Life has continued in a similar pattern with travel, hillwalking (climbed 242 hills this year), reading and courses at Lancaster University (mostly philosophy type).
In January Ann and I visited the Antarctic Peninsula on a cruise ship (the Polar Star). I visited the Dominican Republic and Haiti in February.
We rented a cottage for a week on the beautiful island of El Hierro in the Canaries at the end of February.
Between March and June we spent a lot of time in Scotland using our motor caravan. We were having to make up for time lost last year due to foot-and-mouth disease.
Antarctica whet our appetite for polar regions so in July we boarded the nuclear-powered Russian ice-breaker Yamal in Longyearbyen and smashed a route to the North Pole, returning via Franz Josef Land.
In August we spent a few days walking in two of our favourite spots, Zermatt and Grindelwald. I had a few days cycling in the Moselle area of Germany in late August.
In late September we had a long weekend in Bologna, which enabled us to visit Venice and bag a new country, San Marino.
At the end of October I cycled from Glasgow to Inverness. It was pleasing at my age to achieve an average of 62 miles a day.
We then visited China and travelled by boat through the Yangtze gorges before they are flooded when the world's largest dam is complete.
Our final trip of the year was a week at Nerja near Malaga in December.
2003 update: after bagging a few new countries (Antigua, Dominica, Saint Kitts, Bhutan), Rowland thought it was about time for a new Marilyn, and popped over to Hirta to bag Conachair in early May.
