Back to Britain – November 2025 (Month 8)

Here we are, approaching Christmas – our first one living in the UK.

I will start with some great news: Klaus has received his Spouse Visa. That means that he can stay here independent of his job which is a good thing as it gives us more flexibility. It’s more secure than the Skilled Worker visa. We got the information on the 27th of November which meant that Klaus can now travel to Germany but we have run out of time to do it before Christmas so it will be in the New Year probably that we visit his father and other friends there.

Culture

This month we visited two National Trust properties.

Anglesey Abbey

The first was Anglesey Abbey which is a country house with beautiful gardens. Unfortunately we hadn’t realised the house was closed for two weeks to decorate it for Christmas so we weren’t able to go in there. We walked around the beautiful grounds instead.

We stopped for the obligatory cake.

Wimpole Estate

The Wimpole Estate is in Cambridgeshire and it is a house and some gardens, as well as a working farm. It was all set up with an outdoor Christmas lights path thingie so there were lights everywhere.

We went on a very chilly day but had a great time. The house itself was very interesting – it used to belong to the daughter of Rudyard Kipling.

Here is the chapel attached to the house.

And here one of several bell arrangements to call the servants.

Klaus took a photo of the staircase ceiling and I took a photo of him taking a photo.

We had lunch at the café and a cake later after walking the grounds, including visiting the walled garden..

We will definitely visit again, probably in summer so we can do more walking outside. We were a bit perished!

A visit to a distillery

Friend Gwenllian had given Klaus a sample of whisky from the English Distillery as she said she really liked it; Klaus liked it too and so decided we should visit the distillery.

We arrived an hour early for our tour so had some lunch in the Grain Store café.

Then we went into the distillery which had a very good gift shop where we assembled for the tour.

The tour was very interesting and the tasting at the end allowed people to have their whisky later (if they were driving, for example) so my whiskies were put into little bottles and Klaus can have them another time. It was a really interesting visit. Particularly seeing all the casks stacked up and learning about the angels’ share.

Klaus really enjoyed the 18 year whisky so bought himself a bottle; it’s slightly over his normal top price limit but he felt it was worth it. The tour was also worth it for me, a teetotaller.

Choir Events

Bury Bach Choir – African Sanctus

For the last ten weeks we have been practising David Fanshawe’s African Sanctus, which is a choral piece with accompanying taped recordings of various African music which is woven in to the main piece.

I have to say, I didn’t really like it. It seemed very noisy and shouty and discordant. It was also quite difficult to sing!

Three weeks before the concert we had a fairly disastrous rehearsal which I think encouraged all of us to do much more work on the piece at home – I know I did.

We were performing the Sanctus in the Apex which is the fairly new concert venue in Bury St Edmunds, along with a percussion band and David Fanshawe’s widow Jane who would give a shortish talk.

We arrived at 14:00 for the dress rehearsal at the Apex. This was the first time we met the percussion band but it turned out to be much easier to sing with them as the rhythm was so clear. However, within a few minutes I started getting warnings from my watch about the volume! These continued through the practice and the actual concert.

The acoustics of the venue meant that we needed holdback speakers to know what was going on but the mix was really well done and we were able to sing well enough in the rehearsal and also in the concert.

We had lots of very positive feedback about it. Klaus volunteered to sell programmes before the concert and we all went to the pub afterwards which was good fun. The next concert is on 13th December and it’s Christmas carols in Lavenham.

The Elderberries Concert

The U3A choir, known as the Elderberries, were also doing a concert in the Apex, three days after African Sanctus. This was a free concert for U3A members and it was themed on VE Day so we sang various pieces such as the White Cliffs of Dover, It’s a long way to tipperary and more. I played my flute for one of the songs and that went well too.

We have another Elderberries concert in early December (another Christmas carols one) so I am having to learn quite a lot. And will also be singing at the Lion Walk Christmas Carols service too!

A quick visit to Glasgow

Klaus had arranged four days in Scotland for work but his first meeting was 9am on the Monday morning in Glasgow so he would have to travel up on the Sunday in his personal time. Once again I suggested I drove up with him to share the driving (it’s seven and a half hours) and then we decided to go up on the Saturday to have a day in Glasgow (the Sunday). So we booked a hotel for two nights and would just play it by ear in Glasgow.

The drive up to Glasgow was good. We left home at 7am as we had to detour a little to pick up some gadgets from a colleague of Klaus’s that needed to go to a place in Scotland that Klaus was visiting.

We swapped driving throughout the journey so I had my first experience of driving his company car, the Mazda MX-30, and I liked it.

We arrived at our hotel in Glasgow which was very near Kelvingrove Park. We were able to park in the road outside.

Our room was a fair size and had a very large bathroom with, would you believe it, a television in the shower! It turned on but had no signal so we weren’t able to watch TV whilst showering.

We went out for a curry that night as we were in an area of Glasgow with lots of choice of decent looking Indian restaurants.

The next day we decided to do the hop on, hop off bus around Glasgow. First of all we walked into the centre of Glasgow, picking up breakfast on the way. We had to buy a few supplies (Klaus needed another roller for his back as he uses these occasionally and didn’t have one with him and felt a few twinges). We looked in the Whisky shop of course but didn’t buy anything.

It was difficult to work out where to get the hop on, hop off bus but we found it eventually and, after moving around a bit on the top deck to get out of the cold, we settled down with little headphones to hear the commentary. There was even one in Germany.

The bus reached the end point and we had 25 minutes till the next bus so we had lunch in a whisky bar (burger lunch) before getting on the next bus. We took this round to the Riverside Museum where there is a transport museum, including a Ford Anglia being attacked by a spider (Harry Potter style).

The exhibition also had bicycles and trains.

We walked back from here via Kelvingrove Park and went back to the hotel to warm up a bit as it was freezing!

That evening we went out for a pizza and Klaus had an Irn-Bru as he was in Scotland (he’s been drinking them in England too!)

The next morning I got ready to buy my train ticket home and discovered that due to lots of rain half of the trains weren’t running. These were the journey which had only 2 changes (so 3 trains), I had to book a 3 changes (4 trains) journey which was still fairly fast and cost £73.

So I booked the ticket and said goodbye to Klaus who was off on a week of customer visits in Scotland. I walked to the station and arrived early enough to have a cuppa before getting on the train.

The journey from Glasgow to Carlisle was good but due to the rains they had some speed restrictions on some bits of the track.

These restrictions meant our service was delayed and I had 1 minute to change at Carlisle for the next train to Leeds. Me and several other passengers ran to the new platform but we made it! This was a slow train going across Yorkshire with some lovely views.

At Leeds I had a 12 minute change for the train to Peterborough but made that one comfortably enough. Fortunately I had bought my lunch in the Co-op outside Glasgow station so it didn’t matter that I had no time between trains, I was able to keep fed.

At Peterborough I had a 40 minute wait, so got myself another cuppa and was patient. I arrived back in Bury St Edmunds at 5pm and walked home.

All was well at home and it had been a really nice visit. I might do the same again next time Klaus goes to Scotland as it’s an efficient way of having a weekend away!

Miscellaneous

I have continued doing jigsaw puzzles in my spare time, One that I very much enjoyed was this cupcakes one.

The problem was, having spent hours and hours looking at all these cupcakes I found I really fancied one so headed off to Waitrose to buy myself one in due course…

I was able to buy a couple more Wasgij puzzles from charity shops in. Bury and have been attempting those.

That’s all I really have to report from the UK except that I have put my Velomobile Millie the Milan up for sale, and also my car the Mercedes SLK Samantha, as neither are being used. We’ll see how long it takes before someone snaps one of them up!