4 days left in the UK

Wednesday 22 May

P.S. I have been advised to avoid the "MF" abbreviation as it could be mis-interpreted ....

Having a relaxed start to the day. We went early to the car park down the road to feed more coins into the meter and wandered back past the "busgate" which we drove through illegally (although not deliberately) yesterday and is manned by CCTV & for which we are sure we'll be fined. Still, as I said to My Friend, as long as we don't kill anyone, then we just 'wear' these things. [Postscript: MF was fined £66 TWICE!! ].

Will depart Bath in about an hour and drive to Stonehenge enroute back to Oxford. Weather grey and cold, again!

.............

We ended up 'ticking a few boxes' today: went to Stonehenge which we expected to find underwhelming but wasn't.

We stopped for lunch at The Antelope Inn at Upavon - picked at random as we drove down narrow country roads, the little car dwarfed by the hedgerows on either side. The publican was quite a character (aren't they all?) and he suggested we go to Avebury. 

Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles & contains the largest stone circle in Europe.

The nice surprise was that Avebury Manor is the one that was featured on the 2012 BBC series entitled The Manor Reborn starring Penelope Keith which we watched with my mother when she stayed with us at Xmas & which we found quite fascinating; in this series, The Manor underwent a major transformation. Unfortunately it was closed today but it looked lovely from the outside especially as the sun had come out.

We then returned to the Cotswolds, specifically to Lower & Upper Slaughter: two picture-postcard villages, bathed in afternoon sunshine making everything even more attractive.

By now it was almost 6 p.m. We still had to drive to Oxford and then to Northmoor where we are staying the next 4 nights. 

We dropped Kathryn and Regis off and fortunately we had Kathryn's GPS but the navigation was still difficult, meandering along narrow country lanes to Rectory Farm. 

We passed a bunch of cyclists enroute looking very serious. There were marshalls on some corners; and the cyclists were wearing helmets (hardly anyone does here). So it must have been an event.

Forecast is for some rain tomorrow; and Friday is forecast to be worse: freezing in fact (max. for the day 9 deg C)!!!!! In fact, the Giro d'Italia news is:

"Snow, rain and cold conditions are forecast for the rest of the week in northern Italy, with a cold front expected to dump snow on the Dolomites and force race organisers to cut several of the legendary climbs scheduled for Friday and Saturday".

Thursday 23 May

We had another 35-year reunion today. Trevor & Barbara from York, with whom we caught up at Birdlip in the Cotswolds, were on the same overland bus trip in 1978 we did with Janet & Neville.

We are meeting up with Janet & Neville today at Windsor.

We drove down in the morning and spent a few hours touring Windsor Castle, before meeting up with them for High Tea - very English! The Castle was great, especially the State Rooms.

Windsor Castle (built by William the Conqueror in the decade after 1066) is an official residence of the Queen and the largest occupied castle in the world. A Royal home and fortress for over 900 years, the Castle remains a working palace today. The Queen uses the Castle both as a private home, where she usually spends the weekend, and as a Royal residence at which she undertakes certain formal duties.

The weather (oh, surprise! surprise!) was grey and miserable today, with showers. So it was nice to walk the grounds without the rain and then cheerfully look outside at the rain and the poor sentry getting wet whilst we were inside in the comfort of the magnificent Reception Room, St George's Hall, the Waterloo Room and the Grand Vestibule. The Chapel was really lovely and a simple stone slab holds the tombs of Henry VIII, Charles I (beheaded by Cromwell's forces, after the English Civil War) and Jane Seymour (Henry VIII's third wife).

It was lovely to catch up with Nev and Janet. Janet was one of the 4 American girls who had been teaching in Australia prior to joining the trip in Kathmandu. Janet had met Nev who went through Uni with My Friend - how amazing is that! AND they both worked in Occupational Health and Safety!

We have been sharing news through Xmas cards and letters for years so it wasn't too difficult to pick up the threads of lives lived many miles/kms apart. And Janet has an aunt who lives in the same suburb of Chicago where Regis grew up (in Naperville!); and her grandparents lived there. Small world!!

It was just a lovely afternoon.

Friday 24 May

Well, guess what? Another cold, miserable day!! In fact today was just about the WORST we've had since we arrived in the UK. I don't know where the wind was coming from, but it was icy. And it was wet. And we got chilled to the bone.

We had a Plan A, B, C - and in fact, a Plan D. We managed some of these but definitely did NOT do Plan A: a walk along the Thames. It was bitter!

So we started off by driving to Iffley and having coffee in a cute cafe. We then managed (somewhat miraculously) to find a parking spot in central Oxford - no mean feat I can tell you in a city that has a Park-&-Ride scheme to discourage driving; we spent an entertaining couple of hours in the Pitt Rivers Museum which cares for the University of Oxford's collection of anthropology and world archaeology; the shrunken heads were pretty interesting...

Our next visit was to Christ Church, one of the largest colleges of the University of Oxford. It has produced 13 British prime ministers and has been used as the setting for parts of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, as well as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and, more recently, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series: the Great Hall was replicated in the film studios to create Hogwart's Hall.

Mid-afternoon, we finally succumbed to the cold and drove out to Northmoor where we are staying (about 20 kms west of Oxford). Enroute, we ended up at the Rose Revisited right next to the Thames where we had a lovely meal.

The sun even came out between rain squalls to offer some lovely photo opportunities.

Saturday 25 May

The sun came out! Yay! We went for a quick walk before breakfast around the fields of Northmoor village. Kathryn and Regis (who'd had the car overnight) picked us up and we drove to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace, to see a production of As You Like It which was excellent.

Stratford is very pretty and afterwards we walked around admiring the buildings in the afternoon sunshine and then had a wine and a ploughman's platter at a local pub.

On the way back to Oxford, we called into Blenheim Castle (as you do) - birthplace of Winston Churchill. It is set in the most beautiful grounds (landscaped by Capability Brown in the 18th century) and it would have been lovely to spend more time there. But the day was getting on (it was already about 6 p.m.) and we had to get back to pack as we have an early start in the morning.

It is our last day in the UK today as tomorrow we leave on the Eurostar for Europe. It was very sad saying goodbye to Kathryn and Regis. She now has until the end of September to write up her dissertation and Regis leaves Nairobi at the end of June to take up a new posting in Panama.