Waking up in the Cairngorms we were ready and rearing to start our first proper hike of the trip up Ben Vrackie. We had some wonderful weather on the way up, a shame I jinxed it by saying so... On the top, and exactly a year from the start of our engagement we took off our first rings and replaced them with something a bit more permanent. It's safe to say that jinxing the weather on the way up was not the way to go... Thoroughly soaked through we treated ourselves to comfort in style at a local truck stop. Not exactly the Ritz but boy did it feel good to have a hot shower! Moira then decided to throw a tantrum by having her windscreen wiper break. Assuming that we might need to use the wipers at some point given Scotland's inclement weather we'll have to get that fixed. After a whirlwind of a day we stopped off at a tiny loch for some nice reading and a Goulash, well deserved after a big hike.  

On our first day in Scotland itself we resorted to some old habits and had a city day, or in fact two cities in a day. Kicking it off we went to St Andrews. Once a centre of Scottish religious power, this small city is now very much defined by its university, it's Cathedral and its Castle, both now in a worse state of repair. Pictured above is Danni on the breakwater made from the reused stones of the castle. Cool castle although I don't think it'll be repelling any Englishmen any time soon! A funky university-affiliated museum in the centre sure did have some opinions about things. A box of chips and 2 bagels later we headed out of St Andrews and across the river Tay to Dundee. Before going into Dundee itself we headed along the coast a bit to the castle at Broughty. This medieval castle was in a state of disrepair when a short man with a limp in France started taking over half of Europe. Not wanting to also be subject to Napoleon's constitutions and French rule, the B...

 After a two week hiatus and a lot of feeling sorry for ourselves now we're back in the UK, we headed off again on Thursday morning for our next month or so of travelling! Starting bright and early at 9am, unheard of for us, we hit the road from Sheffield on our way to Scotland. A quick stop off at the angel of the north which for us was towards the southern tip of our journey. Our second stop-off was more substantial at Newcastle for 4 hours to catch some sights. Craving some more Roman history before we headed into Scotland we visited the Great Northern Museum with its' creatively lit up Roman grave stones. Also at the museum was a massive to-scale model of Hadrian's wall. I hope Hadrian's fears of violent people to the north doesn't come to pass for us... Big 32 million year old bit of tree. Speaks for itself. Wandering around the city and through its' chinatown we came across some of the remaining old city walls which were is a superb state of preservation, ...

It's finally arrived, after weeks of seeing it coming and wishing it wouldn't, we're back off to the UK today! Gifted with wonderful weather on our final day we headed into the sea for our first time since Italy and had a paddle in some very warm water.  Wandering back into Gravelines, our park up for the night, we had a park picnic and a stock up on some French goodies you can't get in England before heading to the ferry. While much of the history I knew was associated with Gravelines was to do with naval battles off the coast, it was very nice to see the fortifications so well intact in the city itself. We have seen these early modern fortifications in many cities used in different ways: turned into parks, ring roads, or shopping districts. Their repurposing in many places was largely due to urban expansion or invading French troops after the revolution slighting them to avoid their use as fortifications in future. In Gravelines, since the town never expanded dramatic...

Our final city of the trip was the home of the EU (sort of), chocolate (again, not home but popular), and some very cool museums. Feeling quite starved of museums in the past week or so we were delighted by the super cool and cheap city museum of Brussels. This gem had some incredible dioramas of the city with really good information boards meaning the rest of our day in the city was full of context. One funky element of Brussels's character is this distinguished fellow: Mannekin Pis. This little guy has been in the city since at least the 15th century and has developed a tradition of being dressed up for events and also for being stolen several times. Getting yet more spoilt for museums we stopped by the military museum in the EU district of the city and were impressed by all of the dioramas. The museum had this super cool WW2 section with several recreations of various methods of combat during the war including a submarine (pictured), a tail gun of a Lancaster, a Normandy landing...

After leaving Alfie in Amsterdam we resolved to head straight down south to The Hague to continue the trip. However, we pulled over in a lovely looking lay-by on the motorway and ended up having lunch then a snooze there. This delayed us enough that we opted to write the day off and visit The Hague on the Sunday instead. When I said a lovely lay-by I really meant it. Could you imagine something like this on the M1?? Not wanting to waste a good opportunity we played a couple of board games and did some life admin tasks in the fresh air. Back on the road again on Sunday morning we headed to The Hague and were surprised to find a very different city to our other Dutch experiences. This particular view aside the city was largely devoid of the extensive canal networks we had come to expect. A fortunate difference was the lack of cyclists everywhere, I say as a cyclist.  We first stopped off at the Binnenhof which is one of the oldest parliament buildings still in continuous use from the...

Much like visiting our other multi-day cities, Amsterdam was an absolute whirlwind of business. With this in mind here is a snapshot of what we got up to. Day one: Wild parking in the Netherlands is illegal so we decided to stay in a paid campsite for a few nights. We didn't however plan for it to be so filled with animals, bonus win. Our friend Alfie came over to stay for a couple of nights meaning things were a bit cramped in Moira but with some crafty packing away we all fit in. Moira all parked up next to one of three lovely sunsets we experienced while staying in that site. The goats too also had their own little tree house / shed to sleep in at night. Day Two: we kicked the day off with our new pancake batter writing tool to make some funky pancakes. Not quite there yet but practice makes perfect Our cycle into Amsterdam, already over an hour, was extended somewhat by Danni's tyre having a hole in it. We did manage to get back on the road but since we were delayed and too...