Late last night we got back from almost two weeks away in Holland, a trip which we had been hoping to do for the past 38 years or so but never got around to it due to family and financial constraints, I blame the eye watering mortgage interest rates which we suffered in the 1980s when we were buying our house. Anyway, we had a great time visiting the Dutch branches of our family tree, and their various animals – three horses, one pony, one border collie and an American pit bull terrier which is owned by the youngest of the family. I never thought that I would be licked by a pit bull, it was a bit scary but I did end up patting him, or clapping him as we say in Scotland when we stroke a dog.

Today I’ve been busy trying to get back to normal, you know what it’s like when you’ve been away for a while. Piles of everything to be done and piles of post to be looked through. There were almost no referendum fliers so it looks like the activists are mainly sticking to busy places near the centre of towns – not that I’m complaining about that. We couldn’t even escape the referendum in Holland as it featured on the news there too and even a supermarket check-out chap was asking us about it when he realised we were Scottish – oh all right, I told him we were Scottish when he heard us speaking English and I couldn’t let him think that we were English could I!

So lots of photos have been taken and it was only when we were on the ferry on our way back to Harwich that I realised that we didn’t take any photos of ourselves while we were there. Well, why would we, we know what we look like!

Tomorrow I hope to get some photos on pining, they’re mainly of very flat countryside and I do mean flat, it’s a bit unnerving as I find it difficult to recognise places when there aren’t particular hills to help me. I was reduced to memorising what houses looked like as they are all designed by the original owners, so no two are the same.

Jack didn’t have any problems with driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road even although we drove off the ferry and straight on into the heavy rush hour traffic of Amsterdam.

We didn’t visit Amsterdam itself this time, I’ve been told that the queues at the big art galleries there are huge and apparently you have to queue for hours to get into the Anne Frank house and are rushed through in about 10 minutes. It’s not a place that I want to visit anyway as I think I would find it too sad.

I took the photo below when we went to visit my nephew and his family, they live near Utrecht and we walked along the path beside this canal to get to a good eatery where we had lunch.

More photos tomorrow.