Friday and our first full day in Ireland and the day has started out with a little drizzle but a promise of a clearing sky away to the south. We don’t expect temperatures will reach any great heights while we are here and we have put the summer clothes back to the bottom of the suitcase again. Ireland doesn’t have a great reputation for a lot of warm sunny days in a row. Rather you take whatever sunshine you can get when it appears and enjoy it. Our host Kathleen called in to make sure we had settled in OK and that the heating had worked. When we arrived last night she showed us how the oil fired aga or heat storage oven worked on the thermostat and timer that was set up. It also heated ... read more

Today was the day of reckoning! If we were to be able to continue our planned and booked travel to Ireland then I really need to be able to pick up the replacement passport somewhere we hoped that was in transit by courier from London. It was another beautiful day and the morning temperature was already in the mid 20’s as we sat on our little terrace to have breakfast. We hope it wasn’t an omen but as I was about to take a mouthful of muesli and fruit with yogurt a tiny baby bird fell out of the terrace rafters above me narrowly missing my breakfast bowl! It seems the baby bird was either dead in the nest or near to it and the parents decided to heave it out! After this most upsetting incident ... read more

We have another 500km ahead of us today but pretty much highway driving all the way although we do want to try and make two stops on the way. We had seen a TV news item when Prince Harry had visited Thiepval Memorial on the Somme to commemorate 100 years since the battle and we would like to see it as the structure is huge and has the names of all the missing/dead Allied soldiers whose bodies were never found. The memorial is not far off the route we need to take to our destination at Connolles, France. Because we are old fans of the TV series ‘Allo Allo’we also want to have a look at the French town of Nouvion that it was based upon. Not that we really expect that it will look anything ... read more

Today we start what is a long journey across Denmark through Germany,Holland,Belgium to get to Connelles near Giverny,France where we have a couple of nights before taking Peggy back to Peugeot and flying off to Ireland for a week. We aren’t attempting to do this journey of over 1500km in a day but rather with two stops along the way making it three days of driving. The day has dawned, like yesterday, beautifully fine and sunny although we expect that won’t last and the ‘typical European summer day of 2016’will return before long. And dark clouds were soon to roll over the BBA V3! It was a typical start to the start, breakfast first and a cleanup of the place as we do before we depart for the next overnight stop. As usual we went through ... read more

As expected sleeping was a challenge in the small ‘double’ bed and not a lot of sleep was had. I had thought about hauling the squab out from its location wedged between the wall and the bed but now regret I hadn’t. Never mind the day will go on and here’s hoping to a more comfortable bed tonight. We cross the border into Sweden today as we make our steady progress back to mainland Europe. The Rema1000 supermarket was just up the road and we did some shopping for lunch on the road somewhere ahead of us. The road south in this part of the world doesn’t run through any of the few towns there are so we will probably just stay on it until we get to the exit for our destination. There have been ... read more