A White and British Christmas!

Currently I'm at Tim's house in Chepstow and the two days at his house has been a blast so far. On Thursday night, I took a night train from Leeds. It was supposed to be an 8.11pm train but somehow it got delayed by an hour until 9.11pm. Ah, that would mean that I would miss the connecting train at Cheltenham Spa. I met Tim instead at the Bristol Park station instead to prevent myself from being stranded. The train had another unexpected switchover at Birmingham but I reached the Bristol station earlier than expected. I waited for quite some time before Tim drove over to pick me up from the empty station. The bed was freezing by the time I'm trying to sleep at night.

Tim has a big family with 4 siblings (1 older bro, 2 younger bro and 1 younger sis). Their house is very spacious too with 2 living rooms and the guest room that I'm staying at is quite sizeable too. In the day time of Christmas eve we spend time chilling out in the living room. I also accompanied Tim to the supermarket to shop for some groceries and have a short tour of Chepstow town in the process. It's interesting to note that Chepstow is actually the town where J.K. Rowling grows up in and she goes to the same secondary school as Tim too. I had the opportunity to have a look at her house too as she stays in the same village as Tim. There's also Chepstow castle, a really old monument that is there since 1067 and it looks amazing beside the river. After dinner on Christmas eve, we went to one of the houses of Tim's family friends. They have a big gathering at the house there as everyone gathers at the fireplace to chat. At about 11pm+ or so, the whole bunch of us in the house headed off to St. Luke's Church for a midnight Anglican mass. Before we knew it, it was already Christmas early morning.

On Christmas morning, I awoke with the sound of the Tuckers unwrapping their presents and looking into their stockings. It's quite a funny experience as all of us got laughs looking at what each of us got for Christmas. For Christmas service, we went to one of the churches in the nearby forest. It was around a 30 minutes drive past the forest. And yes, it's a White Christmas for sure now! The snow in Chepstow is quite thick and most parts remained untouched unlike Leeds because of lthe ow pedestrian traffic. So, in the evening we actually went out to have a morning walk and the family brought along two sledges. We walked into the white fields of snow and then we took the sledges up on a slope and slid down it! That was superb, as it felt like skiing down at a super speed time with adrenaline gushing through. We visited another family and then went back to the house to wait for the ultimate Christmas dinner.

Christmas dinner was great as we tuck into traditional English food like Turkey, potatoes and stuffings alongside with wine to go with it. The ambience was fantastic and all of us were full to the max. As a result, I felt quite sleepy throughout the night and had an early night's rest. Today's Boxing day and it's a chill out time over at the house! :)