Monday 25th July 2011

Hello to all
It is Monday morning. Quite an eventful last 24 hours. We arrived in Pembroke Saturday evening after 7.00 settled ourselves into our B&B and headed out for dinner. Sam decided to call his cousin first so used the local phone box, when he came back to the car he looked ashen,he decided to check the balance of our savings account, he handed it to me, dear me, we had all but been cleaned out. We went back to the B&B to get my bag to check with my card same result. We made a phone call to the bank from our mobile while we were collecting my bag, but could not get thru, so headed out again checked the balance, no different then tried to call the bank from the phone box, absolutely impossible, we sat in the car for a few minutes to calm ourselves and then I said lets go and take whatever we can before the rest is taken in the morning or tonight. We had been left with £701.00. They had taken over £4,000.00 so we are looking at about $7,000.00 if you add in the fees probably £300.00 worth of fees. They took the maximum they could take each day. It is very difficult getting a balance as there is only one bank which gives a balance at all, none of the others give one so you are really stuck between a rock and a hard place. We had done all the right things, been careful, I always check for the card readers etc. but you know they are way smarter than us. Sam was beyond upset so I said we need to be practial, I did an email to my neighbour Phil and Elissa and did a copy letter to the bank as well and Elissa very kindly was at the bank with my letter as soon as they opened Monday morning. When we woke up this morning (being Monday afternoon your time) there was the email telling us the very bad news. I had asked for the cards to be stopped as we use this for everything. All has been taken care of now, the crime dept had been alerted to a concern on our account of Saturday but knew we were in the UK could not make contact with us, thought it was possibly OK. They think there is probably more than we think has gone so when their forensic team has gone through everything we will no doubt get the entire story. You know you can take care of everything, be as careful as you can be but if they are going to get you they will I'm afraid.
We have composed ourselves, I said they have taken our cash lets not let them ruin the next two weeks. We headed off to Bath today arrived at about 1.00 our B&B owner lovely lady gave us all the info so we have just done a full day,had some dinner and are now home.
I think we have done remarkably well all things considered, worse things happen, when we were in St David a little girl literally ran in front of us, Sam had slowed down because it was so busy and her Mum literally
grabbed her arm, we would have killed her if we had not been driving slowly and her Mum not on the ball, so I said if we had killed that little girl that would have been a tragedy, this we will get past, we have already drawn a line under it, I do not think we have any redress because we are out of the 5 day reporting a situation only by a day but we will see, we do not expect to get it back so as Julia would say moving forward, we just have to watch the little cash we have left along with our credit card. One never knows what a day will bring. It was very nice to have Elissa and Phil who we could ask to do what they did for us, and our branch manager is a terrific girl as well and our two girls got straight back to us as well. Candice rang us and it was lovely to talk to her I felt much better then as did Sam. Cheers Sabine and Sam, Sam said good news follows. We are ok now.