Marisol and Paul wish you a happy and healthy new year.

We hope you have had a relaxing time over Christmas and have been able to enjoy the time with your family and friends.

At home

During 2024, we have both remained very active with both lots of sport and in our home and working lives.  At the start of this year, we did some renovations in our living room.  When we bought the house, it has a hot air heating system.  That was replaced with heat pumps when we moved in, so the chimney became redundant.  In January and February, a wonderful carpenter transformed the space in the middle of the living / dining room and made some glass shelves, then added a high level book shelf.  The transformation was quite amazing.  We have requested his assistance in the start of 2025 to transform the chimney in our bedroom into a set of shelves and draws.

Sports

The biggest part of our year was based around a major sporting event in August.  It involved cycling from Annecy (near Geneva) through the Alps down to the Mediterranean coast near the Italian border at Menton.  Cycling this distance and over all those mountains would be hard enough, but the event that we joined was called the Inferno, and we needed to complete the route in just 2 days.  With almost 250km (150miles) each day and 4 major mountain passes, it was far from easy.  Needless to say, a large part of our spring and early summer was spent in training for the event, with one ride of 300km (190miles).  The event itself was very hard with very early starts in the morning with temperatures in single figures and late evenings with afternoon temperatures above 30 Deg C.  Marisol and I arrived at the hotel on the second day, completely exhausted but happy.  Our goal was only to get to the finish line, so we were very surprised to be awarded with the prize for the best mixed team (man and woman).