UK visit on the way home

Flying back from Africa, we took the opportunity to spend about 10 days in the UK, mostly in Scotland.  More pics on a separate page.

First stop after landing at Heathrow was driving to Cambridge and finding a bookstore to buy a bird guidebook.  Talk about culture shock, we have not been in a bookstore like that for a long time.

Continuing north, we stop at Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland

Walking Hadrian's wall

Farne Islands, a nesting colony for many seabirds

The main attraction - puffins!

Some other good birds to be seen, razorbills, kittiwakes, and guillemots

Can't go to Scotland without having haggis.  The boys tried some for lunch in Edinburgh, and decided it was fine.

Start of our bike trip, in Oban on the western side of Scotland.  We took the Caledonian trail for 4 days, going along the west coast, and across various lochs to Inverness on the east coast.

The scenery was of course amazing, including a good number of castles along the way.

Can't be in Scotland without rain, and indeed on our longest day biking we had rain all day.  Fortunately the rain was at our back.  Here we enjoy a break on one of the two ferries across a loch.  We found out later the ferry hit a rock later that day, and so there is no longer a way to cross there!

And more rain...  We camped 2 nights on the bike route, but by luck had booked a hostel room on the day we were biking through the rain.

The next morning was beautiful sun, and a great path along the canal connecting the lochs

Lots of wonderful views of the lochs along the path

Outside Fort Augustus was a long slog up a hill to high moorland with lakes.  Again very beautiful, but quite an effort with loaded bikes.

Scotland has very open land laws, including the right to camp virtually anywhere. We found a great moss covered forest along the shore of Loch Ness and claimed a spot among the conifers for a night.

At the end of 4 days, and arrived at the other end of Scotland in Inverness, celebrating with some ice cream on a beautiful sunny warm day!

A day spend in the Cairngorms, enjoying the amazing moorland scenery

Heather in bloom

Tour of Old Trafford, stadium for Man United

Evan is our Man U fan, so we made the pilgrimage to the sacred ground in Manchester

Leaving Kenya

Two years in Kenya are coming to an end for us.  Some final pictures of our life around Nairobi:

At camp Alex finished Lion's Pride - a challenge involving an assortment of challenges including staying up all night under the Kenyan stars without letting a fire go out.  He's only the 24th person to make it through the challenges in 17 years of Bluesky camps - way to go Alex!

MCC Kenya kids!

Boys leave with Just Connections for their last day of school at Rosslyn

One of many farewell ceremonies, this one at UDO in Machakos.  We had lots of cake in the last few weeks here.

Another cake and farewell, this in Kitui with SASOL

MCC Kenya team!

Showing off his clean water bottle at school in Mathare

Good friends (and WASH promoters) John and Brian.  We had many great times over the last few years.

One of the school pupil's parents, who practices water purification at home.  She has a business outside her house sewing.

Visiting another parent

Proudly displaying SODIS bottles, she is one of the "champion" parents in the WASH program

Soap readily available in the house for handwashing

Lunchtime at Mathare, lining up for ugale and sukuma wiki

At Mukuru, looking over the river behind the school.  This area is rapidly changing, with new buildings going up every week.  The river collects all manner of stuff washing downstream, which people them wade through and sort out anything valuable.  The dike shown does now help prevent flooding in the school's neighborhood.

Ready to head out the door from our apartment

Farewell to our askari David

One last time enjoying the amazing milkshakes at the guest house close to us.

One last post to come, as we spend a few days traveling in Scotland on our way home.