2022_07 England and Wales – Lynn's Travel Adventures

Back in London

We left our adorable bungalow in Clacton on Sea for the little over 2-hour drive back to Heathrow. The first stop was the Hilton to unload the luggage then it was on to Europcar. We put about 1400 miles on the car in 3 weeks. Other than never being able to figure out how to use cruise control, it was a great car for us.

Then we headed to the Piccadilly underground line for the trip back to London for our visit to the British Museum. We could have taken the Heathrow express and, after connecting with the brand new Elizabeth line, been at the museum in about 40 minutes each way. But, round trip, it would have set us back about $120 ($25 pp each way on the express train). We paid $14 RT on the Piccadilly line and it too just about an hour each way. It was worth the extra 40 minutes to save $100.

The British Museum is free (as are many of London’s museums) so it was very crowded. We were there only 90 minutes so we saw only a small fraction of what the museum has to offer but we enjoyed what we saw.

Sunday at Sutton Hoo we saw the replica of the King’s masks. This is the original. It’s in great shape considering it’s about 1500 years old.

Ring of King Richard I (Richard the Lionhearted).

The Lycurgus Cup. It’s from the late Roman period (about 300 AD) and is very rare because it has small amounts of silver and gold that turn the glass from opaque green to translucent red when light is shown through it.

These painted jugs are from central Iran circa 10th-9th century BC. Do the math on that. These babies are about 3,000 years old.

This dude is the Gebelein Man. He was named after the area in Egypt where he was buried around 3500 BC…over 4500 years ago.

After leaving the museum, we headed to Trafalgar Square.

National Gallery. We didn’t feel up to another museum so we’ll catch this next time.

Our last stop was a quick peek in St. Martin in the Fields church just off the square. The earliest reference to this church was 1222. Unlike most of the churches/cathedrals we’ve seen in the UK, this one is a neoclassical design rather than gothic.

The inside was relatively simple but still very beautiful.

Tomorrow we begin the 2nd leg of our UK adventure when we head to Scotland. I’m very excited.

Ninety Minutes on the Beach

OK. So the title of this post says it all. Other than go to the driving range and whack around of few balls, all we did today was have our lunch at the beach. It was wonderful! We’ve been here 4 weeks yesterday and this was the first day that we’d done virtually nothing.

Clacton Pier was just like Brighton Pier only much smaller but it was voted Best Pier in 2020. Yea them!

Beach was mostly sandy but we didn’t go to the water. Peter has been in the Channel 3 times already, two on the English side and one on the French side in 2018, so he didn’t feel the need.

A little bit of home. This was a kiddie car ride of some sort.

Even though the pier was smaller than Brighton Beach, there were more rides on this one. Of course, we didn’t go on any of them but the kids looked like they were having fun.

After ice cream we headed back to the car but it was a very long walk and Peter got a bit tired. So, he waited on a park bench while I got the car and picked him up. And, my friends, was our day. I did a load of laundry when we got home and took a short nap. That was it. It was a wonderful day!

Tomorrow we head to the Hilton at Heathrow where we will spend the night. After dropping off luggage we’ll take the car back to Europcar and then head into London for the day. Peter didn’t get see the British Museum or 10 Downing Street (home of the Prime Minister; can’t go inside but you can see the address) so I think we might do that. We fly out of Heathrow to Edinburgh on Wednesday. For the first time in 6 years I get to add a new country to my list. This will be #57. Can’t wait!

Sutton Hoo

Today we went back to the early medieval (6th to 7th centuries) times. In 1938, amateur archeologist Basil Brown discovered an ancient Anglo-Saxon burial ship on Edith Pretty’s land. Excavations continued on and off until the early 1990s finding 18 burial mounds. Mrs. Perry donated all the treasure found on her land. In 2000, when excavating for the Visitor Center, they found many more burial mounds.

Mound 2 is the most important as this is where Basil Brown found the large burial ship. It has since been determined that it was probably the burial ship for the East Anglian King Raedwald. This is when England was made up of a bunch of kingdoms so every region had its own king.

The metal is where they found the bow of the ship.

The rope indicates where they found the body surrounded by the treasures buried with him.

One of the 10 bowls buried with the King.

Metal model of King Raewald’s burial ship.

Several of the few pieces of metal found in the ship. These were a part of the King’s shield.

Replica of the mask found in Raewald’s grave.

Gold pieces of his shield. The red shield is a replica to show how it would have looked.

They also found the grave of a 25-year old warrior. He had been laid out with his sword and purse in a tree-trunk coffin. Here are some of the things found with him.

Some of the jeweled pieces of his shield.

The early Anglo-Saxons decorated a lot of their things with garnet (my birthstone) as it was fairly common stone as it was brought with traders from what is now the Czech Republic, India and Sri Lanka.

They found relics in the other burial sites. One was a Byzantine bucket. The first photo is a replica to show what it would have looked like. The second photo is what remains today.

We were home early (2:30) which was great. We’ve been running around a lot so it’s been fun to have a lazy late afternoon. Tomorrow I think we’re going to go to a local beach and just chill for the day. It will be wonderful.

Airplanes and a Manor House

We only had a 17-minute drive from the hotel to our first stop – Imperial War Museum Duxford. This museum is primarily an air museum and is gigantic, covering most of what used to be an RAF base (both WWI and WWII). Because it was more than a mile from hanger 1 to the final hangar (one way), we only saw about 1/2 of the exhibits. But, after a while all the planes look the same, even to Peter, so we don’t think we missed anything.

Like any other air museum we’ve been to, planes are suspended from the ceiling as well as displayed on the ground.

This was the 2nd prototype of the Concord. We were supposed to be able to go inside but the one guy who had the one key apparently called in sick or got lost on his way to work so we never got to go into the plane.

The inside of one of the planes that actually flew in the Berlin Airlift from June 48 to May 49 when the Soviets tried to starve out West Berlin.

Cockpit of the plane; it was so cramped it’s hard to imagine there was room to move.

A “fake” Memphis Belle. The Memphis Belle is a B17 bomber used in WWII. It was one of the first bombers to complete the required 25 bombing runs. Most bombers didn’t come close to making 25 runs and many of the crew who were lost on those planes are listed on the wall of the missing in the Cambridge American Military Cemetery we saw yesterday. The original Memphis Belle was on the Naval Hospital Millington TN grounds when I was stationed there, but has since be refurbished and moved to Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton. The plane we saw today was used in a 1994 documentary film about the crew.

This was the motor from the plane flown by the Red Baron (no, not Snoopy; Manfred von Richthofen). In those planes, the propeller would have attached to the piece of metal sticking out from the front of the motor.

German V1 flying bombs used in the Battle of Britain. They’re more widely known by their nickname….the Doodlebug. It got that name because of the distinct sound it made as it came in.

One of the most famous planes in WWII, the British fighter Spitfire. They were offering 30-minute rides for the low price of 2,995 pounds (about $3700). Not surprisingly, we took a pass.

The last hangar we visited (there was still one more but it was too far to walk) was the American Hangar filled with U.S. planes. We’ve seen so many of those before that we only did a quick walkthrough.

There was a small exhibit dedicated to 9/11 and this was a piece of metal from one of the towers.

B17 with the side markings of how many bombs it dropped.

From the American Hangar, we made the long trek back to the Visitor Center where our car was parked. We ate our ham/cheese sandwiches in the car and drove another 20 minutes to Audley End House. It turns out they had picnic tables so we could have had our lunch there but who knew??

Audley End House was originally a monastery which was dissolved and granted to Lord Chancellor (very high ranking in government) Sir Robert Audley by Henry VIII. The original house was demolished and this grand manor was built.

We weren’t able to take pictures inside the manor

Image I found online of the Grand Hall. It’s hard to tell from this pic, but the carving on the entry wall was amazing.

Found this on VRBO; can we rent this?? That would be cool.

It is a gorgeous house now owned by the 11th Baron of Braybrooke. The title was created in 1788 so it’s fairly old. The 10th Baron died after having had 8 children…all of them girls!! Luckily for the Baroness, she wasn’t married to Henry VIII or it could have gone very badly for her. Because of the British male preference primogeniture, none of the girls could inherit the title so they had to search for a male. They found one in the Baron’s 3rd cousin twice removed. He is the great-great-great grandson of the 3rd son of the second Baron. This sounds like my family….very few boys. The 11th Baron’s only child is a boy but is only 7 years old. So, if something happens to him before he has kids, next up for the title is the 78 year old uncle of the current Baron. Hopefully he has boys because if everyone dies before another male heir is born, they have to go searching for someone else. Who knows how far they’ll have to go to find one.

Anyway, back to the house. Here are a few pics of the formal gardens and the back of the manor.

We had almost a 90-minute drive to our new Airbnb flat in Clacton-on-Sea but it was a pretty easy trip. We in an adorable cottage with 2 bedrooms and a nice backyard. I took a chance on this one as it is new on Airbnb with only one review, which could have been written by the host’s mother. But, it perfect so we’re pleased to be here for our last few nights in southern England.

Cambridge

We lost our internet connection last night so I wasn’t able to finish this post. But, it’s 5am and it’s back so here it is.

Last night (Thursday) after I posted the blog, we watched The Imitation Game, the story of Alan Turing and his group at Bletchley Park developing the Bombe. While the interiors were shot at a studio, many of the exterior shots were taken at Bletchley Park; we saw several shots of the mansion. It was cool to hear them talk about the different places (e.g. Hut 6) because now I know what happened at Hut 6. It’s a good movie if you ever get a chance to watch it.

Today started with a visit to the Cambridge American Military Cemetery. There are over 3800 military personnel and 30 civilians buried there. There would have been a lot more without the work done by the team at Bletchley Park as it is estimated that their intelligence shortened the war by at least 2 years. In addition to the graves, there is a wall listing the names of personnel whose remains were never found.

The cemetery is primarily for people killed in the campaign of the North Atlantic (over 3000 ships were sunk by the German U-Boats) or the air campaign over Germany.

Reflecting pool leading to the Chapel. The wall of remembrance for missing personnel is to the right.

The grounds were just beautiful. It was so peaceful there.

One of the sculptures along the wall of the missing. It’s hard to see in the photo, but all the names were inscribed into the wall.

One famous names on the wall of the missing is President Kennedy’s older brother, Joe Jr.

Kennedy’s name is about half way down the list.

Here’s another name you should recognize. Big band leader Glenn Miller. They made a good movie about him too….The Glenn Miller Story with James Stewart in the title role.

Raise your hand if you knew his first name was Alton. I didn’t.

We spent over an hour in the Visitor Center of the cemetery. It was very well done with lots of stuff for Peter to read.

After leaving the cemetery, we headed into the town of Cambridge but luckily found a park and ride about 10 minutes outside of town. It only cost 6 pounds round trip on the bus and parking was free. That saved me the hassle of driving into town and trying to find someplace to park. It was perfect!

The Round Church was on the corner as we got off the bus. We didn’t go inside but I thought the building was cool.

One of the first things we did was go punting on the River Cam. Punting is to Cambridge as a gondola is to Venice. It was a 45-minute trip down the river and it was absolutely lovely.

Our punter’s name was Josh. He’s a med student at the University of Brighton.

You could rent your own boat and punt yourself down the river. That’s what this guy is trying to do. While we were waiting for our ride, someone asked us if we wanted to share his boat and help him go down the river. We had already paid for our ticket to take the tour so we politely declined. We saw him later on the river. He was sitting in the boat while the young guy he found was “rowing” the boat.

Mechanical Bridge. It’s made of wood but held together with steel.

Cambridge is most known for its university, which was founded in 1209 and granted a Royal Charter by Henry III in 1231. One of the most famous colleges is Trinity College founded in 1546 by Henry VIII. Some of the more famous names to have graduated from Trinity College are: King Edward VII, King George IV, Prince Charles, Isaac Newton, as well as poets Lord Byron and Lord Tennyson.

BTW. The individual colleges (there are 31 colleges in Cambridge) have nothing to do with their field of study. While some colleges tend to attract students in a particular field, the college is just where students have their accommodations and meals. Each college has it’s own library and chapel (a privately owned church). Alan Turing is a graduate of King’s College. He was the 2nd youngest fellow to ever teach there at age 27. Isaac Newton was the youngest at age 24.

We visited the famous King’s College Chapel which is the 2nd largest chapel in the world after the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City.

These are the windows you can see at the front of the church.

Looking into the Chapel from the Nave. It had a gorgeous carved fan ceiling. We saw another fan ceiling but I can’t remember which Cathedral it was in. They’re all starting to blur together. The organ pipes were amazing.

Close up of one of the many carvings in the Quire.

One of the beautiful side windows. Now that I know how hard, and time consuming, stained glass is, these windows are even more amazing.

We took a short walk by the river where Peter walked up to one of the bridges.

Selfie from the same bridge. It had gotten a bit windy as you can tell from the hair blowing in my face.

On our way back to the bus, we took a few pics of King John’s College. We could have paid to go in and visit the chapel, but we were starting to get a little tired, so we settled for a few pics from the outside.

St. John’s College Chapel from the side.

After a short ride to the hotel, we settled in for the night. We’re at a Holiday Inn just outside of town. Hilton has a property but it’s in town center and was over $300/night. The Airbnb flats were also crazy expensive so our backup was this place. Other than a spotty internet connection it’s a nice place.

Saturday we’re headed to the Essex coast for our last 3 nights before heading back to London and our flight for Edinburgh. Have a great evening everyone.

Bletchley Park – Home of the Code Breakers

This one will be short and sweet as we only had one stop today. We left castles and palaces behind and moved back to WWII and the famous Bletchley Park campus. This was where the code breakers of the war did their work. If you saw the movie, The Imitation Game, this is where the real action took place.

As soon as the war started, England set up the campus at a rundown estate home (built in 1883) here in Milton Keynes. The group started with only about 50 people but by the wars end, there were over 7,000 working around the clock on breaking codes and ciphers. What’s the difference? A code is saying “Bring bread home for dinner” but what you really mean is, “The plane will land at midnight.” A cipher is saying, “sxyrl ekxot cmsit”, when you mean “The plane will land at midnight.”

Mansion house of Sir Herbert Leon that was purchased for the code breaking campus.

There is a small, but pretty, lake on the property where workers would relax.

Every room in the mansion was used either for administration or code breaking. Eventually they ran out of room in the mansion and built additional buildings, or huts, for additional space.

One of the most famous story about breaking ciphers is the story of the enigma machine. It was used extensively by the Nazis and was considered so secure it was used to send Top Secret messages. What Germany didn’t know is that Polish mathematicians had broken Enigma before the war even started. They made their way to England where they helped decipher messages.

Enigma Machine. The wires on the bottom were reset every day so that when one letter was hit on the keyboard, a different letter would appear based on the configuration of the wires.

We saw entire books of this type of messaging that was deciphered.

The coolest building was Hut 11/11a. This is where Alan Turing did his work with Bombe. This story is what the movie was about. Of course, it was a drama not a documentary so they didn’t get everything exactly right but it told the basic story.

Model of the Bombe developed by Alan Turing who is considered to be the Father of Computers.

The reason the Bombe was so important is that it used mathematics to quickly determine how the wires on the Enigma was set which made deciphering messages much easier and faster.

You know how Peter loves to read every word on every card but even he got tired of it, especially since a lot of it was a technical discussion about how the work was done. So we were only there about 2 hours and left.

After finding a Mail Boxes Etc. to box and ship stuff home, we headed to the Peace Pagoda Park to enjoy our lunch in the beautiful sunshine. Well, we got there, found parking, paid for parking and realized we left lunch at home. OOPS. We were going to walk to the lake and see that Peace Pagoda anyway, but it was a longer walk than we thought and, since we didn’t have lunch, we decided to bail.

So, we ended up at Bella Italia (next door to TGI Fridays) and had late lunch there. We were planning on eating dinner there but this is even better as we’ll have time to digest before bedtime.

Peter once again had noodle-less lasagna. Cynthia, you really have to talk with the chefs here.

And I had spaghetti carbonara. Not as good as in Italy, but then what it. It was still tasty though.

We’ll hit the road again tomorrow and head for Cambridge where we’ll spend the day before heading to our last stop on this part of our trip. Have a great day everyone.

Blenheim Palace and Broughton Castle

What, you might ask, is the difference between a castle and a palace? Well….the difference is the main purpose of the building. The main purpose of a castle is defense and have moats, keeps, cannons, etc. A palace, on the other hand, was meant to show of incredible wealth so they are filled with priceless works of art, tapestries, rugs, silver, gold, etc.

The palace we saw today certainly does a good job of showing off wealth. We visited Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of Winston Churchill. The 10,000 acres of land was given to the 1st Duke of Marlborough as a reward for his efforts in the War of Spanish Succession and the 1704 Battle of Blenheim. He started construction in 1705 and 25 years later, the palace as it stands today, was finished. It is a remarkable palace and has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The main entrance to the Palace is through the columns in the middle of the photo.

The present titleholder, the 12th Duke of Marlborough, lives in apartments in this corner of the Palace. Apparently there are tours of the private apartments but they weren’t offered today.

The rooms in the Palace were unbelievable. Here are some of my favorites.

It should as no surprise that this room is the Red Drawing Room.

Can you guess the name of this room? If you said, The Green Drawing Room, you win a prize. They were really creative with their room names. I love the wrap around tapestry on the far wall. I don’t think I’d ever seen a tapestry like that before. There were a couple of them in this Palace.

This gorgeous organ was at one end of the Long Library was built in 1891.

This is someone’s office but I don’t remember whose.

The main dining room. The family still has large dinner parties in this room.

Queen Anne is the monarch who gifted the land to John Churchill who became the 1st Duke of Marlborough. This was at the other end of the Long Library, the opposite side of the room from the organ.

In the basement, there was a large exhibition about the family’s most famous member…Winston Churchill.

How weird that someone thought to save his hair.

A diamond encrusted green malachite cigar box from the people of Belgian Congo to Winston. Doesn’t everyone need a diamond encrusted cigar case. It was huge and gorgeous.

We took a tram tour of the gardens which was beautiful. It turned out to be a private tour as we were the only ones there so we got to stop wherever we wanted for photos.

Back of the palace. They’re getting ready for an auto show of some sort which explains the tents.

This bridge has 30 rooms in it. The family used to hold parties here.

Bridge with the Palace in the background. The farther we moved from the Palace, the bigger it looked.

We spent a very pleasant 3 hours touring the Palace and the grounds. Even though we’ve seen many palaces on this trip, it’s still hard to believe people actually live like this.

On our way to our next stop, we took a detour to St. Martin’s Church where the Churchill family has its burial site.

The burial site of Winston and his wife, Clementine.

The castle we saw today was Broughton Castle the home of the Fiennes family, the Barons Saye and Sele. While in the peerage, a baron is way down the food chain from a Duke (Churchill family). There are 5 ranks in the peerage. From highest to lowest rank they are: Duke, Marquess, Earl (or Count), Viscount and Baron. This highest ranking Duke is the Duke of Norfolk. Why is he the highest? Because this dukedom has the earliest date of creation…1397.

Anyway, I digress. Broughton Castle was originally a medieval fortress and has been home to the Fiennes family for over 500 years.

The family name, Fiennes, may sound familiar. The current Baron is 3rd cousins to actors Ralph (pronounced Rafe) and Joseph Fiennes.

Ralph Fiennes. Best known for playing Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies.

The Castle rooms were certainly not as large nor as ornate as those of Blenheim Palace but they were still very nice.

The main drawing room. This is where the current family entertains guests.

The current Baron is #23 and is 102 years old. He no longer lives in the castle but his son, and heir, does.

The regalia the current Baron and his wife wore to Queen Elizabeth II coronation in 1953.

We saw a lot of memorabilia here as well. It’s amazing the stuff people keep.

Invitation to the coronation of King George V, Elizabeth’s grandfather. George was first cousin to Tsar Nicholas of Russia. In fact, they look like twins. Unfortunately for Nicholas, George wouldn’t offer refuge to his cousin and his family and they were eventually executed by the communists.

Invitation to the wedding of Princess Mary, only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. She was the aunt of the current Queen.

This is the back of the castle from the gardens.

Formal garden from the roof of the Castle. Peter waited for me down below while I climbed the stairs to the top.

After leaving the Castle, we drove about an hour to Milton Keynes where we are staying at yet another Doubletree Hotel. This one has air conditioning, except we no longer need it. The temp maxed out at 65 and we switched to long pants to stay warm. Unfortunately, when we got to Blenheim Palace and realized how chilly it was (at that time only 58 degrees) the jackets and long sleeve shirts were buried beneath the backpacks in the trunk. We managed without them but got them out when we got to the hotel.

Tonight’s Doubletree is adjacent to the stadium of the local football team. When I say, adjacent, I mean it. Here’s the view from our room.

There is a row of seats directly outside our window. Luckily they don’t play until Saturday.

We walked a couple of blocks to TGI Friday’s for dinner. It was a ton of fun.

Who care’s what’s for dinner when you start with a Friday’s Long Island Iced Tea. Haven’t had one in years but it was as good as I remember.

Peter had ribs and I had a burger then we splurged on a dessert.

All ready to eat his S’mores Sunday. It was so sweet my teeth hurt just thinking about it. It was quite good though.

Tomorrow our day will be spent at Bletchley Park, the center of the codebreakers of WWII. According to the website, we could spend all day looking at the different exhibits. All I can say is….god, I hope not! I’ll let you know.

The Cotswolds

I didn’t get this posted last night because the internet connection at the Doubletree in Cheltenham is pretty awful and it was taking FOREVER to upload pictures. By the time that was done, it was after 11pm and I was too tired to actually write the post.

Anyway, we left Wales yesterday morning and headed straight for the Cotswolds, the fairytale region of England. The Cotswolds is very large covering a 40 mile by 90 mile area so we’re only seeing a tiny piece of it.

Here’s a YouTube video about the area if you’re interested. If not feel free to skip it.

Our first stop was Sudeley Castle, a medieval castle (construction started in 1443) that has quite a storied history. It was owned by two kings, Edward IV and Richard III. The latter is the hunchbacked King that was found buried in a car park in Leicester.

A model of what the castle originally looked like.

This part of the Castle is still in good shape.

Another view of the intact portion of the Castle.

This is the not so intact part of the Castle. This part dates to the Tudor times.

Henry VIII and his then wife Anne Boleyn visited in 1535 and Henry’s final wife Catherine Parr. After Henry died, Catherine secretly married Thomas Seymour who was the Baron of Sudeley. She died there after giving birth to a daughter and is buried in the Chapel. BTW. Thomas was executed for treason 6 months later as was his brother who had inherited the Castle. It then reverted to the crown.

Tomb of Catherine Parr. She’s the only former Queen to have been buried on private land. Her original grave site was lost to history until they found her in 1782. She was reburied in the Chapel at that time.

The Becket window depicts the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. It is believed that William, the brother of Baron de Sudeley, was one of the knights that murdered Becket. We saw the site of the murder when we were in Canterbury. It’s so cool to see how all of the places we’re seeing tie together in British history.

They have a large exhibition with artifacts of the people who lived there. Here are a couple from Catherine Parr.

Locket contains some of her hair. Henry VIII touched that hair….so very cool.

The two pieces of jewelry belonged to Catherine and the thing on the left is a piece of her tooth.

Queen Elizabeth I visited the Castle 3 times during her reign, once for a 3-day party held in her honor. That’s when the current owner landscaped the gardens There are 10 gardens covering 15 acres on the 1200 acre estate.

This was a cool greenery sculpture of QEI in what had been her bedroom during that house party. Unfortunately, that part of the Castle has been lost to time.

Moving on in time, during the English Civil War (1642-1651) the owner was a royalist and, at one time, housed part of the Royal army at the castle. King Charles I lived there for a time.

Waistcoat worn by King Charles I. As you may remember from earlier posts, this war did not end well for Charles.

In WWII, the Castle was used to store the artwork from the Tate Gallery.

The Castle is still the private residence of Lady Ashcombe and her kids. We were able to tour the residential part of the Castle, but like at Highclere, we weren’t allowed to take photos.

Part of the grounds is now a Peasantry, where they have many different types of rare pheasants.

All in all, we spent a very pleasant couple of hours at the Castle. Then we headed to Bourton-on-the-Water which is usually listed on the prettiest of the Cotswold villages. It really is beautiful but because of that distinction, it was crazy crowded. It has a population of less than 3400 people and there had to have been half that again in this 3 block long section of town.

The town center is on the River Windrush.

This is the fairy tale style buildings found all over the Cotswolds. Very pretty.

Looking down the river to one of the several footbridges across the river.

We had lunch at one of the pubs. Peter took a walk on the wild side and switched from a burger to BBQ chicken, which he said was delicious. I tried a steak and ale pie, which while good, does not beat my favorite pie from the Red Lion. The Brits have a thing about peas, either whole like this or mashed…eew. No surprise that these were still on my plate when I was done eating; I hate peas.

After lunch we headed a few miles up the road to Stow-on-the -Wold, another one of the prettier villages in the area. It was founded by Norman lords as a market town. One of the last battles of the Civil War was held about a mile north of here.

This wasn’t nearly as crowded but it also wasn’t nearly as pretty.

We visited St. Edwards Church while we were there.

There was some beautiful stained glass windows. This one was over the main door in the Nave.

We spent less than an hour at Stow before heading to Cheltenham for the Doubletree. Airbnb flats are much more expensive than the last time we were in Europe, which is why we’re spending more nights than usual in hotels.

Today, we’re heading off to Churchill’s ancestorial home, Blenheim Palace. Then maybe to one of the other Castles listed on the “Most Beautiful Castles in the Cotswolds” list. We’ll see how much time we have.

A Day of Castle Ruins

Good evening. The weather finally turned today with clouds and drizzly rain almost all day. The good news is that the temperature dropped about 25 degrees to the upper 60s so that was a welcome change. The sun came out later in the day but now it’s clouding up again a bit.

Today we drove a 45 mile loop to see 5 castles. All but the last were built during the time of the Norman invasion (1066) and most were in pretty bad shape. Our first stop was White Castle.

Next we moved on to Grosmont Castle but the gate was locked so we could only grab a picture from the road.

Skenfrith Castle was next.

The Keep which is the highest point in any Castle. It’s usually where the guards were stationed.

Then it was on to Monmouth Castle. This one was in the middle of Monmouth, the largest town in this area. Monmouth Castle is where Henry V was born in 1386. He’s the King that successfully ended the 100 Years War, which actually lasted 116 years. But I guess the 116 Years War didn’t have the same ring to it. Henry V is the king who spoke the famous line, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” that was used in the best TV program ever…Band of Brothers. BTW. For you BOB fans, the last surviving member of the 506 PIR died a few weeks ago. They’re all gone now.

We planned to have our picnic lunch at our last stop, Raglan Castle, and we did. Except it was still raining so we ate our sandwiches in the car. Raglan Castle was a late medieval castle. This is what it used to look like.

Here’s what it looks like now.

Not sure I want to know how this chair was used. Note the manacles on the arms of the chair.

After finishing at Raglan, we were less than 15 minutes from home so we had an early afternoon. Peter took a nap while I started packing up our stuff to head out tomorrow.

We decided to eat dinner out at a special place. Yesterday someone told us about Skirrid Inn which is only about 10 minutes from our cottage. It is one of several inns that claim to be the oldest inn in Wales, about 900 years old. Whether it is the oldest or not doesn’t matter. It was still very cool.

My dinner was a delicious Welsh beef lasagna. There were no noodles, though, so it was less a lasagna and more of a beef dish with cheese but it was still very good. I only ate about 2/3 of it plus a handful of chips. It was way too much food for me.

Tomorrow we’re heading back into England to spend the night in Cheltenham in the Cotswold region. It’s supposed to rain all week but if it’s like today it won’t be bad. It barely drizzled. Good night everyone and thanks for following our adventures.

Welsh Driving Adventure

So, if you read that taking a drive through Gospel Pass to Hay on Wye is one of the most scenic drives in Wales, wouldn’t you want to go? That’s what we thought too. OMG! I guess the author of that article has a different idea of scenic drive than we do.

This is what Wikipedia says the view from Gospel Pass should look like.

View from Gospel Pass according to Wikipedia.

This is what we saw.

It’s not terrible but it’s not what we expected. But what we really didn’t expect was the road to get there. The UK identifies their roads with letters….M (as in M4) is for motorway or our freeways. ‘A’ (A465) roads are at least two lanes but could be 4 lane divided roads. ‘B’ (B4069) road are country road but should be wide enough for cars to pass each other. The key word is “should”. In our experience, that isn’t always the case. Then there are roads without any letters or numbers which are maybe 1 1/2 lanes wide. Mind you the speed limit on these are still 60mph, but only the truly insane (or suicidal) would drive that fast because you never know when you’ll be face-to-face with another vehicle.

Then there is the road we took to Gospel Pass. It was barely a lane wide and unpaved. I think maybe Gracie (our GPS) led us astray. This road was supposed to take us all the way to Hay on Wye but it narrowed down to virtually nothing so I can’t believe we were on the right road. According to Wikipedia, Gospel Pass is the highest road in Wales. Well, we did climb a lot but…

Turning around was an adventure in itself. I could only move about 8 inches in each direction so it took quite a few tries before I was finally able to go back the way we came. In the meantime, Peter is having a stoke in the passenger seat thinking we were stuck there forever. Here’s a video we took just after we turned around. The road looks much wider than it actually is. At least I didn’t have to remember what side of the road to drive on, I just stayed in the middle.

We found these guys running down the road.

After going back the way we came, it took another 45 minutes to get to Hay on Wye. It’s a cute little town know for it’s book stores. Our first stop was the Hay Castle which was built in Norman times but now it’s a center for the arts. The lift was broken so we didn’t get off the ground floor.

We wandered around town for a while before having a bite to eat at a local pub.

Our lunch spot Kilverts Pub. Peter is hiding behind the plant on the left.

Peter had a BLT and I tried the meat pie. I was expecting something along the lines of the pie I had in London, but this was quite different. I wasn’t impressed when it came as it looked mushy, but it actually tasted very good.

Once we finished lunch, we headed back south to White Castle Vineyards for a tour and tasting. It’s fairly new, established in 2008. The owner, Rob, took us on a tour of the vineyard explaining about the types of grapes he grows.

16th century barn which is a part of the Vineyard.

View from the Vineyard. It was really beautiful.

The tour was very nice but incredibly hot, the mid-90s yet again. Luckily, the tour was followed up by a tasting. I only took a sip of each of the 4 wines as I still had to drive home.

You can’t really see them, but there are 8 glasses of wine on the table, 4 for each of us.

Luckily we were only 15 minutes from home and for the first time all day, I didn’t take any wrong turns so the drive back was uneventful. We’re here for one more day but the weather is going to turn…cloudy with a high in the low 20s (upper 60s; low 70s) and a possibility of rain. The cooler weather will be a nice respite from the 90 degree temps we’ve had over the last week.