Exchange 4 - Our first non-simultaneous.

We had two good opportunities this year. We were offered a youth hostel in Wales to look after for one week and Claire and Jyrki asked us to visit Finland, Jyrki's home country, with them. This meant that there was too little time for an exchange in the summer holidays and we decided not to.

We received a large number of offers, as we do each year, and turned them all down. However, a couple from Newcastle were looking for somewhere in Kent to stay while they looked at static caravans. Their plan was to retire to a caravan on the Kent coast in a few years and they wanted to get a feel of what it was like and what might be available. We decided that we would offer them our house while we were in Finland and then Wales. They suggested that we just let them know when we might want to travel to Newcastle and they would make their house available. this suited all of us down to the ground. they would look after our cats and the house while we were away and we could stay in their house when we needed to.

They arrived after we left and so we didn't meet them but everything went well. Mum showed them around the house and they didn't have any problems. They had brought their own car and so all we had to do was to move one of ours somewhere else to make sure that they had room.

On the subject of retirement, we found a place in Wales that we both felt we could retire to. We stayed in a place called Trefdraeth (Newport) on the north side of Cardigan Bay. We could sit on the beach and watch the sunset, dolphins and seals and behind us would be green rolling hills, it was beautiful.

Finland was also beautiful. We visited the countryside around Mikele, swam in lakes, visited a ski jump centre and an indoor cross country skiing centre. We were able to see the places where Claire and Jyrki had lived when they were first married and they had Nadia and Nathan. We also spent some time in Helsinki, just the four of us before heading back to Stansted airport for the drive to Wales.

We were offered many dates for staying in Newcastle but we were unable to manage any of them and in the end I said that we would leave it and we weren't worried about the second half of the swap unless something came up and we happened to be in that area.

It took four years before that happened but we did eventually stay in the house in Newcastle as part of a trip to Northumberland and we had a great time.