(click on the photos below to enter each country's photo page)

Our 4 month sojourn around Europe! By the end we had pretty much seen as many churches with the "highest nave" or "tallest steeple" or "most ornate altar piece" in Europe, plus medieval towns, cobbled streets, half-timbered houses and roman ruins that we wanted to see!

So what was our favourite country? Mmmm, very difficult to say after visiting over a dozen of them in such a short time!.
We love France for its old towns - they're always very romantic (and the patisserie's are great!). Austria and Switzerland have to be the best for lakes and mountain scenery and reminded us very much of the South Island in NZ. Budapest in Hungary had the loveliest night time views. Spain and Portugal offered quite a different pace of life and incredible contrasts of coastal areas and dry mountain ranges. Germany also has some fascinating scenery, from the lush, green black-forest, awesome freeways to the very ordered agricultural fields (in fact very ordered everything else - camp sites were very well structured!). In Denmark we were looking for the NZ connection - they've certainly got a lot of islands and coastline, and a lot of the buildings were "younger" than many we'd seen in Europe, and often with wood cladding.
Italy's Tuscany region is gorgeous - we were initially surprised by how mountainous Northern Italy was but considering where the Alps lie, it ain't that surprising! I think our first impression was that they just wanted to dig a tunnel through every mountain they could find, and if there happened to be a valley around, well hey! we could build a huge bridge over it!

So the BIG question: would we go TENTING for another four months??? Well of COURSE! We really enjoyed it despite the fact that we'd only ever camped once before, and that was for 10 days and over 10 years ago!
Our tent managed to be bigger than most couples but boy did we appreciate the space during the 8 or so electrical storms we had along the way! It only took 10 to 15 mins to set up after we'd done it 10 times!(and less in the pouring rain!)

We WERE pretty well equipped ("5 star luxury camping", some of our more "hardened" camping friends suggested! I think it's probably more 4 star, after seeing some outfits - we didn't have electricity, lounge chairs, a heater or a T.V. - all of which we saw - no joke!), which made the trip a lot more enjoyable.
Oh - and a word of advice to ANYONE going camping - NEVER take a blow up bed! We used thermarest mattresses which are absolutely PERFECT! We heard families, couples and singles busy huffing and puffing (its OK, this is a family webpage! ;-) at all hours of the night just to get their bed made - NOT a clever idea after a long day travelling!

And the best car to do such an epic wander in? Well a Peugeot of course! No air conditioning (but then we were only driving in temps of 35 degrees celcius!) and no electrics! After 17k miles in 4 months we only had to change the oil once and replace two tyres.

So anyone for a low mileage, excellent, used Peugeot, lady owner, only used for travel to the local shops (they just happened to be all over Europe!) ;-) Or perhaps one slightly used tent, only 4 months old, used for one camping trip? (Okay so its not like new, and the elastics gone in one of the poles, gaffa tape is holding the holes together and cable ties are holding other bits together - but honestly, it'd be a good buy!!!) Any offers over £80 seriously considered - after all, we paid over £90 for it!