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The final two days of our holiday were spent heading back from the Finger Lakes region towards Newark. We spent Monday night in a town called New Windsor. The reason for selecting this fairly anonymous location was it's proximity to a large Discount Designer Retail Park so we spent Labour Day evening shopping. It was absolutely crammed and also gave us a massive attack of Deja Vu ...

... Basically it was a larger version of the retail outlet at Bicester Village in the UK.  "Ah" I hear you say " You are just drawing a loose comparison there". Well No, Woodbury Common Premium Outlets was EXACTLY like Bicester Village right down to the layout and architecture. The only difference was that Woodbury was about four time the size of the UK equivalent. I am guessing that the same company is behind both outlets.

As for the shopping, I can report that our first impression wasn't particularly positive but that didn't stop us taking a second look on Tuesday when things were much quieter. We ended up spending a few more dollars and came away with a few "must have" items including a pair of Converse Baseball Boots for TP and a Thomas Pink shirt and a pair of cufflinks for me. 30% was frustrated not to be able to track down the hand bag that caught her eye on the previous day.

We then continued our drive back towards Newark Liberty Airport and boarded the 19.10 flight back to sunny Birmingham.

We arrived back to a fine day and first task was to take a very keen TP in to school for his first day in the Sixth Form. It was then a case of taking in more coffee* and doing the normal post holiday activities that involve emptying cases and repeated filling of the washing machine. By mid morning neither of us could wait any longer and we headed over to the kennels to collect T&M.

We were all delighted to see each other but I was concerned to note that the hair around Tyson's eyes was wet and matted and didn't look at all good. When I enquired about how long her eyes had been running I got very vague responses from the Kennel Girls and the owner and this left me feeling somewhat concerned about the level of care the dogs had received.

To cut a long story short I took Tyson up to the Vets on Wednesday evening and the diagnosis of conjunctivitis came as no surprise. I am now £55 worse off and Tyson is on antibiotics and eye drops for the next few days until the infection clears up. As for Marauder, she was just in desperate need of a bath, flea treatment and vast quantities of affection.

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* I got very little sleep on the flight back