Eco-family Explorers

Nous avons passé une semaine en Irlande du Nord... Nous avons quelques amis irlandais du nord, et donc avons demandé leurs conseils pour notre petite visite.. Liste très longue et varié, malheureusement nous n'avons pas pû faire même la moïtié, mais nous avons beaucoup apprecié leurs conseils - y compris pour une église à Belfast. Nous sommes allés à Willowfield , et nous avons été super bien acceuillis - c'est une église dans un quartier qui ressemble un peu à Gennevilliers, et le choix des membres d'être impliqué dans la communauté locale nous a beaucoup parlé, car c'est quelque chose que nous essayons de faire aussi chez nous. en déguisement -visite au Titanic, à Belfast Nous savons depuis longtemps que les chrétiens de l'Irlande du Nord se connaissent tous (à chaque fois qu'une nouvelle personne arrivait à notre église Saint Michael, ils trouvaient facilement des connaissances de connaissances en parlant aux autre irlandais du nord).. Et donc no

As you may already have gathered, we had a fantastic time on Mull. We stayed for 2 weeks at the Tobermory Campsite . We've given you some snap shots, and a week on, I thought it would be helpful to reflect on our time there. With an 8 hour ferry crossing from Belfast to Liverpool, we had time to talk - so I interviewed each of the children to find out what they thought. I've included lots of links to places, so if you're planning a trip there with young kids, you don't have to search far to find our favourite places.. Nathanael My favourite thing on Mull was the Tobermory Evangelical Church because they gave out giant chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday. I loved the Bunny Hunt at Glengorm Castle - because they gave out chocolates at the end. and I liked the aquarium because it was fun, they had water and sand play areas. I touched a crab. I liked the Isle of Mull Cheese farm because we got to see the cows being milked and we got to see the calves. I liked Ion

We're by the lake of Lough Neagh for just one night, before our 8 hour ferry journey back to Birkenhead, and a house.... We went for an afternoon walk by the side of the Lough (another one of the 'biggest' lakes we have been too, in this case the largest lake in Great Britain), and were amazed by the diversity of flowers, buds we found. For the last 2 months we've been travelling around the North of Scotland, so have seen gorse bushes, dried grasses and not a lot else..It has been winter, after all. So here is a competition for you all - name all these plants..    

Just amusing myself ... and one minor correction, it is in fact Thursday here too.

 This blog was going to be a trip-advisor list of our kids' favourite things to do on Mull, but then someone asked a question on a worldschooling facebook group, which coupled with my experience over the last few days, prompted this instead... Sorry for those who are much more interested in the tourism part of our blog! So, clothes - many of you have asked how much we brought with us, and how are we coping.. For a whole year in the UK, travelling from snowy Aviemore to sunny Cornwall (amongst other places) we came equipped with a year of clothes for the kids.  We have got many of the boys' clothes second hand from friends, and the same for Myriam from cousins, so we have boxes of clothes at home sorted by age group, and we simply shipped these boxes to the UK. We then sorted them out by season, and have managed to leave some at my parents' house while we travel with the rest. This has meant cutting a pair or trackuit trousers into shorts for Nathanael, as we haven'

It is with mixed feelings that we waved goodbye to Scotland this morning as our ferry pulled out of Loch Ryan into the Irish sea. We've spent the last 9 weeks exploring what the country has to offer, and have enjoyed where possible simply living in the different places we have visited. The geographical extremes of Scotland are well illustrated by the place we left from - Stranraer. It is a hundred mile drive from the English border and yet it is further south than Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This is a country that has 6200 miles of coastline on the mainland alone, and yet is only 25 miles wide in the middle. That's not normal, but it makes for a lot of cool bridges. Each place we have visited has been special in a different way for us. Edinburgh was a time spent with friends, where the warm welcome was more than enough to compensate for the freezing weather and heavy snow. We then left the snow and ice behind by counter-intuitively heading north-west, first stopping at Loch Nes

Today we went to the house of a friend we met at church in tobermory. They are renting a house of a neighbough who wanted to build an extension. He had a digger and he let me and Nathanael have a turn. On Saturday we were on Iona and we went to a beach and Nathanael and I both built sandcastles. Here is a video of our finished off creations. At Calgary beach we found some frogspawn in a little pond by the car park. Here is a short video of what we found.

Nous voici à Tobermory, sur l'isle de Mull, à l'ouest de l'écosse. Nous y sommes depuis samedi après-midi, ayant quitté Aviemore le dimanche d'avant. J'ai l'impression que nous avons fait beaucoup de kilomètres entre les deux - James me dira si c'est vrai, ou bien seulement parce que les derniers jours, les routes ont souvent été à voie unique, avec des virages, des trous, (des nids de poule me dit google translate, vous me corrigerez en cas de besoin) alors pas du tout facile à negocier en camping car.. Revenons à Aviemore.. Un site merveilleux, de la nature, des écureils roux, chauffage par le sol dans les douches, un lac magnifique..  et ou nos enfants ont appris à skier, chacun à leur façon.. Dimanche, destination Balloch, à Loch Lomond, en passant par Doune pour déjeuner avec Janet et Robert, des amis de longue date de notre église Saint Michaels, à Paris. C'est vraiment un des plus grands plaisirs pour nous de retrouver nos amis penda