Half term holidays

• Posted in Blog
• On February 19, 2020
• 7 Comments.

What?!? I hear you say, a holiday from a holiday, how ridiculous. In all honesty, it’s not. With the arrival of Ryan’s sister and our niece we had every excuse to down tools and chill. School’s out for the week and we were ready for some R&R.

Unfortunately the weather had different ideas, not downplaying any of the rubbish you’ve had in the UK, but 35 knot winds and squally rain showers was not top on our holiday agenda. Luckily Lucie managed to put a positive spin on life, “ I could be walking around Legoland in storm Dennis!” she mused whilst sheltering from the warm rain clutching a rum punch, yep there are worse places.

We started our week on the french side of St Martin but after being blown around the anchorage for a night we made the call to sail to Anguilla. Not the smoothest of sails and our newbies did very well to hold down their lunch! A worry was the swell and the fact that Anguilla only had one tenable anchorage so if that wasn’t going to work we would be turning around and bouncing back across the 3 hr passage. Luckily the bay was blowy but flat and we all got a lovely sleep. Well, that’s the royal we, I spent much of the night getting up during the squalls to shut the hatches and stop the buckets of rain coming in!

We decided to visit Anguilla by road for the first couple of days, and with much debate as to whether we should hire scooters, push bikes, quad bikes, jeeps, trikes and even hover boards it was decided unanimously by those with a sense of maturity that a vehicle with an open air element was really not ideal. So off we trundled in our 2 cars. Do not ask me how this happened, but Ryan managed to land himself with all the children whilst Lucie and I had our own car. I cannot tell you our delight at seeing his face when he finally clocked that he was babysitting (just as an aside, I was once told, it’s not babysitting if you own them!). So with jubilant glee Lucie and I set off leading the way, with our only responsibility being navigation. Unfortunately, map reading is not our strong point and I think we managed to make a total of 6 U turns, not to mention mistaking a police station for a petrol station, we have strengths in other areas!

Anguilla did not disappoint, We found some fabulous beaches and beach bars. Anguilla is old school Caribbean with white sand untouched beaches and fabulous sea scapes. The windward side has rugged beaches that you can hike along and the leeward side boasts languid flat water in idyllic bays.

Day 3 saw us ride a speed boat 1 1/2 miles offshore to sandy island, literally a spot of sand rising up from the sea,this island is open to the elements and is ever changing with the wind and sea. It’s like the island itself is alive. We had a wonderful lobster lunch here and hung with some other friends of ours. My absolute favourite phrase of the day was Priscilla, “Oh!” She sighs, “Being on holiday is so hard, for goodness sake where is my hammock!”

So we’ve made our way back to St Maarten today with some sore heads but great memories, we’ll be sadly waving goodbye to Auntie Lucie and Kitty tomorrow. We’ll be saying ‘adios’ from the famous beach bar at the end of the runway. I won’t be one of those crazy people that holds on to the chain link fence whilst being blasted by jet fuel so hard that it sends you careering into the sea, no I won’t do that, I can’t vouch for Ryan though!

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