Great Halloween...

Well I'm not a great fan of Halloween but a day like today makes it a truly enjoyable day indeed. Arriving on the flight yesterday from Zurich meant I had time to catch up with my Dad, go to do a little shopping in Kingston and get to Ian's in plenty of time to...

Be the babysitter and thankfully Matt, Hana and Franny were all fine and pretty much did what I asked even if Franny missed her mum a little later on.

Then it was off to the North London Derby in the wake of Robbie Keane's speech (how is that strong bench Robbie?) and a 3-0 win was oh so sweet. The feeling of two goals in less than a minute was wonderful and as good as it gets. Then after the match it was more beers (& wine) plus running round a house with kids at Pete & Liz's Halloween party - cheers guys. See the photo of the scary Mummy!

Sunday Morning Hangover...we only went for one!

Last night we had our good friends Jim & Beth round for dinner and it was a quiet affair as they had been "indulging" the night before. As a result Claire and I said we would join the rest of the village at the local Chilbi but we would just stay for one drink with our very good friend Clemens. We arrived at around 9.30pm and after our "one" drink we managed to get home at 3am!!!! This may explain the lethargy this morning and I feel sorry for Claire who has to go to hockey in Zurich today.

Here's the Snow!

As you can see from this story the snow has well and truly arrived this week! Let's hope it's the sign of a good early base layer of snow for the skiing season...

A Cold Snap for a Week or so

So it looks like we're going to get our first taste of winter here in Switzerland as snow is being forecast for the week ahead. Okay only in the high mountains but Basel is expected to drop from 25 degs last weekend to 6 degs this week. Time for the winter fleeces!

Arsene's Pub - La Croix D'Or, Duttlenheim

Okay so it wasn't ever going to be that great a place but I did hope for some sign of the great man's presence there in his formative years. Unfortunately the place was a typical small French town Bar/restaurant with little decor and your average morning cafe clientèle, one man and his dog! Combined with roadworks and grey, rain-threatening skies it could have been better but that doesn't mean that I wasn't glad I had undertaken the pilgrimage. Anyway a quick coffee and a short ride later I was on a train back to Basel for beers and a curry with Jim! Whilst the cats are away...

A Long Cycle on the Absolute Last Day of Summer

Waking up this morning I felt that I should really do something as the expected temperature was 28 degs (in October!!) and this would truly be the last day of any summer weather. Then I procrastinated for a while, before faffing around and then wasting some time. Finally around 10.30 I decided to get out on the bike and cycle North as far as I could go and just see where I ended up! I did, in the back of my mind, have some idea of reaching the holy shrine that is Arsene Wenger's Pub - the one where he grew up as a boy in Duttlenheim. I seriously didn't think I would get that close though as it's around 140 km away. However with a reasonable tailwind and beautiful weather I managed to cycle for five hours and managed 132km in the process. A Logis de France near Erstein was the perfect place to rest before a short route to Strasbourg tomorrow.