Eco-family Explorers

This trip was never really about sight-seeing, but back in Spring 2017 we decided that if we were going to go travelling for a year it would be a good idea to know where to go. In one of our now infamous family meetings we brain-stormed the places we would like to go during our year of travels. The resulting list was a combination of places the kids had heard of, places we'd been to as kids, places we'd never been to as kids, and fish. The Atack-opoly board was produced to metaphorically set our target destinations in stone and ever since we set off it has guided our choices of destination.  As I write this we are currently staying on the Isle of Wight, and combined with Laura's trip to the Tower of London with the kids last week we have now collected all the properties on our board. So job done, we can all go home. Except that this list was always more or less just for guidance rather than being a firm plan. We will indeed go home sooner rather than later - the Eu

Voici la vidéo sur la bataille de Hastings qui explique comment ça s'est passé. 🏹🏹

Dans les derniers semaines, nous avons passé pas mal de temps à visiter Londres.. Retour en images (et mots!) En mai, c'était Ma grande aventure orchestrale - au Royal Albert Hall. Un spectacle de musique classique pour enfants qui était magique, captivant, magnifique. Avant le spectacle les membres d'orchestre accueillent les enfants, les invitent à toucher et jouer les instruments. Plus de 5000 places (équivalent presque du Zénith) et donc impressionnant. Pour moi, c'est un lieu mythique, car ici a lieu tous les ans les BBC Proms..  trop de souvenirs d'enfance... #GoldVaultSelfie Fin mai, une journée pour visiter le ' City of London '. C'est le cœur de Londres, le quartier des finances/ affaires, et aussi la vielle ville romaine. Donc nous avons commencé notre journée en cherchant les murs d'un site des bains publics, et puis nous sommes allés visiter le Temple de Mithras  -un musée créatif, gratuit et fascinant, avec la re-création en s

We're back in Guildford staying with my parents for 5 days - having left here about 3 weeks ago. One of the definite bonuses of this year's trip has been the opportunity to spend more regular time with family, just doing normal things (and the odd day trip out of course!) We have been able to pick up cousins from school, hang out in the library with Grandma, watch TV with Gramps, do puzzles with Grandad Ian, and play cricket with Uncle Ed..  But as most of you are not family, you probably don't want the details on how many overs the boys beat Uncle Ed by.. So in between these trips (which just about coincided with my mum's birthday and then Father's day) we've been off round the East and South East of England - in Essex and then Brighton. Can you spot Lucia? Our trip to Essex was to cover a gap in our UK map! and to catch up with Andy and Alison Griffiths, who lived in Paris many years ago. Andy was a curate at St Michaels, and is now involved in trainin

Hello everyone. So I managed to reboot my phone half-way through filming this so I've lost the first half. It's probably more watchable as a result. Hope you enjoy... Ingredients : 4 tablespoons olive oil 1 medium onion finely chopped 2 cloves garlic slices 2 medium aubergines cubed 2 medium courgettes cubed 1 tin chopped tomatoes 1 tablespoon sundried tomato paste 8 cherry tomatoes quartered 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce / tamari a few splashes of tabasco salt, pepper and golden syrup to taste... :-) I friend the onions & garlic in half the olive oil, then added the aubergines until they were soft (10 mins). I added a tablespoon or two of water to keep the aubergines loose while cooking. I then set the aubergines aside and fried the courgettes in the rest of the oil for about 15 minutes, before adding the tomatoes, half the soy sauce and tabasco ... the video takes it from there Apologies for the bad video quality. My decent phone is dead following

I woke up this morning in a PANIC – when we’re staying at my parents’ shortly, we’ll only have 2 MONTHS left to go... ARRGH, how am I going to cope. But that’s for a future post.. Today is all about transport. Firstly, there’s Lucia, our trustworthy motorhome. I am very grateful that James is a practical kind of guy – as the motorhome made a strange noise as we were driving here to Essex... “Hmmm – gugrly gurgly that sounds like mumble mumble pipe.  A few minutes later – yes, definitely.. Hang on a second – we’ll just pull over”.. So pull over we did, and he stuck his head under the bonnet, got me to rev the engine a few times, reattached something, and it all sounded a lot better. Turns out the air inlet pipe into the engine popped off. Something to do with giving an engine extra power (turns out that air makes fuel combust to move some pistons to make your car move – yes seriously I didn’t know that until I just googled it). Secondly, we have our bikes. We lik