England & Wales 2018

  

Even though this was not really a well-planned holiday it ended up being quite a roadtrip. The idea was to visit two good friends from Uni (who know each other but are not close friends) and who both had babies on Christmas Day - is that a coincidence or what? Anyways, the idea was to have a "get to know the babies" visit since we were all busy with our own new family additions.

This was extended to a cross-country roadtrip from Dover via Essex, London, Hampshire, and the Cotswolds to South Wales. From there we also visited Bristol and then back to Dover via Oxford. I feel quite accomplished, doing all this with a 5 months old baby! And it was actually less stressful than expected, we're lucky to have a baby that sleeps well in the car most of the time. 

We visited many places that were new to me, too. I really liked Cardiff and Bristol, I almost wished I had studied there because they seem to be very vibrant student cities while not being too big at the same time. Of course we also enjoyed the phenomenal weather at the Essex seaside and Wales was the perfect destination to cool down a little bit while still having more sunshine than usual in this part of the world. London was great as usual (even though we had quite some rain but thank God for museums!) and I must say I forgot how pretty Oxford was. 

Now we're back and we have filled up on takeaway curry, egg & cress sandwiches, fish & chips, and Fentiman's lemonades for a while. But since it was so easy to get there by car this was definitely not the last time we drive to the UK, unless of course BREXIT spoils the fun next year.

 

Surprisingly, I also managed to do a fair bit of knitting. I have now perfected the art of knitting in the car (as a passenger, obviously) to use my freetime as efficiently as possible. So far it works quite well, even though I have to recover the occasional dropped needle or an unravelled skein from under the seat. Above you can see the early stages of another "Branches & Buds" jumper which is actually almost complete by the time I'm typing this. I'm still debating whether I should make it into a cardigan again, as I did with my first version of this pattern. 

More knitting updates to come soon!