View from atop the Belfries. If you've not watched In Bruges this scene is one of my all-time favs. "Well you lot ain't going up there.

Love the range and complexity of Belgium beers.

Do you not know who we areeeee? (don't give me the option to choose Lord or Lady when booking tickets. It's well worth the hassle at customs.)

A poem (unathorised by Lord Peterson).

We had waffles and frites and Flemish stew

We had cheese and beers and hot chocolate too

We had potatoes and coffee and apple strudel

We love Bruges

Lord Damian: "what does the 'Bruges' at the end rhyme with?"

Lady Sally: "it's a poem that doesn't all have to rhyme. It ends with 'We. Love. Bruges'; it's the final kaboom".

That beer tasting was really good.

He doesn't understand art.

We've just got back from the last couple of days down in Collingham with Sal's family. A proper northern hemisphere Christmas with lots of indoor food, games and chatter interspersed with the occasional walk to clear the cobwebs.

One of the games we played that we're going to have to import to NZ is a murder game where each person is given the name of another person, a location in the house or nearby and the name of a common object. The goal is to give your victim that object in that location to murder them. Once murdered, the victim is out of the game and passes on the details of their assignment to their murderer. Person with the most murders wins. Best played over the space of a few days.

Iceland 10am -9°

It's super cold. Sal and I were just in an outdoor hot tub and I grew icicles in my beard whilst sitting there.

This pic is from a geyser area where the steam blows in a constant direction which causes this buildup of ice on the nearby branches.

The final plunge of the Gullfoss. The water is trying to flow but simultaneously freezing on every rock it touches.

We're staying in a place called Hella which is in the south of Iceland and today we drove further along to the township of Vik. Most places are covered in snow and there aren't many roads other than the main ring road around the island that we can drive on. On the road to Vik there are mountains close to the sea and here the temperature goes from -11° to a balmy -1° or so.

The coastline here is rugged and cold.

Nice rock formations. Hálsanefshellir Cave.

Snowing on the beach.

After a very long trek across a volcanic plain we came across a plane of another kind.

Volcanic plain

This blow hole turns water into shards of ice that blunderbuss your face.

The sun rises here at 11:20 and sets at 15:40. There's a long transition though as the sun sneaks along below the horizon on an angle. Lots of shots here come out kind of gloomy because it's either half-night or the sun is very low. This is Skógafoss at 16:00. Sally likes waterfalls and I like icicles so we're both pretty happy here.

Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavik designed by Guðjón Samúelsson to look like a combination of basalt columns and a geyser.