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...

Arriving back in the Netherlands we resolved to go to the last few major cities we had not yet been to. This had the added bonus of going to our first major Roman site since we left the Danube which was very exciting. After waking up in a beautiful lay-by we spent a little while exploring the local area and went over to this bunker. Created under the Nazi occupation it was moved here in 2017 which must have been such a faff given its 100 tonnes weight! I imagine that's why they didnt bother to straighten it up Before going into Utrecht proper we stopped by one of the most exciting destinations of the day: Hoge Weord. This was one of three Roman Castella that were present in the Utrecht area and this one had an enormous Roman museum. This boat, De Meers 1, was perhaps the coolest of their artefacts. Unusually converted it had a cabin on it for the skipper of the boat who had likely made it himself for his long journeys supplying grain to the Roman forts. This makes it exceptionally ...

On our last few days in Germany we really picked up the pace. Aside from the lack of drinking water and public toilets, Germany was absolutely our favourite country we visited and leaving it was certainly a sad experience. Hopefully we'll be back soon! On Saturday we visited the final large city in Germany of our trip: Hanover. This city, linked to British history through the Georgian kings, was an absolute treat which was made only better by the music festival in town. Possibly due to the festival, or perhaps usually scheduled, on our cycle in we stumbled across an enormous market where we got all sorts of goodies from a GDR medal to tools for Moira. Cycling further through town and after our picnic we stopped across the Waterloo monument. I wonder if the actual battle site will also have as much scaffolding? Expecting to find a museum we happened into a whole exhibit of an aquarium. Since all the information was in German we were forced to stop learning and just enjoy the fish, n...