Nine consecutive nights at home. What a joy! Such luxurious comfort compared to July. It’s flown by. Our respite from travels in Namibia has been lovely, but on reflection, perhaps not exactly ‘restful’!

In just over a week at home, our rest and recovery from a month in Africa, has still involved a 12km hike and scramble up one of the highest peaks in Snowdonia, a multi-pitch climbing day, some coastal paddleboarding, two swims in the sea, five swims in the river and a further two dips in the lake. We’ve witnessed an eclipse, watched a meteor shower, had dinner at a friend’s house, caught up with the neighbours, been visited by old uni friends and hosted an impromptu dinner party at The Cottage.

And that’s just the fun stuff. We’ve also been working hard giving The Cottage some DIY love, with bathroom upgrades, taken on the lawn that has grown into a full-blown flower meadow while we were away, and even painted the outside of the house!

And of course, the washing, cleaning and sorting of clothes and equipment (and myself!) has taken some time. So on reflection, I suspect that it’s no surprise that we felt a little bit fatigued when it came to packing for the final two sections of the summer travels! It took a while, but eventually we managed to pack up several different bags containing assorted clothes and kit for all the various and varying places we are about to visit! Logistics, logistics…

Today we start a family road and rail section, which is starting by heading south and eventually ending at an airport, but more about that later… Between now and into the start of September it looks like we’ll be in a different bed in a different location every night!

As the skies of North Wales clouded over and the summer rains finally arrived, we moved out of Wales to the still desert lands of Loddington…

Here we go….