National Memorial Arboretum

We dropped the girls back home this morning and also left the dogs with Rachel overnight as we’d been invited to stay with Vicky and Mark, friends who also used to live in Belgium. I’ve seen Vicky a few times when we met up in London but we haven’t seen Mark or their boys since we left Belgium. The boys were 8, 10 and 12 then and they’re now 16, 18 and 20!

We arrived about 2.30pm and after an initial catch up we went for a walk to the National Memorial Arboretum. It’s an amazing place with over 400 memorials, and the one I’ve chosen as my Blip is Armed Forces Memorial. It was created to remember those who have given their lives in service to the country since the Second World War.
We only saw a fraction of what’s there as it closes at 5pm, but it’s somewhere we’ll definitely go back to.

Back at Vicky and Mark’s we had a lovely evening in the garden and they’d hired a pizza oven for Tom’s 18th birthday party last night, so we had home made pizzas and kebabs for dinner.

We had a lovely evening catching up and reminiscing about our time in Belgium and the boys who are all very talented musicians played for us - Tom plays the Sax, Ben the piano and Jean-Marc the clarinet.

And the good news is that Bobbie seems more like his usual self and he let us put the drops in his ears!