Our first months in Santa Cruz . . .
We moved house from the forest outside of Rambouillet in France (La
Bellanderie) to our new home in the forest
outside Santa Cruz in California in June 1997, less than a month after Marie-Hélène
and Ian were married. This move was a key part of our
family history.
First we flew from Paris to New York, where
we spent a few days in the granite corridors of Manhattan. From New York, we travelled
west
on the Amtrak train across America. It was a great trip. Three days and more of
winding and clackety-clacking across more than 3,000 miles of the great steel
highway. When Ian was a boy growing up in England, his father gave him a
leather-bound three volume set of "Railway Wonders of the
World". Many of the wonders were the magnificent railroads blasted
and sweated across the US and Canada. It had been a lifelong dream to
see them.
On to Santa Cruz . . .
Two families helped us enormously to settle down in Santa Cruz: the Nashes
and the Hanlons.
On the right, Russ and Annie Hanlon with Charlie during his first visit to
California in April 1997. We were exploring the
coast, to figure out where we wanted to move to.
Once we arrived in Santa Crux in June, the Hanlons let us use their home as a mail-drop and phone and fax line, and loaned us furniture until
ours
arrived years later. Ian spent hours at the Hanlons to download and print
his emails, usually around their bedtime! Every birthday for years they
thought to do something special for us.
Below, Sue and Derek Nash with Marie-Hélène and Ian at their home in Foster
City on Christmas Day, 1997.
The Nashes are other expatriate Brits: Sue is Ian's sister, and lived in
the San Francisco Bay Area from 1987 to 2001 or 2, when she and Derek moved down to
San Diego and then out to Indio (still in California, deeper into the desert)
and back to Marlow, simultaneously. A truly
transatlantic family.
There are other photos of them here,
complete with Antony and Laura, their delightful children.
They also loaned us furniture when we arrived. And they sold us their old Mazda for a very good price:
six years and 110,000 miles later, it was still going strong when we sold it to
a boyfriend of Daphné's.
Here
are other shots of the Nashes at
Antony and Courtney's wedding.
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Immediately after our arrival, we stayed for two months at this hotel near the beach, the
Blackburn House, while we looked for a home.
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We did find the time initially, before Ian started real work
in Silicon Valley, to take long weekends and explore Northern
California. Below is a beautiful state park near Guerneville that we
visited in late 1997.
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Of course, some of the local customs were easier to get into
than others . . . Daphné and Alban's first Halloween,
for example!
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 The day after we moved in was Charlie's second birthday, which we duly
celebrated on the deck, the first birthday in our new home. There's another one on this
page, and still more here.
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