Charles Abbot left London on 25 September for Paris, where he had conversations with the Earl of Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington. He left on 12 October for Brussels and having spent ten days in Belgium returned to his estate at Kidbrooke on 27 October. Notes of the stages on the various routes are written inside the original covers (now folios i verso and ii). The journal was written in a notebook which he later had bound in hard covers, the binder's blanks watermarked 1822.