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New Year Mushing 2009
Dear Kim,
You would have been quite justified in thinking, from the long silence, that I came home in January and never gave any of you another thought. How far from the truth that would be! There are only two reasons for my not writing: the first is that I am the worst correspondent ever, and the second that I was completely engulfed in work from the moment I returned. I apologize.
In fact, never a day passes without my thinking about our holiday and looking longingly at both our own pictures and those from other weeks on your website. You have obviously been enjoying the most amazing snow; it all looks fantastic. We even had a little snow in London, something of a rarity, just a few centimetres and everything ground to a complete standstill. So many of my friends and colleagues said the same thing to me, "The snow must have been lovely for you - stop you feeling so homesick for Sweden!" So there you are, everyone knows how I feel about it. You have really made our visits to you feel like a homecoming. We were there for such a short time and yet we have experienced so much: your gorgeous dogs and the wonderful driving, plus some walking and riding. The Northern Lights continue to elude us, but we shall persevere. I had thought that the reduced daylight at New Year might restrict activities, and was surprised to find how many hours of light we actually had.
We had a truly wonderful time, in some ways the best yet. I loved being on a smaller tour, and it was great to try something new like a drive with the puppies and a pleasure to see old friends like Pluto thriving. Dog driving in your beautiful landscape never ceases to captivate me. It is a privilege to be able to handle the dogs and get to know them a little; they are so unfailingly friendly, welcoming and tolerant of our mistakes, as indeed are you and all your human helpers. I love the house, the room, the surroundings, the weather, the snow, the people and of course the dogs!..... I wonder really why I am back here in London at all and I sometimes find it hard to believe that I am. We always spend the first couple of weeks trying to work out if there is any way that we could all relocate to Jamtland, but we know it is not practical and besides we shouldn't have your beautiful dogs and shouldn't be able to go out driving all the time. There is nothing for it but to keep gazing at the website and dreaming of the next time; of course we start planning that before we even reach home.
Just one more thing - I didn't think the food could get any better, but you excelled yourself, and the new-style lunches were terrific.
So a huge thank you, Kim, and thank you also to Jenny and to everybody round about who contributed to such a marvellous week. I wish you every continuing success with the business and can't wait to come back. I shall be watching the website!
Best wishes to you all,
Hilary
Picture Gallery from this tour >>>
The Christmas and New Year Mushing Winter Holiday >>>
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