Turkey

Here are some photos of our lovely few weeks in Turkey.  After our disappointment of not getting ourselves a boat we decided to hire one instead, and we had a ball for two weeks cruising around our old stomping grounds between Marmaris and Orhaniye where Pete and I first met and worked.

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Belgium

During our travels through Belgium we spent a day in Brussels and of course top of the list of things to see was the Mannekin Pis, as you can see he is much smaller than I expected and he was all dressed up in his chinese outfit.

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There was of course lots and lots of chocolate shops, but we couldn't resist this one!

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There was also lots of buildings painted with cool cartoons like this one.

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 Neatherlands

While we were in Holland we saw lots of bicycles and widnmills but only one giant clog.

We took the ferrz across the Amsel River in Amsterdam, where we were blown away by the huge quantity of bikes in the city.  There were even special bike only multi-storey bike parks.

Photo later (b,c)

We had a great day cycling along Amsterdams canal paths and cycleways.

Photo later (d,e,f)

We also spent a day cycling along the Kinderdijk where we saw 19 lovely old wooden windmills, I was so enjoying the view that I managed to fall off my bike. 

Photo later (g,h)

 But thankfully there was always the gian clog to cheer me up, isn't there a nursery rhyme about an old woman who lived in a shoe!!!

Photo later (i)

Germany

Our next stop was the Black Forest in Germany, where of course we all par took in a generous slice of Black Forest Gateau, Yum.

Some of the shop fronts in the small villages of the Black Forest were very cute.

Our next stop, still in the Black Forest was to see the largest fully working cuckoo clock along with its giant wooden pendulum chime.

Next was a steep walk to see Germany's tallest waterfall.

But the real reason to go to the Black Forest is of course to walk among the trees of the forest to see if you can spot any of the mythical fairies and gnomes that live in the forest for yourself, unfortunately we only found trees but we had a great walk.

Some of the lovely buildings you find in lots of the towns in Germany.

Slovenia

After Switzerland we drove across the top of Italy and headed into Slovenia to see if we could spot any Slovenia brown bears, no luck with bears but we did see some wonderful scenery

 We also went to see the world famous Lippizaner horses at the Lipica Stud Farm.

We also happened across the national tug of war games, where we spent a happy half an hour cheering on all the teams, this one was our favourite.

We also went to the annual Cow Ball where the cows that have spent the summer up in the mountains are bought back down for the winter, and there is a local celebration with lots of traditional fare.

Switzerland

After our wonderful trip around Italy we headed north for a spell of cooler weather and and spent a lovely week in Switzerland   Our first stop was to see some of the hard working St Bernard dogs, and it wasn't until we we up close you realize just how large they really are.

 Next we headed to Verbier to show the girls the village we worked in all those years ago.  It was great to see the place in summer with all the lovely summer alpine flowers about rather than the piles of snow that we were used to while we were there for the ski season.

Helping to keep the trees warm with these colourfully knitted trunk and branch warmers!

We also walked to the glacier at the start of the River Rhone.

From there we went to see the area that the lovely book Heidi was written and we spent a great afternoon walking the Heidi Trail spotting many of the scenes and locations from the book.

 Like Grandfathers house.

Some of the stunning views of the Swiss Alps

The Intrepid Trampers

The Olympic Flame

How great to be among a crowd of people to watch the Olympic Flame being carried past on its way to the start of the Olympic games.

Fishing at Hayling Island

We decided to brave the weather and head to Hayling Island for the afternoon and try our hand at fishing from the beach.  The weather decided to be kind and we had two hours of sunshine, before we had to make a quick dash back to the van!

Getting the rods ready to go with the crabs we had collected earlier in the rain, oh well you can't have sun all the time, although a little more in the UK this summer would be nice

A couple of budding fisher-women.  Unfortunately we only caught weed but we had some fun.

Dorset

Next was a trip to Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door to 

We spent the next day at Chesil Beach, which is a shingle beach on the Jurassic Coast that is 29 kilometres long, 200 metres wide and 15 metres high. We started at the Portland end of the beach where the pebbles are the size of a small egg

And by the time the pebbles reach the other end of the beach in West Bay 29 km's away they have been battered and bashed by the sea to the size of peas. So the story goes, that the smugglers of old could tell how far up the coast they were by the size of the pebbles.

 Although it was a very blustery day the surf was amazing to watch, and it was easy to see how the pounding of the sea could wear away the pebbles.

We spent a few days down in Dorset fossil hunting along the Jurassic Coast, first we went to the very informative Charmouth Heritage Centre to pick up some hot tips on finding fossils, and here are the girls learning which rocks are the most likely to have fossils inside.

Then between the down pours we headed out to the beach in Charmouth and began our fossil hunting in earnest.

 Before long we had found a small collection of ammonite and belemnite in the rocks but we soon discovered that extracting them from the rocks is definitely the tricky part, but we had great fun trying!!!

Croatia

We had a great holiday in Croatia to look for a boat, our first stop from Pula airport was to have lunch at the 'Laura' restaurant near Funtana.

 After looking at a boat in Funtana we stopped to have a look around a sculpture park in Vrsar.  the sculptures were made up of some pretty original materials like long and short nails, chain link and some more traditional materials like marble and concrete.

We had great fun swimming in the refreshing cold sea under the boiling Croatian sun.

We stayed at a great hotel by the sea to celebrate Laura's 13th Birthday just outside the town of Split.The day was gorgeous and Laura and Amy practically lived in the hotel pool.

 Amy and Janet helped to celebrate the day by preparing a yummy lunch laden with treats and a lovely chocolate birthday cake covered in strawberries.

 That evening we strolled down the beach and found a great restaurant just cm's from the waters edge and we had a most scrumptious dinner.

 The whole day was spectacular.

Our 13 year old, where did the years go!

 We stayed a night at an apartment with two cherry trees covered in lovely ripe cherries that Laura and Amy had fun picking and eating!

 

 One day we crossed a very old foot bridge onto the tiny island of Trigor.

 We spent a day in Pula and visited a very ancient amphitheatre, the ruins were spectacular.  It was built as an arena to hold tournaments where the people came to watch gladiators fight to the death against ferocious  wild beasts like lions, bears and hippos from lands far away.

Wales with David

We spent a lovely few days in the Brecon Beacons with David, so after our fun day at the Yateley Fair we drove up to Watford, picked up David and headed West towards Wales.  We spent the night in Bath and the next morning drove the rest of the way to Wales.

Our first evening was a stop at the lovely waterfall at Tal Fechan Forest, we walked up to the waterfall

 and then had a lovely BBQ next to the van in the deserted car park.

The next day we went to Carreg Cennen Castle, with its cliff-top perch

 and after wandering around the ruins we went down a very steep set of stairs leading down into a passage beneath the castle, and from there into the damp limestone caves.  We definitely needed our torches as it was pitch black down there!

 Whilst we were down in the caves it started to rain in earnest and unfortunately didn't stop again until we had left Wales, but that didn't stop us from a few more walks to some other stunning waterfalls,

 and a trip out to Llanthony Priory

Yateley Fair

Whilst in England we went to my Nan's local fete, 'The Yateley May Fair' held on the May bank holiday. It is similar to a school gala but run for the community by local charity organisations like the Yateley Round Table and the Yateley W.I. We had a lovely time and even the bit of drizzle didn't stop the fun.  We watched the very traditional entertainment of the Morris Dancers with their bells and batons.

 Then later the same day we saw a more modern form of entertainment, a guy wearing gold coloured frilly underwear cycle through a ring of fire!

 But our entertainment for the day didn't stop there, Laura was on a roll, and after us all trying our hand at the Coconut shy Laura managed to snag one!

 Then came the Llama racing, unfortunately for Amy you had to be 12 or over, but Laura was off into the ring like a flash and managed to be picked to compete in one of the Llama racing teams.  When it was time for her turn she donned a poncho and grabbed a llama and she was off around the agility course, and after a tense few minutes we could see she was about to come 1st! well done Laura.

We had all had a lovely day out and soon we were on our way to pick up David for our trip to Wales.