Simon and Lin

Another year has passed! As usual, we split our time between Coventry and Greece. In Coventry we have been kept busy with childcare (Charlie and Bobby are now 9 and 4, Jade's George and Harry are 3 and nearly 2) and visiting Simon's mum (now 97), who moved to a dementia home, just round the corner from us, in February. She has deteriorated a lot over the last year and is now bedridden and barely communicative. Lin continues to volunteer at the Warwickshir Wildlife Trust, doing nature conservation, and Simon keeps up his cycling. His arthritic fingers meant that he was finding it increasingly difficult to use his brakes, so in June he bought an "old people's" bike, which is very light, with hydraulic disk brakes, so now he can stop. We went back to Greece in the middle of April and set off on our long spring cruise (almost 1000 kilometres) up to Lesbos, Limnos and Thasos, then across to Mount Athos. At first we kept offshore from Athos, because women are not