We wanted to show the kids The Lake District, so we left relaxed Seahouses and headed west, noting the proximity of Hadrian’s Wall just to our north for much of the journey, and the change from fields and trees to more rugged moorland as we drew closer, finally negotiating some narrow country roads to drop down to Bowness. I had drunk one too many coffees that morning, judging by the number of times I had to stop for a ‘can’t wait’ toilet break, too; turns out there are few service stations on the A-roads across the top of the country, so it’s just as well I can do roadsides! ...

Time to show the kids the Great British Seaside. Seahouses is a small, out-of-the-way fishing village and seaside escape just north of Newcastle, that you get to from the A1 through miles of fields, and that has endless windswept beaches with fine sand, low rock formations, grassy dunes, and - away from the campsite, car parks and independent shops - few people. We got there via a quick lunch stopover at the Scotts Arms near to Wetherby Bridge, where we met up with fellow campers Roy and Lynda who were also joining us on the trip in their motorhome. From there it was past the Angel of the North (singularly unimpressive from our bit of the motorway, I have to say, mainly hidden behind trees), and cross-country to reach Seahouses and the breezy, spacious Seafield Park campsite right on the beach and just a minute’s walk from the little town centre. ...

Maya’s birthday weekend and we’d promised her something special, so we took her to Center Parcs in Woburn Forest with a gang of family in tow. We went via a phone shop to get a UK data SIM card for the router (onboard WiFi being essential for family unity, of course) and we also stopped for a really good pub lunch close to the site at The Woburn, a huge but tasteful hotel/bar/restaurant, right at the heart of its village. ...

Cruising the canals at the walking pace of a narrowboat feels like stepping back in time, into a parallel world that intertwines with the bustle of real life but manages to feel distant from it at the same time. We’ve hired a narrowboat for a week, from Worcester Marina. Setting off by road from Southampton just before midday and after seemingly continuous roadworks, diversions, questionable GPS routing decisions and traffic jams, we rolled in at 4pm, just within the boat handover deadline. Some of the country roads we’d followed to avoid the literally closed actual route were tight single file, and it was all rather hairy, including a memorable near miss with a speeding red BMW coming the other way. ...

Confession time: We willingly went straight to Burger King this time on our onward journey. Do not pass ‘go’, do not collect £200. At least we ate at lunchtime for once on a travel day. In brighter news, the countryside went from the plains of Spain to much more interesting gnarly rocks then mountains, tunnels, lots of meadows and woods, and before we knew it we were descending into our final night’s stay in Spain, at Laredo. ...

Setting off from Nazaré we realised that by the time we reached the nice restaurant Faye had found for lunch in Spain, it would actually be an hour later than our already tight timings, as we’d forgotten about the change of time zone. So we went on the old ‘Morse family lookout’ for somewhere suitable to eat, involving leaving the motorway at towns that time and beauty had forgotten, and calling into motorway service stations where ‘restaurants’ were literally closed/boarded up. We eventually ended up at the Burger King in Salamanca at 4.20pm. Poor. ...

Temperatures were all over the place on today’s journey from Porto Covo up the coast to Nazaré, a fishing town and resort between Lisbon and Porto. A warmish morning on the coast led to sweltering inland weather into the mid-30s by the time we sat down for a (very poor) service station lunch. Arriving later at Nazaré, we were a full 15 degrees cooler, with a sharp wind and overcast skies greeting us as we set up the van in the pine trees of Ohai Outdoor Resort. Kept it interesting! Driving in, one thing was certain: The place has changed quite a bit from the out-of-the way, sleepy fishing town I first trudged to on foot with my friends on a post-uni European backpacking trip 34 years ago. Funny, that… ...

The drive up from Luz to Porto Covo was through noticeably greener countryside than Spain, with gently rolling hills and much uncovered, outdoor agriculture - a huge contrast to, for instance, the greenhoused, barren landscape of Almería. We got to admire it over lunch at the roadside Altura Steakhouse & Bar in Aljezur, where our meals came with a huge array of extras like salad, dips, black bean and vegetable fries alongside the usual chips, and where we all also had homemade desserts, chosen by eye from the chiller cabinet. ...

First three nights of this year’s summer expedition. Drove down to Lagos from Gibraltar, stopping at a well-placed Burger King just off the motorway outside of Sevilla for a patio lunch with dog tucked under table, before crossing the Guadiana International Bridge into Portugal. Grabbed a data Sim for Portugal to power up the WiFi from a Meo store at a shopping centre we suddenly recognised from a previous trip, then pushed on to Espiche, a couple of kms past Lagos and the same inland from Praia da Luz. It’s a very posh campsite, Yelloh! Algarve Turiscampo, with spacious gravel pitches, lots of greenery, indoor and outdoor pools, spa, restaurant, shop, snack bar etc. ...

I went into this marathon expecting - if I was lucky - to run around 3 hours and 5 minutes. I’d trained for a 3-hour finish, but the build-up hadn’t gone perfectly. My gut feeling was that I was capable of running at about 4:20/km pace, not the 4:15/km required for a sub-3. The forecast didn’t help either: gusting to gale-force winds, especially over the final miles, made chasing a sub-3 feel unrealistic. ...