Please accept my apolgies Mrs S

Oh l am sorry Mrs S, your email was sat in my 'inbox' waiting for me when l got home. No. no, no l haven't stopped in my attempts to fill the Internet with bad spelling, punctuation & grammar, it's just that we have been busy at this end.

Thanks to the panto season, ice cream orders for the little pots were amazing, Hull Truck Theatre doing particularly well, closely followed by both Bridlington & Scarborough Spas. Farm shops too were pretty busy with our total stock of Christmas pudding flavoured ice cream being sold out by mid-December with the Cointreau & orange coming in a close second! So you see, no time to hit the keyboard and then in January, time just flew, Harry was skiing with Young Farmers in Val Thorens and we were thinking, 'need a holiday' & 'must get away'.............

Get away we most certainly did. After a lot of trawling the Internet for 'late holiday deals' then reading reports on Trip Advisor we found ourselves sat in the GP's surgery at Leven waiting to have our bodies stuffed full of injections. Well, you don't need jabs to go to Bridlington but you do if you are heading down Africa way, south of the Equator, across Sudan & Ethiopia to Kenya.

After a 24hour delay, thanks to our flight being canceled due to a 'medivac' and spending the first night of our holiday in a Manchester Hotel, we finally hit Mombasa in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The streets of Mombasa were strangely deserted as we speed through, heading for the 'notorious' Likoni ferry and the road south that would take us to Galu Beach, just south of Diani & our Hotel.

Arriving in the dark at about 4.30am local time, we were greeted by ice cold towels and a fresh fruit punch by happy smiling staff who seemed to think nothing of us arriving so late or early depending on which way you look at it.

So this, l suppose, set the scene. The hotel, backing onto Galu beach, was amazing, the staff happy & chatty, the weather hot & sunny, the sea warm and azure blue, who could ask for more!

Before we left, l had done some research on the National Parks and safaris. Being keen followers of anything coming out of the BBC's Natural History unit and as we were actually in East Africa, a safari should feature somewhere on our itinerary. Before leaving home l had contacted several local safari companies, the choice being once again being based on reviews on Trip Advisor. No easy choice l can tell you as none have prices posted on their web sites, and you need to pick any over night accommodation that you require, OK, you have a list so a case of deciding tent or walls.

At the end of the day, we plumped for a two day safari encompassing Tsavo East & West, staying overnight at the Severin Safari Camp in Tsavo West. We booked the trip with our new best friend, Julius C.K. Nzumbi & his company, Julius Safaris. All l can say is AMAZING! The drive to the park was a safari in itself; so much to see along the way, houses, villages, the local inhabitants, then the parks.

The scenery in Tsavo East is flat, a bit like Holderness with out the drainage dykes, and animals, elephants and more elephants, giraffe, gazelle, zebra, our driver/guide making sure our cameras missed nothing that moved! Lunch was spent at Voi safari lodge, sited high up on a bluff overlooking the Savannah below, peppered with water holes around which families of elephants relaxed.

It is a long way, believe me, a lot of driving and if you are a poor traveler take a large packet of travel sickness pills with you for you haven't finished the day's game drives yet! From Tsavo East we drove across to Tsavo West via the Man-eaters bridge. A railway bridge built by the British in the late 19thC, plagued by 2 man eating lions who devoured a great many Indian workers before being shot by Col. Paterson who lay in wait with his guns. Sorry, Mrs S, l seem to absorb trivia.

The landscape, here in Tsavo West, is truly awesome. Loved it. Volcanic hills, rugged rocks, black lava flows, dramatic landscapes, few tourists. Loved it, loved it, loved it. We decided to give the Rhino sanctuary a miss as it was now 4pm & poor old Mr Moo was having a seriously bad reaction to Malerone [the anti malaria tablets] plus l had forgotten the Qwells, was in need of a cup of tea and a cold towel. As we drove to Severin, the landscape continued to enthrall, totally mind blowing! The camp, my god, we were met by a real Masai complete with pointy stick! Never had an iced Tusker tasted so good as we sat in comfy sofas watching the giraffe grazing the acacia trees just metres from the lodge! And it got better. As the sun set the frogs began singing in stereo, hippos emerged from their water holes with an amazing grace for such a bulky creature. Once the light had failed we had to press the 'escort button' to bring an armed guard to take us to super; no fences between us and the wildlife you see, the animals, in this case the hippos with wind were only yards away & very dangerous! Amazing, truly amazing. The food in the middle of the bush was mouthwatering delicious, the tent was, and l do NOT camp, was unlike any tent l have seen, fabulous. So there we were, in the bush sleeping in tents serenaded by hippos and frogs whilst in the morning we were woken by the songs from the finches and weaver birds. We staid till 8.30, leaving reluctantly to head back down the Mombasa highway, an exciting drive through Mombasa itself to the Likoni ferry, then back to base where once again we were welcomed by those oh so cool towels & fruit punch. I could see myself getting used to this life l can tell you!

So, we are back now, the flight was almost on time, the UK weather cold & snowy. I have replied to my emails, caught up with the accounts and Harry & Jenny, who incidentally are adorning the freezer cabinets in Tesco, attended the Meet the Buyer session at the Yorkshire Showground. So what are my thought of the holiday now? Amazing, the locals are happy, polite and friendly, the country is full of so much to see, will we go back? Yes, not the same hotel as all inclusives are not, if l am really honest, our cup of tea, but l have spotted on the Internet several small hotels in the Diani region that have now been 'bookmarked' for future reference and no l am not putting up a link for those!

So, l hope, Mrs S, you will forgive me for not having written for such a while and look forward to seeing you soon!