Catching up

Hmm, it has been a while, hasn't it? Well...I spent a good two weeks in mid-August in England. Well, two weeks minus a weekend, but that and some got eaten by jet lag anyway. :-) I can hear the voices asking now, "How was it?"

It was fabulous. Essentially me and about 17 other people (plus a pretty darn patient two-year-old) spent four days bouncing around London doing whatever made our cookie crumble, then spent the rest of the trip driving around the southwest of England with our fabulous driver-and-tourbus-company-owner Roger and his wife Sonja (apologies if I'm misspelling that, btw). I roomed with Cara, a goalie friend of mine whom I'd roomed with before over a couple of tournament weekends, so we at least knew that we could put up with each other, knew we both didn't snore, etc.! She was nice enough to rattle around London with me, meeting up with two sets of relatives (Susan & Peter for Afternoon Tea at the Savoy, and Andrew, Joce, Asha, Maya and Ellie at the tube station down the street) in exchange for a beeline to see the Horse Guards (Cara = horse nut) and Churchill's War Museum when the opportunity presented itself. :-) We took a trip around the Eye, had a posh lunch in St. James's Park, saw the big building at the other end (Buckingham Palace), visited Kew Gardens, spent most of a day in and around the Tower of London on a special tour (many thanks to Yeoman Warder Tom Trent and his gracious and patient wife Andrea) with a side trip across the Tower Bridge to tasty lunch at a recommended pub.

After our four days in London, we packed up our luggage (minus a bunch of stuff for the relatives, but plus 1100 teabags(!) ordered by Elizabeth, various family gifts going back in the other direction, and of course souvenirs), hopped onto our trusty -- and, by the way, brand spankin' new -- Eassons Bus pictured above, and started our drive. We would drive 1-2 hours at a time, kept amused by Roger's periodic notes of interest, stop someplace (often a pub -- most of our group were avid pub fans, a concept whose alcoholic aspect was unfortunately lost given the coke-please tastes of Cara and I) for lunch or touristing (hey, look -- more old rocks and gift shops! Okay, while we did joke about that, we didn't mean it. Honest!), and then troupe back to our hotel for our included dinner. We'd usually stay at a given hotel for 2-3 days at a time; it was always nice to just get up, dress, have breakfast (also included), grab our day-tourist gear, and leave; having to PACK somewhere in there was not nearly as fun, particularly as figuring out where to put our growing pile of souvenirs & gifts was becoming a daily source of amusement; my big extra REI duffel bag, brought for the purpose, was broken out on something like day 2 as auxiliary storage, and more than earned its keep! But...hey, what can I say, I am now well stocked for fall birthdays and Christmas. Talk about getting my shopping done early.

We went to Salisbury (with its famous slightly-tilted cathedral of that name, also housing one of the three surviving copies of the Magna Carta), Wells ("the biggest town in England"), a big pile of rocks (pictured to the left), the New Forest (Cara: Ponies!!), Exmoor (More ponies :-) and...green, blue and red sheep. Bus-boredom rumor has it that the green ones are left-handed.) Also the Cheddar Gorge -- yes, the area that gave its name to the cheese, and yes, I had some. A lady in our group even bought some. But given that there were no refrigerators in our rooms and we still had several days to go -- AND we can't bring cheese back with us to the states, and I didn't see her passing it out, I wonder now what happened to it??? ;-) What else...oh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's grave (behind a small church in a small town), Bath, where we spent a good number of hours looking at the cathedral (there was almost ALWAYS a cathedral) , finding the local National Trust store, listening to street musicians, taking a photo of the occasional interesting motorcycle for the absent-due-to-work-but-really-wishes-he-were-here Jerry, and generally walking around and taking photos and running into other members of our group like we'd been doing all week. After a while, the obvious theme was "If you get bored, head for the best pub; there will probably already be others of us there having a pint!"

We had mute swans imperiously demand tribute from a river filled with boats 40' long but only 7' wide, visited a glassblower who was famous for his beautiful sky-blue glass, shared a 'swift pint' around a fireplace at 'The Fleece' Inn dated 1670, and spent time wandering around an enormous garden estate where almost no plants are labeled because it had been owned by a man who gardened only for himself. We saw walls of stone with nothing holding one upon the next but skill and gravity (see pic -- that's Cara), had bats in our belfry (well, one in our hotel hallway, anyway), and visited an award-winning bathroom. Many grins, many miles, several hundred photos, and a wonderful time. There, now aren't you glad you asked? :-)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30523746@N00/sets/811578/

(Note: Due to bandwidth constraints, it'll be a while before I have 'em all up on Flickr. Be patient!)