do have our fifth wedding anniversary to celebrate. Stay tuned!