Mid Winter Christmas at Hamner Springs

Miranda and Scott invited us to the Hamner batch for a mid-winter christmas weekend! Great fun!

It seems that whilst it is great fun to have real christmas on the beach, it's not quite the same as a European white christmas, particularly with respect to FOOD and DRINK and SNOW. So, an ever more popular idea here is the concept of a July Christmas. By all accounts I think it should be an idea more widely promoted but not commercialised!

Hamner Batch

Christmas silliness

Christmas seriousness (dinner)

White Christmas!

During this action packed weekend we:
- ate brandy snaps;
- mountain-biked around Hamner (Jollies Pass). Impressive singletrack (muddy); impressive climb (long, just graded, loose, steep, difficult, muddy, icy/snowy at the top). Great rideout, Scott politely suggesting we walk some sections of the climb for my benefit, well, until we met some female twins on their way down who explained that although they had walked a bit, they started walking later than we had!
- relaxed in Hamner hot springs;
- ate food until near explosion (GREAT);
- chilled out, played silly games (mainly with the lazy boy chairs) and opened presents;
- went skiing at Lydford - Jen coached usa very well and was very positive and encouraging but the conditions were very icy, which was tough. Road up to Lydford was ok but learned that our little toyota doesnt have much ground clearance as I carefully lined up the wheels to go over a rock, but instead crushed it (sump survived that one thankfully). Later needed to learn how to use snow chains to get us to the top of the road, but Scott and Andy helped us with that - it's a little tricky!