Jill and Karenlea had had a great time seeing South-East England and parts of Europe. We wanted to get out for one last look around, so on the Friday before they left we borrowed the little red car from Karen and drove up to the Cotswolds.
First stop was Shakespeare country - Stratford-Upon-Avon. This town is about 160km north of London and its main claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of Shakespeare. We wandered around some of the more famous sites, Shakespeare's House and Garden, Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare is buried, Anne Hathaway's Cottage, New Nash House and Garden. We had lunch in one of the many pubs and walked along the River Avon.
From here we drove in the general direction of our night's accommodation passing through the beautiful Cotswold country side. Driving through this area is just like the old traditional English country-side you see in movies and on tv; green rolling hills with fields of yellow flowers dotted everywhere, little country towns with tiny country roads, rock wall fences that go for miles, wooden sign posts and so many rabbits.
Our accommodation for the evening was a traditional English Manor house with beautiful views over one of the many valleys. The next day we were treated to a traditional English Breakfast and they do mean traditional! This includes all your standard English favourites, bacon, eggs, toast, baked beans, little sausages, tea, coffee and more tea but it also includes Black pudding. For those of you who don't know what Black pudding is have a look at this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_sausage. Yuk! Yuk! Yuk!
The next day we visited two of England's most beautiful country towns - Upper and Lower Slaughter. It was a beautiful quiet town with an old stone church, a little creek with a mother duck and her ducklings and sweet little houses. From there we drove to Bourton-on-the-Water to see their famous Model Village. It is an exactly miniture model of the town complete with tiny furniture, gardens and shop signs.
We took a quick drive through Bristol stopping to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge and then out towards the coast to see a beach. The beach, although not quite what we were expecting (see photo of sign), was kind of 'interesting'. From here we decided to start the long trip back to London. On the way Kelly got distracted by another potential historicial site. After a quite a trek from the main motorway, a section of dirt road and a hike through a sheep paddock (nothing unusual about that for us sheep farmers in-training!) we finally made it to the White Horse at Uffington. It is a chalk out line of a horse on the side of a hill. It has an amazing history - http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/majorsites/uffington.html. We also saw the site where St George slayed the dragon.
All in all It was a fantastic few days and a nice way to end Mum and Jill's trip to England.
We caught a bus from Angel and managed to jump onto the end of the tour. There was a match on between Oxford and Cambridge for the final of the MCC Universities Challenge. The tour initially took us through the rooms of the Pavilion - the Long Room, the Members Room, up onto the Members balcony, back through the members bar, much to the chagrin of the members having their breakfast. We spent some time in the museum, and had a look at the original Ashes trophy, and memorabilia from some of the greats of cricket.
The tour wrapped up with a look around the NatWest media centre - that's the space age looking one at the western end. In the photos there is a picture of one of the function rooms used during matches. We sat in the stand and watched some of the match, although Jonathan had a bit of a snooze - it had been a long first few days in London.
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