Whipsnade Zoo is located outside of London and is a massive outdoor zoo run by the Zoological Society of London for conservation purposes. We had a lovely day wandering about and seeing the various animals. I had two favourite parts – the butterfly room (amazing) and the bird show (and environmental messaging) was also excellent.

We took the boat over to the UK and drove towards iron bridge which we’d intended to visit (and go the Victorian themed park). Unfortunately we’d underestimated just how popular it has become (or perhaps just how busy the UK is) and either which way it was completely sold out for the morning.

Undeterred we headed to Warwick Castle which was super fun anyway. Well, it was a big old castle and you don’t get those in NZ!

We headed on that evening and met up with Maaike’s old boss Martin. Lovely to see him and Elaine again.

It was time to head on to Ireland.  Not entirely sure if it was the strain of so many late nights, or just a bug or what, but, Anna was really under the weather when we were leaving (and for about a week). She was a complete trooper with the travel though, just getting on with it (not that there was much choice of course ;)

It was lovely to be back in Dublin with my family. My sister was over from the US (in prep for the big family gathering the following week) so it was really special to get to spend some time with us all together. Can’t happen enough!

We headed to Valkenburg for the day – to visit some caves and have a look around the pretty town. The caves I think would properly be called a quarry? they certainly weren’t natural, having been used to quarry out the marlstone a type of limestone. The caves were really extensive and filled with drawings & carvings.

The cave we visited had been used by the Germans during the war, but, the Dutch resistance also used caves in the area during the war for hiding Jews (and themselves). It’s a really extensive area of caves!

We also went to some outdoor attractions mainly “rodelbaan”, which, I guess you’d call a kind of tobogganing? Super fun for the kids. You can actually get up a fair bit of speed on it. Didn’t see anyone massively crash off. And extremely affordable (just a few euro for a couple of turns)

Valkenburg was one of the places badly hit in the 2021 floods. You could see the level where the waters had got to, and still see the damage in the church. I imagine something we’ll see more of as climate change continues to have its way.

This was a fun “middle-ages” festival we went to. Lots of people dressed up in medieval gear, archery, pagentry, music.

Kids had a great time getting to dress up as knights and hit eachother with sticks. Lots of fun! The guy running the kids part was apparently hilarious, but, my Dutch wasn’t quite up to it.

I did feel a little sorry for both of the falconers. Their birds just… didn’t come back! They thought it was something to do with the fact that the grassy area was in a bit of a hollow and they don’t like that. They took out fancy radar equipment and went off to find them. Hope they did!

I really enjoyed the weaponry & horse riding/jousting demonstration. Those people had serious skills. The lady who smashed off metal heads and obliterated watermelons was especially cool.

Anna noticed that one of the owls they had there was a Rūrū (the native New Zealand owl). Good spotting.