Celebrations in St Andrews

We celebrated Sara and John’s anniversary long and hard with our family. Their ceremony in St Salvator’s was lovely - Sara’s speech was spot on. 

We had lots of delicious food with a hog roast, seafood extravaganza and cheese board and caught up with a bunch of great people. 

Thanks guys for a great party. 

NC500

We’ve always wanted to do the NC500 which is the loop of roads round the very top of Scotland past Inverness. I’ve never been further north than Inverness before. We spent a week doing this before Sara and John’s celebrations. 

After consulting my AI buddy, we decided to travel anti clockwise round the loop to avoid cyclists and build up to the gorgeous remote west side. In terms of where to visit, it’s pretty straight forward with clear NC500 brown signs all the way round and then each key site is clearly signposted as you drive along. 

One of the highlights of our whole trip was visiting the Mey Highland Games in John O Groats. As we walked up to the games, the stewards stopped the traffic to let us cross the road which we thought was super service. Then as we stood by the entrance a convoy of cars drove by us. As we looked into the second one I thought I could see someone that looked like King Charles. I said to the steward that he looks like the King. The steward (or as I subsequently realised - security!) smiled. I asked if it was the King and he nodded! The King was arriving as he is the Chieftain for the games and was attending the last hour to watch and give out awards. It was super fun. We went in, watched tossing the caber, country dancing, tug of war and the pipe band playing. I could not convince either kid to do a parent and child race. We could have done it in front of the King! It was super seeing the King at arms reach. 

This highlight was followed swiftly by our other highlight - seeing puffins at the nearby Stacks. Special. 

Smoo caves in the North West was super. The guy called Ferguson is amazing. He has been digging these caves for 30 years. Such a passion. 

As we continued travelling round we saw lots of impressive sights including: Dornoch beach, Dunrobin haunted castle, Whaligoe steps, Kylesku bridge, Ardvreck castle, Corrieshalloch gorge and Gairloch. 

Scotland 2026 road trip

We decided to book our housekeeper in for the summer holidays to look after the turnovers and head off in the van to tour round Scotland. The catalyst was Sara and John celebrating 11 years of marriage back in St Andrews in mid-August. 

We started with a couple of nights in Abergavenny with some of Olive’s school friends. It was a super chilled time, spending a couple of days off the grid - no shopping, just eating the food we had packed in a rush, no ticketed attractions, just chilling in a field with a nearby river to play in. 

We spent a few days working up North, stopping with Pop briefly in Birmingham and wending our way up to Scotland. 

We stopped at a Steiner-esque Playpark called Lilidorei. It was a fantasy playground with massive slides and little fairytale buildings dotted round. It reminded us a lot of Efteling in Holland. 

As we entered Scotland we upgraded  our stove to a two ring stove with a big calor gas bottle and obviously spent ages sourcing the bottle! And of course, as soon as we crossed the border the heavens opened!

Easter 2026 in Holland

We’ve been toying with buying a big van for us to sleep in for a while. We ended up going for a white Mercedes sprinter like the one delivery guys use. It already has a big bed made up in the back with space to set up a couple more beds for the kids and a portaloo. Throw in our stove and we are all set for action. So we booked a ferry over to Rotterdam in Holland for the Easter holidays.

We took the ferry from Hull overnight to make it interesting! We had a little cabin to sleep in which the kids loved. 

Our first day was so much fun. We went to Brielle who celebrate their Liberation from the Spanish back in 1650 by dressing up in clothes from that time and reconstructing events from the Liberation with everyone eating and drinking in the cobbled streets all day. Super fun - we had our best chips and mayo, waffles and kibberly (a local battered fish delicacy). Boo was fascinated by a scary man hanging from a post. He quizzed me about this for the rest of our fortnight away. 

We spent all our time round the south bit of Holland, jumping across the little finger shaped bits across Zeeland. 

We visited a couple of sand dunes. One by the sea at Ouddorp which made more sense. The other sand dune was a crazy one inland near Tilburg - the size of 7,000 football pitches. 

We stayed almost exclusively on paid for campsites. Most we found on the hoof, rocking up and getting for less than their advertised rates. We particularly liked ones with dairies attached like Middenin , getting to taste €1 bottles of milk for breakfast from the cows we could see being milked the night before. It was fascinating watching the cows getting onto a rotating carousel to be milked.

However we did manage to find one free campsite in Hansweert which had a nice playpark nearby and a tiny patch of sand for Olive and Boo to play on as the sunset. Some locals were even brave enough to take a dip. Brr. 

Holland is famous at this time of year for its tulip fields. We spent a happy couple of days driving through beautifully coloured fields with massive stretches of reds, pinks, whites, purples and oranges.

We stayed on a marina near Dordrecht for a couple of nights. We really liked Dordrecht and wished we had spent a bit longer there. We hopped on a ferry across to Rotterdam to have a quick look round and eat some different foods from a food market. The cube houses are famous and interesting to look round. They are shaped oddly, confusing to work out quite how you would use them. One was for sale for €450,000 which doesn’t seem too crazy for such a famous building until you see it’s only for 100 square feet of space!!

Another real highlight was the UNESCO protected windmill site. It was lovely wandering round them, very peaceful. 

Selina organised a great ending to our Dutch adventure with a two day jaunt at the magical Efteling theme park. We had a two day pass and stayed in the theme park hotel overnight. It was such a great thing to visit. 

The site had some gorgeous sections - especially the fairytale Sprookjesbos section with retelling of so many different stories from Pinocchio to little red riding hood and sleeping beauty to name but a few. Boo was fascinated by each story, insisting we read each summary to him. Olive liked Long Neck whose neck kept extending. 

Boo also loved the bins with a chubby boy with a hoover in his mouth to suck in the rubbish, saying “papier hier” over and over. 

The people working in Efteling were so happy warm and friendly. The park is famous for the music you hear as you walk round, I loved it. Our favourite rides were Symbolica and Droomvlucht (dream flight) which we went on over and over, especially towards the end of the day when the crowds had left and queue times dropped to nothing. 

The magic luna illusion show mesmerised the kids and led to more questions about how it was done. We also had a real giggle on Pirana water ride when we all got a bit wet and I got drenched! Laughter all round!

Overall we had a lovely time round Holland. There was quite a Steiner feel about the place. From the lady spinning wool at the Liberation day celebrations in Brielle to the fairytale stories in Efteling theme park. I did find the roads a bit crazy to get used to with endless traffic calming set ups. But it has definitely made us feel like bringing the van back to Europe to do more camping. I would happily return to Brielle again on the 1st April Liberation day celebrations and return to the special Efteling theme park.