Eco-family Explorers

Nathanael and I are down in Guildford for a few days. Here's his account of our journey down. This is my first attempt at posting a vlog, so hope it works! If it doesn't,  here is the link:  https://youtu.be/tyNosPtGWLA Traduction française du vlog: Nous sommes à Guildford pour l'anniversaire de mon papy, et je vais vous raconter notre voyage. Nous avons pris un bus, puis un deuxième, après un avion, puis une navette,  après un train, et encore un train et après un taxi, et puis j'ai couru à  200km l'heure sur le bitume  (pour arriver dans les bras de sa mamie)..

Yes, I know, I should tell you what an amazing week we've had this week  here in Edinburgh- and we have - we've taken in Holyrood, Parliament, Dynamic Earth, The Sound of Music, and I can't remember what else. Instead, I wanted to deal with some of our Eco credentials. Our worms are being looked after by a neighbour this year In many ways, it was much easier in Gennevilliers - we are members of a veggie box scheme , we have 2 organic supermarkets within walking distance (one of which is an ethical co-operative , and the other stocks milk chocolate buttons "en vrac") and there's another similar style shop in the offing.  We have a wormery for our food waste, and it's easy for us to recyle everything except thin plastic. Here in the UK we have been struggling. Anyone we consulted said 'farm shops are the best option'.  So we looked for a map of farm shops. Problem is, they didn't distinguish between the ones that only sold one product

In order to meet the childrens' need for more stability and routine we have adopted a new rhythm of staying in the same location for 2-3 weeks, with one week road-trips in between. Our current stable location is the Mortonhall campsite in south Edinburgh, right on the edge of the city but well served with Lothian buses (God bless their public-service hearts, but please help them to communicate better with tourists and offer contactless payment so I don't have to carry around a pocket-full of coins). This video which I made a week ago will give you a feel for the location, as well as some fascinating information about the structure of our awning. Apologies for messing up the audio on parts of that, and I'm sorry if you're disappointed at having missed out on some of the technical details on the awning structure - you'll get over it eventually. We hired the car you could see in the video in order to be able to run about during half-term with James & Elli

The rest of our week in Northumbria On Monday we attempted to walk to Hadrian's Wall - but we've obviously not quite mastered our OS software yet, and gave up after a few wrong turns and some tired children. We did get to see Vindolanda (an excavation/reconstruction project), but only from the outside, as it was closed for the month.  With a trip to the village playground in the afternoon, all in all the kids walked 6 miles that day - pretty good going really. Tuesday night was campsite 2, and then Wednesday was our visit to Holy Island, followed by campsite 3. Unsurprisingly, on Thursday everyone had had enough, Myriam was biting the motorhome, and so we had a day of relaxing, swimming and eating cake! Friday saw us in very rural Mitford, visiting Alyson, who left St Michaels this summer. We were all delighted to catch up with her, scramble up the castle ruins opposite the vicarage (the only pentagonal castle in the UK) and enjoy good company, comfortable sofas, j

we went to housesteads  roman fort and we walked on hadrian's wall.     we loved dresing up as romans and britons   As you can see, we had great weather for our visit! We were the first visitors to arrive - we were lucky to be following a car with nice fat snow tyres which meant we actually got up the hill. We discovered where the Roman soldiers lived, built snow soldiers and made snow angels,  and admired the Roman toilets. We were very hungry at the end, and Nathanael's jumper had ice growing out of it (he'd been enjoying some sledging on his bottom!!).

Today we left the warm comfort of a big house in Eaglescliffe, near Stockton-on-Tees where we have been staying since mid January. After saying goodbye to our friends John & Kathie at their church ( All Saints Preston-on-Tees ), we drove up the A1 and along the A69 to Brockalee campsite a few miles west of Hexham. This is what it was like at about 3:30pm today... Since the sun went down it's been a lot cooler, however we are warm and cozy in Lucia with good insulation and either gas or electric heating, au choix. We're here to visit Hadrian's Wall, which we're going to do tomorrow and hopefully we'll also see the ruins of the Roman town of Vindolanda. Today kicks off our longest stretch of camping so far with an initial week travelling through Northumberland followed by 3 weeks in Edinburgh, and then at least a month exploring the highlands and islands of Scotland. So we're going to be in the van for the next 2 months - which should be interesting

Bonsoir mes chers lecteurs/rices Nous voici à Wooller, il me semble, dans un camping avec piscine intérieur (et oui, il fait -2°) Nous ne sommes pas loin de Lindisfarne, ou nous avons passé notre journée à visiter le prieuré - c'est d'ici que s'est lancé la foi chrétienne dans le nord d'Angleterre, il y a 1500 ans. Je ne me rappelle pas très bien de ce que j'ai lu dans le petit musée, mais en visitant les ruines du prieuré nous avons bien compris comment les moines y ont vécu. Et puis nous nous sommes lancés dans un super jeu de cache cache, et au port nous avons regardé deux pêcheurs nettoyer les  bouées pour les casiers à homard. Et oui, à l'aide d'un produit 'M Propre', les bouées sont maintenant plus visibles. Apprentissage de la journée faite ;-) Mais bon, ça c'est jour 204, et donc revenons en arrière.. Pour revenir 3 semaines en arrière, nous sommes partis de Guildford le 16 janvier, et nous avons commencé un voyage qui nous emmène