Paolo’s birthday gave me a great excuse to get away from London for a bit and sample a bit of the Tuscany lifestyle. Not sure whether it made things better or worse. Read more>

When you spend the majority of the time in the city there’s something fundamentally refreshing about finding yourself on a beach. Read more>

If you were going to make a beach and bay area from scratch that was ideal for Kitesurfing it wouldn’t be that much different from Bulabog beach. The wide bay, shallow water and relatively calm, warm water is exactly what you want. However, I suppose in an ideal world the wind would be blowing 20-25 knots a day from 8am to 6pm when the sun goes down, but unfortunately I only got that one day out of 11. Read more>

After dropping Paolo off at work I shifted over the left hand side of the car and drove his Chevrolet Matiz City Car towards Florence Centre. At least that’s what I thought. Paolo’s only instructions were ‘go straight’, which was far from useful.
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Slightly co-incidentally, but then not at all, I had arrived at Paolo’s resort-style home on the weekend of Veronica’s Hawaiian Birthday party. Terrible timing as you can see.
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Hanging out with Paolo in his resort style pad in Florence. Well, it’s not Florence really. It’s like saying Surrey is London. The one, the only, Paul Cherryfield.
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And so it begins. Starting from the Moran in Chiswick in a Beekeeper outfit, we headed out in the community fun bus towards Wales. Despite being on a stag doo, no-one had brought any beer and the M4 wasn’t going to oblige as it’s banned from being sold in the service stations. Nothing like big brother trying to control the British drinking habit! A few old skool dance choons and 4 hours later we were in deepest, darkest Wales.

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After a polish catholic ceremony in Warsaw we headed an hour out to the countryside to a remote reception hall with a floating reception area. After a glass of champagne we headed to the dining area which was a purpose-built room, surrounded by glass windows and trees. Beautiful. Was suprised to see a shot glass with a stem but soon discovered this was standard fare in Poland and that Vodka was the drink of the night. In fact, we kinda got told off for drinking anything else. In a twist on what I thought was tradition, apple juice was the chaser. Shots of vodka followed by a swig of apple juice. It works! Not only that but I didn’t seem to have a hangover, despite getting through at least a litre of vodka throughout the course of the night. Music was mostly supplied by a jazz / swing cover band who played some great tunes and got everyone on the dance floor. The weather was gorgeous, but it was a little hot and humid even after dark. Jin & Renata both seemed to be having the time of their lives and rightly so. Met some great people and it was a shame to leave the next day…

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Barcelona Trip

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Possibly the most beautiful experience of my life so far. The Balloon ride started in a field a few miles outside Christchurch and we ascended up through the clouds so that we could see the mountains in the distance across a sea of grey beneath a blue sky.

We descended back done through the clouds, falling at 10′s of metres a second without feeling a thing. Exhilirating. The landing wasn’t so peaceful, but it was great fun none the less.

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