Flanders and Such

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I did not realise just how long it's been since I posted- a whole week! Sorry, guys... we've done a lot of driving and stuff.

Saturday, July 23. We headed north to Scotland. We took a coastal route along the Scottish waters, and stopped at Sweetheart Abbey, an old church from 1273. We got a look at tidal plains- a few km2 of sea bottom in one spot. We also stopped to see a lighthouse and walked on the rocky, shellful beach. We stopped at a restaurant for- scones! They were FANTASTIC! We were given buckets of jam and cream to drench them with, which mom happily did.

Sunday, July 24. We took our time and headed to the lovely rocks on the beach- it's very sunny for once. We drove for 8 HOURS all the way back between London and Port Dover and watched a sermon after supper.

Monday, July 25. We went grocery shopping and caught a ferry to Calais. We headed to a campground right on the border of Belgium on the water, with loads of activities. That night, we played minigolf for a while.

Tuesday, July 26. Shauna's 9th birthday! We slept in and Shauna opened her presents first thing. After breakfast, we headed over to do archery for an hour. We went into town to hunt for a birthday cake. Fnding none, we collected a few desserts from a bakery and put them together to form a cakelike thing. We played tennis for an hour (all these things were included) and had a lot of fun with it. We are... not very good at tennis. We drove to the beach at the other end of the park and walked through the cold water ; there were loads of people on wind-propelled carts and boards. We played mini golf again with the whole family and watched Tangled( one of Shauna's presents).

Wednesday, July 27. We slept in a bit again and drove to Belgium to the "In Flanders' Fields" museum in Leper. It is very well done and has lots of information on the WWI front in Belgium. We walked down the street to "Menin Gate", a monument with the names of 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died in action in the First World War. We went to Tyne Cot cemetary; a huge cemetary from WWI. It is the largest Commonwealth cemetary in the world. There are nearly 12000 buried there, with almost half of them unknown. About 1000 of them are Canadians. The wall nearby lists thousands of names of all of the Commonwealth soldiers whose bodies were missing. We then drove to a campground near Gent.

Thursday, July 28. We took a bus to Gent in the morning and saw loads of old Gothic buildings. We took a self guided tour of the Castle of the Counts; a typical medieval castle, and absorbed bunches of information on castle life, torture methods, and history. We looked at an intricate cathedral briefly and headed for Brugges. We'd heard Brugges was "the Venice of the North", it was cute but there were only 2 or 3 canals. We walked around-it was very quaint, then drove to South Holland, where we eventually found a campground.

Friday, July 29. This morning we drove towards Delta Park which was supposed to be a site with information on the dikes. When we got there, we discovered it had been turned into a bit of a theme park and now costed 22 euros a person. We decided against it but walked for a while on the beach along the dike. We went to the Royal Delft factory in Delft and looked at the array of blue painted pots and watched a couple being made and painted. We picked up a few souveniers and headed to a campground in Utrecht.

Pictures hopefully next time- I really don't have a whole lot right now. I'll try not to wait so long before posting next time😊

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