Christmas Eve we were invited around to friends of Nick and Jackie for Christmas celebrations. These friends, known jointly as "The Icelandics" are funnily enough from Iceland, and their tradition is to celebrate on Christmas Eve which works out well. Fanny and Svwen and their children (two of whom were there in person and one who kept joining us on Skype from Iceland with his partner and young son), often share Christmas with Jackie and Nick with the first stage at the Icelandics and then on Christmas Day they come around to Jackie and Nick's and have a more English traditional Christmas fare. It was really lovely to share in the festivities with such a lovely group of warm and hospitable people, and we were treated to some new tastes and food experiences with a delicious sea-food based soup for starters (I'm not usually a fan, but this was really delicious), followed by partridge and pears,(and lots of yummy vegetables, and then a wonderful ice-cream concoction and coffee to finish off, with a few chocolates a bit later in case we were peckish!! We weren't too late back to the truck which we had parked beneath some trees in Milly, within walking distance of the Icelandics and also in the other direction, Nick and Jackie's. We settled into bed then and there as we didn't feel up to driving and it was a bit more sheltered than our tarmac surface at the aire. The three of us huddled in bed together under duvets and multiple sleeping bags, trying to get some sleep in the crush and cold. The next morning we awoke and opened some presents after Hilary had found her stocking full of goodies from Santa. I went down to one of the patisserie's which were open (everything was, even though it was Christmas morning)and bought fresh bread. Then we had bacon and pancakes in the van, at which point we were joined by Nick who had come around to invite us around for the day. He came in and had some baguette and bacon with us (he lives in a house of vegetarians and couldn't resist the smell of freshly crisped bacon). We went down to Jackie and Nick's and spent the day there helping out as we could with food preparation and just hanging out until in the evening the Icelandics came around for a lovely evening. We were joined towards the end of the meal by another couple who are mutual friends of both jackie and Nick and the Icelandics, so sat around chatting and drinking nice wine quite late into the night.

Diana and Nick chatting at dinner, Christmas Eve.

Skyping Iceland

Enjoying new books.

Svwen