A little time away....Pt 1....

Hello my friends...it really has been too long since we blogged....but I am back now with a few highlights from the Bt HQ summer holiday...

Miss Sybil and I left the Uk by Eurotunnel ....heading for France.....Miss Sybil is #sybilontour and is a small border terrier raising awareness for Huntington's Disease for our pal @jaq421

...after a long day's drive we arrived in the old town of Nancy for an evening stop over....we always insisted on some comfort...

...all very arty....*sigh*

...Nancy was very beautiful and interesting...well worth a short visit to see the old square and the historic buildings....

.....and home to a good hotel brekkie....very important for working terriers.....

....we were taking TT's bike with us for some cycling in the mountains....more of that later....

....the next day we drove to Switzerland...to the old town of Bellinzona.....it is very famous for its castles...there are three of them...

....Miss Sybil and I paid a visit to each one...this is the biggest one...

....you can see the whole town from up on the battlements.....

....a home fit for a Knight....BOL....

....but our eventual destination was the beautiful Hotel Rivalago in Sulzano on the banks of Lago d'Iseo in northern Italy....we had a room with a view....

...we visited the local market....they had cheese!

...we took a trip on a ferry across the lake for dinner.....

....but most of the time we just relaxed by the water....

...well, wouldn't you?....

...a spot of sight-seeing in Brescia....more castles as you can see....

Do you have this one in a small?...

....but really there were precious few reasons to leave the lake....unless you were the typist...who spent his days cycling in the hills near the lake and getting lost and hungry...pfffft...

.....he's out there somewhere.....tune in soon for part 2 to see if we ever see him again....

In old Amsterdam....

Hello my friends...today I am bringing you old news....about a trip I took to Amsterdam in November...

...you know me by now...we always let the train take the strain.....

...the typist and I had a little bit of business to do in the week....Buy! Sell!...

...which means business hotels and routine.....

.....but at the weekend we met mum in old Amsterdam...we stayed at a nice little hotel right in the heart of the canal district....

....in the morning we walked all the way across town to the Van Gogh Museum....it was very sunny but also very chilly....

.....we were not allowed to take photos in the Museum itself but they did have some replicas of well known painting in the gift shop....

.....we enjoyed a walk round town....the canals are very pretty....

...oh...and there was the odd expensive bike shop to keep the typist happy....*YAWN*....

....a very good job that the hotel had a roaring fire in the lobby...cold paws all round.....

....and of course Amsterdam is famous for its bikes....

....on Saturday we took a walk to the Rijksmuseum....Amsterdam's most famous tourist attraction....

....they even had stuff for the typist to do....

.....lots of paintings of the Dutch landscape....

....lots of paintings of Dutch people....

...old and new.....

....that's better....

...there are bridges everywhere due to the number of canals.....

....and a museum on every corner....

....we ven went to Rembrandt's house....but he wasn't in.....

...the best way to end the day...a nice warm cafe with some carrot cake...the Dutch certainly understand cakes...

....on Sunday I made sure I looked my best before going out.....

....the Amsterdam Museum this morning...these are the Burghers....*nom nom*...

....

....even a history of the airport....

...all rounded off with a stop at the world famous hole-in-the-wall chip shop.....

...but all good things come to an end....at the Central Station...my home away from home....

....at least we had a little bit of glamour and sparkle courtesy of Eurostar.......

A load of old cobbles

 Hello my dear friends....we have finally got our blog working again....(*also possible issues with a defective typist)....and so I am back with a few of our recent adventures....Hurrah!...


So, last weekend, we headed of to France so that the typist could be allowed to cycle his bike and watch a bit of cycling too.....

...so, for border issues don't forget to take your border terrier along....*chuckling*....

....there were lots of other folks heading our way from the UK....we were off to a town called Roubaix where there is a very famous bike ride every year...it is called Paris-Roubaix and is one of the highlights of the professional racing season...although they let the amateurs ride the same course the day before...

...there are plenty of compensations with going to France of course....

....we travelled by Eurotunnel...a dog in a car in a train under the sea....

....we drove all the way to Roubaix, which is near the border with Belgium....and we had a very nice little hotel...they were very kind and accommodating...

...they even allowed the typist to park his "precious" bike in our room....

....we wandered through Roubaix to race registration in the afternoon...here is the Hotel du Ville...Town Hall to you and moi....

....we saw the huge cobble outside the famous velodrome...the race is famously run over very rough cobbled roads across farmland....its known as the Hell of the North....not all the cobbles are this big!...

...and we had a little snoop around cycling's most famous velodrome....many a cycling legend has been born here....*yawn*...typist will get to finish his race here tomorrow....

....what a long day it was.....(*i am told this was all part of the training...i am not so sure)...

....but what a beautiful spring day it was too.....

...although for some reason the nitwits (Surely "neetweets" Ed.) gave the typist his trophy BEFORE the race....pfffft

...*yawn*...cycle cycle cycle etc...this went on for most of Saturday...some of it was HARD ...apparently...*yawn*....try googling Paris-Roubaix to get some sense of what they went through....

..that afternoon I went in search of some real culture....they have a nice museum in Roubaix....spoiled only by a tired typist groaning and moaning about his 90 mile ride....

...and they have found a creative use for their entry tickets.....

...the museum is in a swimming pool!....

...see?...in a pool....these French dudes are strange.....

...but they do know a thing or two about pastries!....

....we all did our bit....I don't know what he's moaning about...it seemed easy to me....

...and in the evening we went to Ypres for dinner (juts over the border into Belgium) and saw the famous Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate...it was very moving and and we thought about typists grandad who served on the Western Front during WW1...

....and we saw this at the Gate...a reminder of some real suffering on a bike....typist looking sheepish and toning down his whingeing...

...on Sunday we went back out to the fields and saw the professionals riding...that man in red in second place was the eventual winner of the race....he's Belgian...the Belgian's are good at this sort of thing....

...we had such a super weekend......we highly recommend Roubaix in the sunshine in the spring!....

Le woof!