Just an hour from Amersfoort on the intercity train brought us to Den Haag, The Hague, clearly a booming city, to judge from the skyline of cranes and high-rise glass and steel, especially around the station.

But the charm of the old city is only a block away, embracing more modern fare like the former US Embassy, built in 1959 and now one of its many art galleries. And water and greenspace (with some fine displays of Honey Fugus) are never too far beyond that, in which the noise of Parakeets is rivalled by that of the Jackdaws.

Our hotel, the Townhouse, proved another good choice, in terms of location and comfort, although let down by the lack of atmosphere in the bistro, something to do with the lack of food, apart from rather good fruit pies and (free) soup! And it provided shelter from the showers,  watching earnest people of all nations  coming and going, perhaps related to Den Haag being at the epicentre of international jurisprudence.

And there was no shortage of real food just a couple of minutes’ walk away around the main square next to the government buildings; indeed here, in Leopold’s, we had the best meal of the holiday on our first evening. The second evening was less successful  though as the eateries were crammed: perhaps Thursday is the new Friday in a country that is on its way to embracing the four-day week.

Art is everywhere, including homage on the hoarding, behind which the former Ministry of Justice is being converted into a museum, to MC Escher. Fittingly so as Escher’s prints feature in an excellent museum nearby, a former Royal Palace:

There we spent a very happy morning exploring his work,  from the early, technically superb but hardly ground-breaking realism…

… to distorted and unexpected perspectives …

… through geometrical shapings and  fascinating, morphing tessellations…

…to his most famous, mind-bending impossibilities.

The inspiration for the impossible staircases was clear from a photo of his school in Arnhem: if that is ever opened to the public we could well be tempted to visit.

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There is probably much, much more to Den Haag than we found on this, our first visit, given that we spent much of our time using it as a centre to travel out from.

One such trip was by tram to the coastal resort of Scheveningen, complete with requisite pier, grand hotel and broad sandy beach. Where better to eat mussels than in a beach bar with the smell of the salt and sound of the distant lapping waves?

This is a place that would be worth revisiting at other seasons. The dunes had Marram and Lyme Grass, , thickets of fruiting Sea Buckthorn, and a few plants like Sea Rocket, Dwarf Mallow and Narrow-leaved Ragwort in flower. How much more would there to be found in summer in the vast dune field that stretches north from the town?

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Den Haag was also the ideal stepping stone from which to visit Leiden, just ten minutes away by train. A small city, it wasn’t really on our radar until we noticed an advertisement (and voucher for reduced price entry!) for the botanic garden Hortus botanicus, but much of a day visiting there was time very well spent.

Of all the places we visited it was the one most reminiscent of home, especially of Harwich and the Dutch Quarter of Colchester, due to its geographic similarity and the commonality of architecture and boat design, indicating strong cultural links. Little did we realise the commonality until we saw the name ‘Mayflower’ appearing regularly: yes, the Mayflower that sailed from Harwich in 1620 collected some of its Pilgrim Fathers from Leiden (to which they had exiled themselves following persecution for contravening religious orthodoxy back in England) in Southampton.

The waterways were flanked by old brick-built houses, many with a familiar stepped profile: one of these, the former carpenters’ house was a gallery and open to look around, revealing an interior tiled with Delft tiles.

Old, attractive buildings everywhere, including two windmills:

The larger canals and rivers, branches of the former Rijn (Rhine) delta, had numerous historic trading boats, as well as those for modern tourism, all of which provided a very pleasing backdrop to our al fresco lunch on the floating Vlot Grand Café.

Another name to put Leiden on the map is Rembrandt, who was born there in 1606:

Leiden is also prestigious academically, home to the country’s oldest university, founded in 1575. Hence its equally prestigious botanic garden (I had forgotten I knew that!) whose origins date back to 1590, making it one of the oldest in the world. And its collections have been built up by a veritable Who’s Who of botany through the 16th to 19th centuries, including Clusius, Linnaeus and Siebold.

Despite the season there were plenty of interesting flowers in the garden…

… with autumnal colours and fruits from many others.

Add in the fungi, including a honey-fungus (probably Armillaria ostoyae on account of its scaly cap),  the bracket-fungus Ganoderma lipsiense and The Prince Agaricus augustus…

…and a scattering of invertebrates, such as Dogwood Aphid, adult Syrphus ribesii hoverflies along with their tartan-clad larvae, some well marked Common Carder-bees and a Clubiona sac-spider.

And of course the birds: Great Crested Grebes on the canal, and Ring-necked Parakeets everywhere, competing with the acorn-foraging Jays for the label ‘noisiest birds’.

The glasshouses too were impressive with all sorts of frost-sensitive and therefore unfamiliar blooms.

And in the warmer greenhouses, it suddenly became clear the trilling sounds came not from a speaker but from living frogs. Poison dart frogs at that, in which their skin can contain a chemical hundreds of times as strong as morphine. Perhaps fortunately, the toxins are in part derived from the plants growing around them, so if the environment is controlled, so too can be the risk of visitor poisoning!

Clearly an impressive botanic garden and one that would repay visits at different times of year.

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And so our holiday finally drew to a close with a last example of the efficiency of public transport. Our intended train was going to stop short of our destination due to weekend rail works, but we were able easily to change plans and get back to the Hook of Holland by metro instead, in the same length of time.

Onto the ferry for a comfortable, calm overnight crossing, we were back in the UK as dawn broke, under the same leaden skies as when we departed a week previously. There was still not a stirring of breeze, as though autumn had held its breath for the whole of our trip, a holiday that left us wanting more so I suspect we will be back before too long!

Just forty minutes out of Rotterdam on the Intercity train brought us to Utrecht, our destination for the next two nights. The journey was almost all across flat, drained, agricultural former marshland, and the upper deck of the train made for good viewing. Half a dozen Great White Egrets and a Kingfisher were the most exciting sightings amongst the Coots, Mallards and Canada Geese.

And from one futuristic station to another: the entrance to Utrecht Centraal is overtopped by a massive honeycomb canopy.

The old city itself is contained within, and presumably formerly defended by, a perimeter canal, alongside which we needed to walk to get to our hotel. But the newer parts of the city, outside the canal, had some pleasant surprises including the massive hulk of the headquarters of ProRail, responsible for the railway network infrastructure of the Netherlands. This is the largest brick building in the country, dating from 1921, Art Deco in style and made of more than 22 million bricks. Put that into perspective: our iconic equivalent Battersea Power Station in its current restored state contains 7.6 million!

And what of the flying saucer on top? Well that is not original – it was part of a Millennium art festival, and has somehow survived, giving the hulk a very distinctive profile.

Right next door, and going back an era architecturally is the Art Nouveau building of the former Hygenic Laboratory, a reminder of Utrecht’s historically prestigious university. The façade of the building is decorated with memorials to some of the important scientists of the time, some of whom like Davy, Bunsen and Priestley are still household names today.

The canal too is fascinating. It seemed timeless, but we learned that in fact once the city walls were demolished in 1830, its defensive function faded and it fell into disrepair. In 1973 it was drained and in part converted into a sunken motorway, but from 2010 the motorway has been removed and the canal restored as part of a general pedestrianisation of the old city. And importantly most of it now is flanked by greenspace, good for people but also for wildlife. There are now some splendid trees, dead wood is celebrated, fungi (like Shaggy Ink-caps) were springing up and there were even a few flowers for autumnal nectar, including Duke of Argyll’s Teatree and Shaggy Soldier, the latter seemingly everywhere in the urban parts of the country, perhaps an indication of what will happen in the UK.

And right next to the canal the Muze hotel, our very pleasant home for two nights in stylish surroundings, our room being themed on the nearby Centraal Museuem. On the first evening we stayed local, found Piero’s, the local Italian restaurant, and had one of the best meals of our whole trip.

For much of the following day we also stayed close by, visiting places just across the canal. We had intended to go out to see the iconic Rietveld Schröder House, built in 1924 at the very dawn of Modernist architectural design. but the Centraal Museum was so good we spent much longer there than we had expected to. A very good excuse for a return visit!

The museum was eclectic and well laid-out, exhibits ranging from the tenth-century Utrecht ship (more than 17m long and hollowed out of a single oak trunk) in the basement to a reconstruction in the attic of the studio of the graphic artist Dick Bruna, creator of the Miffy character, who lived and worked in the city.

Between the two were numerous other delights, including chairs by Rietveld (designer of the Modernist house), ladies’ fashion, a full-sized papier-mâché horse stripped down to its internal anatomical details and art from across the ages. Of course there were Mondriaans (he hailed from nearby Amersfoort), although not the abstract forms most associated with his name now, but what struck me most was a 1923 drawing of trees by Dick van Luijn, the perfect natural model for the Cube Houses we had seen in Rotterdam the day previously.

There were also cyanotypes of local ‘pavement plants’ and a 1913 Tourism Club poster discouraging littering: worthy messages all round and to judge from our experience the anti-littering message seems very largely to have worked.

The museum is housed in a former monastery, and its associated church was worth a visit, especially for some lovely stained glass:

Just around the corner for the museum is the Oude Hortus, the historic former university botanic garden (the main botanic garden is on the outskirts of the city, beyond the Rietveld Schröder House, and so must await a return visit). Although quite small, it packs in a lot of features:

Autumn colours were starting to blaze through the foliage…

… and special trees included a vast, ancient Ginkgo, a fruiting Medlar (showing blatantly the reason for its French name ‘cul de chien’) and a Paper Mulberry with its distinctive orange fruit clusters.

Among the herbaceous plants out in the garden were Pokeweed, Deadly Nightshade and Castor-oil Plant. All are deadly poisonous to us, but the latter two species at least hosted the sap-sucking Southern Green Shieldbug, seemingly oblivious to the toxins. And not just surviving but thriving to judge from the clusters of multicoloured nymphs, quite a contrast to the green adults.

Other invertebrates included both Roman and Banded Snails, and a few fungi around the garden included the ink-cap Coprinus micaceus.

And then there were the glasshouses, with the less hardy and often showy plants:

Of course none more showy than the centrepiece Giant Water-lilies. Interestingly one old leaf had been laid out in the dry but upside down, showing well the struts that support such a vast leaf and the fearsome prickles that presumably give it protection from aquatic herbivores.

Later in the day and on the next morning we walked up into the centre of the old city, along the attractive canals that run through as well as around the centre, forming watery threads among the many historic buildings.

But pride of place among the historic buildings must go to the fourteenth-century Dom Tower, centrepiece of the city and visible from almost everywhere, at 112.5m the tallest church tower in the country.

The cathedral that was intended to accompany the tower was never completed, and a portion of it stands across the square as the Domkerk. It may be only a portion, but it is a towering space inside, and again features some impressive stained glass.

All this in one day, followed by an al fresco dinner (with excellent local beer) under the watchful gaze of the Dom Tower…

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Next day it was back on the train, first to Amersfoort, just 15 minutes’ east, a journey which took us through some rather different countryside, of dry, sandy lowland heath and woodland.

A small city, Amersfoort comes with the seemingly de rigeur modernised railway station, and as the home of Mondriaan, his artwork (or copies thereof) are everywhere. It was also one of the few places we noticed unofficial graffiti, and even that was really quite charming in its simplicty!

Like Utrecht writ small, the old city is surrounded by a canal, with further waterways running through it, including the Eem (or Amer) river which lends its name to the town.

The watery entrances to the old city are fortified, most impressively the Koppelpoort, completed about 1425.

And of course there is also the huge tower in the centre, Onze-Lieve-Vrouwetoren, more than 98m tall, the third tallest church tower in the Netherlands.

Its associated church was destroyed by a historic gunpowder explosion, but that has left us with a pleasant open square with good food and drink outlets, and a very helpful Tourist Information Centre that kindly looked after our bags while we did our walk around the city. All very pleasant, and clearly on the tourist trail, but after a couple of hours we were happy to be back to the station, to head off for the next stage of our holiday, a couple of nights in Den Haag…

And so for our (first) February break, we decided to head to Disneyland Paris – not, you realise, for ourselves but as a treat for Eleanor. At the age of seven, we thought it was time! Eurostar to Lille and then TGV straight to Marne-la-Vallée – Chessy was all very efficient, and gave us a sense being abroad, with changing church architecture and electricity pylon design, along with the most dense Mistletoe populations we have ever seen.

Disneyland was pretty much as expected: brash and busy, albeit perhaps not as rammed as we feared. But still plenty of people there, hence the interminable queues, to get in, to go on the rides, to eat or drink. One has to admire the business model that charges a large sum of money to get into the park, then you spend 80% of your time standing in line…but at least it was calm and sunny, if cold. And the smile on Eleanor’s face made it all worthwhile…

But as everywhere there are nuggets of delight for anyone with an eye to see it. Personally my favourite ride was ‘It’s a Small World’. Notwithstanding the psychedelic/nightmare sight and sound of hundreds of dolls singing, it really chimed with my worldview of harmony and diversity (and couldn’t help but wonder just how much Donald Trump must hate it!).

And while we were queuing for that the pastel shades of the façade made a very pleasing reflected liquid mosaic on the water:

Around the parks, the plantings are generally ecological as well as robust and ornamental, including a good range of early nectar and pollen sources.

And every tree was planted within a rain garden to help it survive and thrive – trees were very much in our minds with our previous month of tree protecting back home, and news of rapidly unfolding events on WhatsApp (this saga will be the subject of a future blog!).

We stayed a short shuttle bus (free) ride from the main resort, in a B&B Hotel (a chain we have always found to be to our liking) on the edge of Magny-le-Hongre, a very pleasant retreat from the razzmatazz of the parks.

It is one of a series of hotels stretching around an inviting greenspace with a large reed-fringed lake at its heart, home to Cormorants, a Kingfisher, Great-crested Grebes and Rose-ringed Parakeets.

But after three nights, it was homeward bound, and an hour exploring the wonders of Marne-la-Vallée – Chessy station. Ultra-modern inside, with interlocking escalators giving an impression of being inside a work by M. C. Escher …

… whereas on the frontage is the retained façade from a previous Brutalist incarnation, now repurposed into homes for House Martins.

Except of course it wasn’t: Wikipedia indicates the TGV station was opened in 1994, concurrent with the theme park. As with all things Disney, all is not what it seems – the edifice is artifice!

Antwerp: another country, another city, another railway station of architectural wonder, although one of a very different vintage to that we departed from in Rotterdam…

Great food and beer made Antwerp a fine place for three days, surrounded by Flemish architecture, laced with its share of mad baroquery, no doubt reflecting its importance as a world trading port, then as now.

Probably the pinnacle of baroque ornamentation, Onze Lieve cathedral pierced the Swift-laden, scream-filled sky, with Black Redstarts singing from its heights, drowned out only for half-an-hour of carillon tunes at noon.

As with any city, there were green oases. The botanic garden may be small but it is space to escape the relentless shoppers, find interesting plants and a few insects and other creatures too:

Then across (or rather under, through the 500m-long Sint Anna foot-tunnel) the River Scheldt …

… to the grassy parks and marshy fringes, full of the song of Reed and Cetti’s Warblers.

Our second full day in the city was very different: we headed to the port, specifically to the Harbour Authority building, in fact the reason we decided to take this break in the first place. We had glimpsed it tantalizingly on  both the previous days, from the train as we arrived and from the other side of the river, but nothing could have prepared us for its close-up reality.

It is a brave architect who can take one redundant, historic fire station and land a huge glass airship (or is it a boat?) right on top: a magnificent shapeshifter of a building, its glass skin cut like the facets of a diamond, reflecting Antwerp’s position at the centre of the world of diamond trade. Zaha Hadid was one such brave architect, who sadly died just as this remarkable building was completed.

I have spent many hours working in ports and port buildings, and the usual impression is of barbed wire and Keep Out signs. But not here – we just walked up to it, and inside to enjoy coffee looking up at the structure above!

Of course being a port, there were boats, fences, rubble and buildings in different states of repair, all the better for Black Redstarts to thrive…

… with green roofs, each an artwork in their own right with half a dozen or more species of Sedum melded together in a succulent mosaic.

Sown patches of pollinator-friendly plants duly attracted insects, including a Bee Chafer, and various bees (what’s not to love about a Honeybee with a pink-pollen-powdered face?!) …

… plus self-sown brownfield plants and their insects, including  Little-Robin, Hybrid Lucerne and Common Blue butterflies, and (a new one for us) 13-spot Ladybird, a species only recently rediscovered in south-eastern England after apparent extinction for several decades.

Ports have a vitality that reflects their focus on the worlds beyond the horizon. And not surprisingly this includes social history museums like MAS, itself a work of art in the regenerated former docklands. The historic inner ports may now be trading mainly in art, culture and ideas but those are as important as goods in any modern culture.

For our last half day the weather took a turn for the worse, so it was a morning of shopping, followed by a sumptuous beer, mussels, chips and mayonnaise lunch at Bier Central. And the sun came out for a final flourish as we headed back to the station, taking in the area round the Zoo, before heading to Brussels and home by Eurostar. A fantastic trip, and each and every one of our transport links on what turned out to be a holiday weekend on the Continent was dead on time!

For our main May minibreak we took the leisurely way out of the country, on a daytime ferry sailing from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. A lovely restful start – ok, we could have done it more quickly but we are fortunate that time is not an issue.

Sliding past the familiar sights of Harwich and Felixstowe, in flat calm conditions, and at first a little warm sunshine, we were on our way….

… but before long, cloud and mist settled around us adding an ethereality to the Roughs Tower and the Greater Gabbard Wind Farm, its giant turbines in stately motion despite the light winds.

Only as we headed past the Maasvlakte container port did the sun re-emerge. From there into port and straight onto the equally restful half-hour metro ride, past lights and onshore turbines.

Disembarking in the middle of Rotterdam, all of that changed. From placid calm to raucous street life in a matter of seconds. It was Saturday evening, a warm one at that, and we were staying in Witte De Withstraat, which we later learned was the ‘liveliest’ street in the city. Quite the contrast!

But just a block or two away down by the docks relative serenity returned, time to eat a great Italian, to appreciate the historic boats alongside new development, including the quirky Cube Houses and the amazing almost-cylindrical Markthal, the inner wall of which is occupied by what is claimed at 11,000 m² in extent as the largest artwork in the world,  Horn of Plenty by Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam.

At this point, serendipity swept in as Jude recognized the artwork as the self-same pattern as on the shirt I wore when we got married, exactly eight years ago to that very day!

Next morning, early, while the revellers still slept we walked the streets and chanced upon the museum quarter. It was sculpture that drew us close; we then got sucked in by the sound of Egyptian Geese serenading us from every tall building, and competing for soundspace with the equally strident Rose-ringed Parakeets and Great Spotted Woodpeckers.

Here were more remarkable buildings, especially the silvered bowl-shaped Boijmans van Beuningen Museum Depot. Its mirrors present an ever-changing panorama of the city skyline, one we thought at first must be painted on.

Around it there were other museums and galleries …

… all set amid the ecological plantings of the museum gardens …

… which include ponds and marshes, with Water-hawthorn, Water Crowfoot, Spiked Water-milfoil and Sweet Flag in flower …

… and Small China-mark moths and damselflies (Azure and Blue-tailed) together with hundreds of dragonfly exuviae. But no sign of the dragons themselves, apart from later on a Green-eyed Hawker cruising the shopping precinct.

From there it was into the older, landscaped Het Park, now overlooked by the Euromast, and a lovely brunch. Just half a day here meant we could not even start to cover it properly, so we didn’t try. Instead we resolved to return, maybe next year, armed with a Museum Pass to really get to know the area properly – including the enticing roof garden on the Depot.

But time was pressing, so it was through the city centre, past all manner of modern edifices (Rotterdam was flattened by both sides during WW2) to the most remarkable of all, the metallic golden Centraal Station, and from there the hour-long train ride to Antwerp…

There are a few calling points on the ICE trains between Regensburg and Brussels, but we thought for our first trip of this type we would stop over in the largest city, Frankfurt, for a couple of nights. Having travelled down the Rhine then up the Main on the way out, we had already had a snapshot of the riverine views, and once there, the pleasant river walks between lines of hydra-like Plane pollards and cotton-drifting Black Poplars casting some welcome shade gave good views of the economic powerhouse that is the city…

… an urban jungle with canyons of glass and steel which harboured (as expected) Peregrines, along with city-centre-dwelling Buzzards, and surprising densities of House Sparrows, along with hordes of screaming Swifts.

An evening in the ‘old’ city was eye-opening for the attention to detail that has evidently been given to its restoration after the area was flattened during WW2.

And even the cathedral, the red stone and its crisp edges and straight lines the product of its 1950s reconstruction.  Almost a pastiche we thought at first, until we realised this in fact the third church on the site during its venerable 1500 year-old history: nothing stands still, not even buildings.

Then there is the organ, an object of pure architectural beauty, which one imagines will produce sounds to match…

Our day to the north of the city centre in and around the Palmengarten was a hot one! So much so that we were rather pleased one of our intended destinations, the Botanic Garden, was closed (another time maybe…).

Not dissimilar to Kew Gardens, this has  extensive greenhouses coving a whole range of biomes, and a tropical butterfly house.

The outdoor gardens are many and varied, and full of interest to the botanist, even though the labelling  is rather patchy and, sadly, all too often wrong.

One pleasing feature though is the extensive area of long grass, well signposted as being for wildlife (butterflies especially) alongside showier, less naturalistic, but still valuable prairie-style swards.

Around the lakes there were Terrapins, both the native European Pond and North American Red-eared species, while the smaller ornamental pools were full of Edible Frogs, their loud quacking choruses audible from a long range.

What seemed to be lacking, sadly, was insects  not (presumably) as a result of pesticide use, more the weather. But as it warmed up, next door in the Gruneburg Park we found plenty.

Of particular interest were a ladybird Oenopia conglobata , which we have never seen before but is considered as a possible future colonist of the UK, and families of Fieldfares hopping around, something we see only in winter…

… and as seemingly everywhere in both Belgium and Germany, large tracts of recreational grass turned over to nature. What’s more, signposted accordingly!

And so it was back into Brussels, with a clear hour to get in a last Belgian beer in our favourite bar before the Eurostar home!

The filling in our sandwich holiday was spent in and around Regensburg, a small city we have always loved, sitting at the northernmost reach of the Danube, here some 100m wide, its reinforced banks covered in Rue-leaved Saxifrage.

A World Heritage Site by virtue of its historic buildings, not reconstructed as it was little-bombed during the war, the architecture is very attractive: wherever you are, there are the distinctive open-lattice twin steeples of the cathedral.

Regensburg is also home to one of the very best botanic gardens I have ever seen. In its 4.5 hectares it has taxonomic beds, habitat beds, geographic beds, themed beds and greenhouses, so many interesting plants that it draws me back time and again. It is also impeccably labelled – nowhere else have I failed to find an error!

… and, as Spring turns into Summer, it is a super place to see a range of insects and other invertebrates, apart from butterflies, in common with the UK thus far this year.

Two particular insects stood out for us: first, the chafer Valgus hemipterus, which is a southern European species, but one which seems to be on the brink of colonising London, and second, the New Forest Shield-bug, a rarity in the UK restricted to that area and the Isle of Wight. Perhaps it is no coincidence that near to the latter we also found a basking Sand Lizard, a species whose UK heartland is also the New Forest and surrounding heaths.

Away from the historic centre of the city, new developments seem to have been well provided with, or integrated into, nature, with hedges of Fly Honeysuckle and hay meadows with Greater Yellow-rattle, among many other interesting species.

‘No Mow May’, as in Belgium, seems to be taking off as an idea (whether for the ecology or for saving money really isn’t important) but in the small village in which we stayed, there seems to be a clear majority in favour of ‘(over)tidy’. Fortunately my sister is not one of those, and her garden was simply teeming with wildlife.

The Drumming Spider (trying hard to beat a rhythm on a chair) and Rose Chafers were two of the highlights, photos of the latter being a near-casualty when it plunged into the pond, until rescued by Jude. They show two poses, and how the colour can change markedly with the angle of the light.

The pond is an absolute centrepiece to this garden, with all manner of life living in, on and around it, including both Smooth and Alpine Newts which didn’t want to be photographed.

Walking around the village was a sheer delight, especially when the weather eventually warmed up …

… while the surrounding Beech woods were home to Black Woodpeckers, Bird’s-nest Orchids and Hepatica…

… with clearings home to Burning Bush, Bastard Balm and Columbine,  plus Orange Tips and a whole load of other insects.

The whole region has limestone underfoot, and even in the village bounds there are fragments of species-rich limestone grassland, with a huge diversity of plants and invertebrates alike:

But away from the settlements the limestone grassland is even more extensive, and richer, with Swallowtails and Common Blues, Yellowhammers and Skylarks, Burnt and Green-winged Orchids, Spring Gentians and Pasqueflowers, Juniper scrub,  many other plants and insects ….

… and the undoubted natural highlight of our entire trip, a male Ladybird Spider, an almost-heart stopping sighting, in what is one of very few few localities in the whole of the country. Indeed, just as in Britain, this is a Red Data species in Germany, and although we didn’t know it at the time, we stumbled upon it in its main remaining locality. And on our wedding anniversary too!

Just before the pandemic, we had our first long-distance overseas train holiday of more than a couple of days, to Switzerland. The success of that, together with the delight of clear blue, unsullied skies during Covid, made us resolve to continue with the 6% club as our preferred mode of travel, and so for our return to Europe, we spent 10 days visiting family in Bavaria travelling by train.

The great thing about train travel, apart for the lower emissions, is that you can see the landscape slipping by and change as you get further from home, and that you can extend your holiday by exploring intermediate destinations. For us, heading out, that involved Brussels. Just a couple of hours out of St Pancras we were living the life, eating moules frites and drinking Belgian beers under blue skies (which sadly largely disappeared for the next few days behind the grey cloud we have become used to at home this Spring).

Over the next couple of days we got to know the city well: the architecture, from the extravagances of the Baroque to the naturalistic curves of Art Nouveau to the edges and reflections of modern times…

… the monumental art …

…. to the street art, of all kinds.

And of course, even on the mean street of Brussels there was wildlife, from the mini-forests of moss sporophytes atop the walls, to the Black Redstarts in crackling song from many a rooftop, and the (unsprayed!) planting pockets for boulevard trees extensively colonised by Little Robin (rare in the UK) and other delightful pavement plants.

There was also more formal greenspace and there the noisy battalions of Monk Parakeets, seemingly more keen on feeding on the ground than the Rose-ringed Parakeets we are more familiar with in London and elsewhere, together with (wherever there were Lime trees) the ubiquitous Firebugs.

Next day we explored further, taking the Metro out to the Atomium, the wonderful Modernist structure built as the centrepiece of the 1958 Expo (and actually designed to be standing for only six months!). It still feels futuristic now, so its impact 65 years ago is unimaginable… Wherever you have a view of the skyline, throughout the city, the Atomium is there.

It is sited on the edge of a vast royal park, much of which has open access, around the lakes, grasslands and through the extensive Beech woods, where the flowers were pretty much as in British equivalents, with the addition of Yellow Strawberry.

Statues, monuments and a magnificent avenue of Copper Beeches that casted an almost autumnal light were all indiciations of past and present human use, but the pair of Goshawks displaying high overhead clearly don’t mind!

As with the flowers, invertebrates were mainly those we might expect to see in a London park (including a range of ladybirds and Beech Woolly Aphid), with the exception of the huge Roman Snail.

An excellent couple of days, in a city we would like to see more of, in a country we would love to eat more of the food of and drink more of the beer of! From a nature perspective, it was good to see the apparent steps towards sustainability, from the spray-free street tree planting pockets, to the swathes of longer grass in the greenspaces with wildlife-friendly native and non-native plants allowed to flower, and the mini-wildlife sites in the heart of the city proudly labelled as parts of the Nature Network. On top of that, while we were there it was Eurovision, and in a commercial break on Belgian TV, a prime-time ad for their equivalent of No Mow May!

And so, after a fun-filled couple of days, and with rain in the forecast and the cold north-easterlies re-establishing, it was back on the train and heading to Bavaria, with just a couple of hours in Cologne to stretch the legs and have breakfast, and wonder anew (see here for our last trip there) at the vast, scary monster, the apogee of gothickry, that is Cologne Cathedral…

At the very end of August, we made our first trip to Switzerland, and had our first taste of long-haul rail travel. The rail experience was superb, each train on the journey there and back on time, to the minute, clean and comfortable, as we watched the landscapes of France slip by. And in the Alps, the local trains and cable cars getting us to high altitude with ease, again on time, regular and with exemplary integrated public transport information, on train and station. We are now proud to be part of the 6% club, as compared with the carbon cost of flying.

The journey down was broken in Strasbourg, two half-days to explore the abundant historic delights of La Petite France, the Gothic Cathedral (the fourth-tallest church in the world) and the Rhine-side wildlife. One abundant feature of the attractive floral displays was the Brown Marmorated Stink-bug Halyomorpha halys, new to us, and new to Europe as recently as 1998 when it arrived from the Far East on roof tiles imported for repairs to the Chinese Garden in Zürich. One to watch this, as it is starting to be found in pest proportions on fruit and vegetable crops, both in Europe and North America.

Another non-native insect was Isodontia mexicana, a North American wasp which is now established in Southern Europe, and seemingly at home – last year I even saw it apparently migrating south through the French Pyrenean valleys in September.

And so to Switzerland and the Bernese Oberland, a place of stunning mountain scenery. We were staying in the delightfully traffic-free village of Wengen, overlooked by the Jungfrau massif, from where we had easy access to the higher ground by train and cable car. The alpine meadows around 1200m were blooming again after the first hay cut, with Knapweeds and Willow Gentian, Masterwort and Yellow-rattle, Eyebright and Purple Lettuce, among many others.

In perfect weather and a landscape relatively unscathed by agricultural poisons, insects abounded. Butterflies included several Fritillaries, Marbled White and Sooty Copper, among a whole host of other moths, bees, flies, beetles and bugs.

The timing of our trip was deliberate, to visit when the snow cover was the least and hopefully find some of the botanical specialities at high altitude. Highest of all, Jungfraujoch – ‘the Top of Europe’ – at 3454m was almost above vegetation, though the few areas clear of snow had tussocks of hardy flowering grasses. And very little else, aside from begging Alpine Choughs and magnificent views, at least when the clouds parted. Magnificent, albeit worrying to learn that the glaciers are only a shadow of their former selves, melting as a result of climate breakdown.

500m lower down, the summit of the Schilthorn was substantially snow-free, and high alpine flowers were on show, their relatively large flowers (to attract the limited number of pollinators at those altitudes) springing from cushions and mats of rock-hugging foliage.

Again the food-beggars were out, here a Snow Finch, but sadly no Ibex to be seen, although a group of Chamois as we headed back down was some compensation.

The Männlichen cable car from Wengen took us to 2300m, a ridge-top with Snow and Field Gentians, Monkshoods and Grass-of-Parnassus. A Stoat flushed a fledgling Alpine Accentor, and it was here we saw our only Golden Eagle: this part of the Alps is sadly lacking in large predators and vultures.

Of course, plants on extensive mountains can be difficult (or dangerous) to search out, so the Alpine botanic garden of Schynige Platte was a final day treat, at the top of an incredibly scenic cog railway, slow and expensive but absolutely worth it. Surely this is the most picturesque botanic garden in the world, with an unsurpassed collection of Swiss native alpine flowers.

As always, the flowers were only a part of the natural festival: Slender Scotch Burnet, Damon Blue, Dusky Grizzled Skipper and Painted Ladies were visiting the blooms, and Common and Green Mountain Grasshoppers and Wartbiters abounded in the flower beds. Presumed migrant Tree Pipits passed overhead, the wader-like piping of Alpine Marmots drifted from the more distant rocky slopes.

All the above, and much, much more. As always, a blog like this can only touch upon the absolute highlights of a week, and then only those that fit easily into the overall narrative. But there was so much more: take the the weeping brackets of Fomitopsis pinicola (a phenomenon known as guttation)…

…on a similar theme, a Noon-fly blowing bubbles…

…and on one memorable morning, swarms of unidentified insects in scintillating masses appended to seemingly every tree top…

…the awesome power of the Trummelbach Falls, both over and underground, but impossible to fully capture visually…

…and simply stunning scenery in every direction. And while expensive, as expected, it didn’t cost the Earth too much.