Hilary Seabrook - writer, podcaster, musician

 My travel-obsessed parents have been longing to get away from their flat and last week I drove them around France, Belgium and Germany.     All in all, it was a pleasant experience, although exhausting.     The constant taking on and off of sun glasses and face masks was annoying, but both were necessary. Mum and Dad at the Menin Gate, Ypres Thew new (replacement) lions guarding the Menin Gate Trier The Mosel valley, through Western Germany, skirting the Luxembourg border The view was the best thing about the hotel in Koblenz Germany does castles better than anyone else Koblenz's Deutsches Eck memorial to a unified Germany Taking me back to Berlin 1990 - pieces of the wall as a memorial in Koblenz

The grave of Wilfred Owen, Ors. My ambition for October this year was to visit the battlefields of Belgium and northern France. I wanted to take my mother and father to visit the graves of my Great Uncle Tom Robinson, Great Great Uncle Fred Robinson and the poet Wilfred Owen. In the end, it was a very moving experience, that included visits to cemeteries, the Menin Gate, Ypres' new In Flanders Fields museum and a set of trenches which are almost as if they were vacated yesterday. The whole trip was eerie and rewarding and I was pleased to be able to help my parents pay their respects, too. A wet and muddy visit to trenches just outside Ypres. Mum and Dad at the graveside of my Great Uncle Tom.