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TheBoysGoNorth

Birthday breakdowns

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 Tuesday started off ominously with Moira failing to start but fortunately a very friendly English expat walker in the car park we overnighted in came over to offer help. The help came in the form of her son Wilf who, after being dragged out of bed at the ungodly hour of 10am, helped us get started again. I'm sure nothing else could go wrong. A little drive and a cycle later we were in Copenhagen ready to explore the wonders of the city museum. Whilst relatively small, the modern exhibits and the coverage of the extensive history of civil disobedience in the city was super cool. Byggeren in particular was an example of a playground where the local community had built structures and had several battles with the police over whether they should stay. Danni had to have a slice of cake since it was her birthday. We followed this up with some Danish retail therapy and buying out 6th and 7th new board games (lol) We then took to the cycle lanes and happened across this gem Danni had read ...
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Four Bros

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 Given most things being shut on a Sunday, we decided to make best use of the time as a driving day from Hamburg all the way up to Odense in Denmark. To break up this drive we stopped at Schleswig on the way assuming things would be closed and we would get treated to a small picturesque town. Schleswig was in fact far more impressive than we first thought with this super cool Viking museum. A strange geopolitical result of Schleswig historically being a Viking town and only being annexed by Germany in the 19th century. (Sort of, the Holy Roman Empire is complicated) I'm sure I looked very cool posing for this picture. As well as a killer museum, the town, Hedeby, had 5% of the buildings uncovered and rebuilt using original tools and techniques. Interestingly the town is called Haithabu in German but also Hedeby in Danish showing some cool linguistic links to the Viking invasions of Britain. After going around the museum and site we drove round the bay to Schleswig proper and had a ...
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Hanse-at-it Again

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On Thursday and Friday we went throught two Hanesatic cities on our way up to Denmark on Saturday, leaving Germany for at least a week. As a bonus extra on the journey Bremen is the last of the 16 German Lander (states) that we were yet to visit) Thursday kicked off with a visit to Bauhaus (sort of like a mega B&Q) for a new fridge for Moira and some light (not literally) perusing. Once we got into Bremen we cycled past the enormous Becks beer factory and ditched the bikes to walk around one of the best preserved medieval city centres in Germany. This started with a faux-medieval alley of Botchestrasse. This was built in the 20s at the height of the Weimar avente guarde art style. Built to represent the Hanseatic brick craft streets (Botcher being barrel maker) but with lot of cool spaceshipesque features like this tower.  Next we had a classic city wander and enjoyed many of the funky statues that Bremen had to offer. I'm not sure we could get either of our cats to get that cl...
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Kunst in Munst(er)

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On our first proper day of exploring we stopped off at the historic and very regionally significant town of Munster.   In typical Gari style he started the day by climbing a tree, Zini was somwhat more grounded. Once they had walked all their zoomies off we packed up a few things and headed into the city. We decided to make use of our new bike rack, especially since it was such a faff to install, and cycle the 45 mins into the city along a huge and very well maintained canal. These European canals are really starting to put British canals to shame.  Initally after getting into Munster we decided to flip our usual routine of local history museum first on its head and explore the city then see what we missed in the museum later: a local history quiz if you will. This entailed a lovely walk around the city spotting some of the classic German historical drain covers like this one commerating the end of the 30 years war and the Peace of Westphalia which was signed in Munster, ...
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Fourth Time's The Charm

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Its that time of year again! The pair of us, and now our furry travel companions, are striking out east once more in search of history, foreign food, and wild swimming. Since our last trip to Scotland in summer 2025, we have had a few smaller escapades: a week in Kent exploring the cinq ports, 2 weeks over Easter in Germany (and a little bit of the low countries too), and 10 days on our 'minimoon' in the Brecon Beacons. We have now moved our boat, being our main home 2/3 of the time, up to Rugby, so we set off from there on sunday night down to Swindon so Danni could crack on with a couple of days of work before we headed down to Dover ready for our travels. Having been given a lot of freedom over the previous months due to the warm weather, we had to retrain the boys to get used to their harnesses.  Once she was all finished with work we set off to the ferry which was super warm. I have a feeling that Moira's lack of air conditioning during a long drive in a very warm year...
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Heights, History, and Harry Potter

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Back in mainland Scotland, we had some exciting plans in the lower highlands. First stop was our longest hike of the trip, up the infamous Ben Nevis. Whilst we were hoping for some amazing views, the clouds had a different agenda.  Danni, briefly, being the tallest person in the UK atop Ben Nevis. After powering our way to the top we opted to have lunch in the tiny, smelly, yet dry, snow shelter on the top of Ben Nevis. The back of the head of a very pleased and accomplished feeling Rob. Although it will hurt for a few days. Living in a van in the UK can be tricky given how spread out the services are, but boy when we found a campsite offering hot showers, water filling, bins, waste disposal, AND hot pies. Were we happy! Our next morning started in the pouring rain (despite smug claims of 26 degree heat from some London friends) but we did get an excellent view of the Harry Potter train atop the Glenfinnan viaduct. Due to some biological concerns, that pie did not agree with Rob, R...
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Over the Minimoon

Ostermarks Und Ostkatzen

Sick Ports

Scottish Shenanigans

European Exploration

French Follies