(From a lovely little book called One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Robert Maurer)

We’re travelling again. This time, Portugal. We’ve never been to Portugal. It’s a long way, the sat nav says it will take 17 hours from our landing in France. It’s a bit difficult for me to imagine a journey of 17 hours, I think driving for two hours is long. Happily we won’t be travelling the entire 17 hours in one go. We’ll stop and go a few times.

(Travelling along the M11 towards the port of Rosslare)

We’ve known since we returned from the last trip that we would be going again in January. I have never liked January – it’s cold, it’s dark, there are grey skies and lots of rain. This year there was even more rain. What’s to like about that? Leaving it behind is a good thing, right? Right, but a funny thing happened this January.

(Our cabin, leaving Rosslare for our sailing to France)

This January everything seemed better… Yes there was rain. Yes there were grey skies. Yes it was cold (not as cold as usual.) But there were also blue skies and dry days, there was even sunshine! Was there sunshine last January? How come I’m noticing sunshine this January? I don’t know for sure but I have some thoughts…..

For now, we are about to dock at Cherbourg and do something we’ve never done before – experience France in January. I’ll be aiming to send you a couple of posts a week, so, talk to you soon, Mairead.