Cotswold Five…

It’s time for Five on Friday hosted by Amy and Friday’s Fave Five hosted by Susanne. Today I’m continuing my reminiscing of our time in Great Britain with our daughter Katie in April of 2004. After our day in Oxford we took a day to drive through the Cotswolds.

This was a literary tour for our daughter to see her favorite authors haunts or inspirations for the books they wrote. We were hoping to see a Hobbit in the Cotswolds. Our first stop was for a snack of treacle close to the Cotswold way. I fantasized about walking the whole of this trail once…

The closest we came on this tour of seeing Hobbit land was just seeing the countryside and coming upon this little village of Buckland which I’m counting as stop number two. Buckland has a lot of history we weren’t aware of when we stumbled upon it. Isn’t that the way it goes when you blog? You come home and look up a stop you made to research for a blog post and find out everything you missed! I wasn’t blogging in 2004 so I’m letting myself off the hook for this trip!

Our third stop in the Cotswolds was Hailes Abbey. Built in the 13th century by the Duke of Cornwall, the beautiful ruins of Hailes Abbey are set amid delightful Cotswold countryside. There was a small church with this graveside next to the Abbey.

Stop number four was Hidcote Gardens. This was early in April and the blooms were still not at their prime except to our delight the daffodils!

All these photos were taken with film not digital. The manicured hedges are always a treat to see.

Lambs were in plenty.

One more stop halfway on the Cotswolds Way was St. Mary’s Church in Painswick. The church of St Mary (originally Norman) was extended around 1480 in the English perpendicular style. The churchyard with 99 yew trees (legend has it that the 100th won’t grow) also has unusual tabletop tombs.

This past week afforded me the time and effort to scan our film photos from our trip to Great Britain in 2004. It’s nice to look back and remember the good things that God has allowed in our lives. This trip was a good experience for Dear, Katie and me. I still have the Jane Austen portion of our trip to share and the Monty Python portion, too. I’ve already shared the C.S. Lewis and Tolkien portion in Oxford.

These five stops could be way out of order but I don’t think that matters now. Hidcote Manor Gardens and Hailes Abbey are part of the Heritage Pass that you can purchase for your touring pleasure…

Dear got home from Austin Thursday night so all is back to normal around this old house. I made it to the accountant in the big blue truck and he was helpful as usual. I have a few more things to dig up for him so we can get a few more deductions. I was able to get out and walk in between rain showers by myself while Dear was in Austin which was a great accomplishment for me.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

This is a long post already but today on Mennonite Girls Can Cook I’ve reposted my Chicken Quesadilla recipe with a new twist. Click over to check it out. Also on some of your blogs my comment link takes you to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog instead of to my home blog (The Happy Wonderer). That happens when the pull down choices for comments don’t include the Name/URL option or the double choice blogger and open ID. On those that give you 5 choices with open ID it won’t let me switch from my blogger ID to my WordPress Blog. TMI? It’s just one of those weird things. Sheesh…I better just let you go now and enjoy your day!

Return to Downton Abbey

D is for Downton Abbey for ABC Wednesday this week. Thank you Denise Nesbitt and the ABC team!

The village of Bampton was used for filming outdoor scenes, most notably St. Mary’s Church and the library, which serves as the entrance to the cottage hospital. On our trip to England with our son and daughter in law in September of 2013 we stopped at this Oxfordshire Village.

The village was nice to walk through. It’s been fun to see the places we strolled by and through when we watch Downton.

Just to the right of this photo where you can see the bench is where they erected the War Monument during this season.

My Daughter and I had a marathon day of watching season 5 of Downton Abbey last week and now I don’t have to wait till Sunday nights to see one episode at a time. I was a lot more pleased with the ending of this season. Are you a fan of Downton Abbey?

Swans

We’ve never ever seen as many swans as when we are traveling in England.

Along the river Thames we enjoyed seeing quite a few.

This was a feeding frenzy. You are able to buy bags of food for the swans along the riverfront in Windsor.

Close to this swan swimming along with it’s cygnet we saw another swan who had ruffled it’s feathers.

I’m guessing it thought these Canadian Geese were getting too close.

We also saw these Swans and Cygnets on the River Wye.

I’m linking to ABC Wednesday for S is for Swans. Thank you Denise Nesbitt and the hard working ABC Team! As we are nearing the end of the alphabet yet again it’s time reveal new logo designed by Troy. You’ll have to click on over and see the fabulous new logo for Round Sixteen! Thank you Troy!

This week I’m getting my ~~swans~~ ducks in a row since we’re having our Thanksgiving feast this Saturday. Our middle son and his girlfriend are coming for the weekend so lots of plans are afoot. Hope to get around and see everyone in between my preparations. Can you believe we are in the second half of November already!!??

Signs from England

We saw some great signs when we were in England. Pubs and Inns have some great unique signs.

This one really cracked me up…how fresh can Lobster be from Canada to Windsor, England? I suppose it can be flown in the same day but the sign still had me smiling.

Some signs around this old house are that the weather is turning on us. Today we filled a yard waste bin with leaves and it’s really just the beginning of the raking season. We are looking forward to a few more soccer games with the Seattle Sounders and since we came in 1st place overall for our MLS season we are really hoping to be able to be in the final game for the MLS championships. If that’s the case that game will be here in Seattle on December 7th! It would be pretty sweet to celebrate our Seattle Sounders 40th Anniversary year and my 40th wedding anniversary with a MLS championship on the same weekend. Hope you were able to follow that.

We get to spend some quality time with our adult kids this weekend and we’re really looking forward to that. If I’m scarce on the internet you will know why. We will be busy eating fish tacos, tomato rice soup, Swedish Pancakes, my mom’s roolyet and besides eating together we will be shooting at pumpkins and other things…

What are your plans for the weekend?

I’m linking up with Lesley for her Signs, Signs; a weekly meme of interesting, funny, ridiculous and unexplainable signs. In the future I hope to post more unique signs.

We Whispered a Fond Adieu…

It’s no secret around this Old House and my blog that Dear and I are very fond of traveling to Great Britain. This is my fond farewell post of our latest travels back in July.

Our final two days were spent just outside of Windsor. On our final full day we spent some time on a boat trip on the Thames, a walk across the bridge to Eton and shopping on High Street in Windsor. Here are some photos to show our adventure.

We saw a few loaded boats with students learning to row as we started off our river tour and then we came upon this scene…

Oops, looks like they need a little more schooling on rowing properly.

On our way back we saw the kids bailing the water out of the boat!

After our lovely cruise we took a walk across the Thames on this bridge to explore a little of Eton.

After all this cruising and walking it was time to find a spot to eat…

We chose the Duchess of Cambridge.

After we were full and satisfied we did some souvenir shopping in town.

Here’s our one and only Selfie that we decided to take outside the Selfie London store on High Street!

This was a shop I had to check out since I’m quite a fan of T.J.Maxx in the U.S.A. I was happy to find a souvenir nicely priced.

The Crooked House was a restaurant that served coffee and Afternoon Tea. They advertise that they are Royal Windsor’s only tearoom.

Windsor is another town that I wouldn’t mind re-visiting.

I took this picture as we left our hotel on the way to Heathrow to fly home. Why yes, I do hope to come back soon! Toodle Pip!

Windsor Castle

This time around on our trip to Jolly Old England Windsor Castle was our only tourist attraction that we had to buy tickets for and to que up for. It was worth the lines and the hoard of people milling about. Photography is not allowed inside the castle but you can click away on the grounds of the castle. We were also treated to a changing of the guard during our time there. At Windsor this event is not as grand as at Buckingham Palace. You can check online to see the scheduled days and times for this event. Windsor is a great town to get the flavor of the Monarchy without the sea of humanity you find in London.

Since I’ve shown some fences and walls and gates in my post on Windsor Castle I’m linking up to

Good Fences #30 at Run*A*Round Ranch and TexWisGirl.

N is for Neckwear ~ The Bear in Oxford

Dating from 1242 The Bear is the oldest Pub in Oxford. It was fun to see it featured in the latest season of “The Amazing Race”. There is another pub in Oxford that also claims to be the oldest. I’ll let them duke it out.

The Bear is home to a rather impressive yet random collection of neckties. Visitors from around the globe have contributed to the collection. They are displayed in a room off the main entrance and you can see that the display continues onto the ceiling.

I was stumped to come up with an offering for the letter N until I remembered this pub that we stopped into after a long day of walking and sight seeing in Oxford in July. It has very low ceilings and a very narrow steep staircase to the toilets. I can’t imagine someone having a few too many going up and worse coming down those steep steps.

I’m linking up to ABC Wednesday with the fine originator, Denise Nesbitt and her trusty team that keep things going…

The Balm We Needed…

After our one bad hotel experience the Oakley Court in Windsor was the balm we needed to end our time in England on a very good note!

Oakley Court is situated along a stretch of the Thames known as Water Oakley. It was first shown on maps around 1800 and the name appears to originate from Cornish Breton in which it appears as “Warhta Eog Lee” – The Upper Salmon Place.

This lovely hotel was situated a few miles outside of the main downtown area of Windsor and Windsor Castle right on the River Thames.

I enjoyed Tea and “Tea” in the hotel bar…

Sitting along the River Thames was very peaceful and a wonderful relaxing and quiet way to end our time in England.

We enjoyed all the interesting architectural features of this grand hotel. A link to some interesting history is here.

In the 60’s and into the 70’s while the manor stood empty 200 films were made in and around the property including Dracula.

The only traffic we experienced at this hotel was boat traffic and it was a welcomed kind of traffic that left us smiling.

We spent two nights here and enjoyed excursions to Windsor Castle and a boat ride along the River Thames. This is a hotel we would recommend.

InSPIREd Sunday ~ Windsor

The last two days of our trip to England this past July were spent in Windsor. After touring Windsor Castle we walked down High street and spotted The Parish church of St. John the Baptist.

From the Lectern, look down the centre aisle and observe in the West Gallery a painting of The Last Supper. This is a national treasure. The picture was originally presented to the Royal Chapel c. 1660 by Brian Duppa, Bishop of Winchester, Prelate of the Order of the Garter. It was “bought by him beyond the sea”. Another tradition ascribes it to Franz de Cleyn (1588-1658), Rostock, Mecklenburg, Court painter to James I. It was rolled up and buried “in the plumery” (plumbers workshop?) in the Great Rebellion. It hung over the altar at St George’s, Windsor in 1702, and can be seen there in Sandby’s drawing dated 1786.

In my reading about this church after the fact I found that this and the next mosaics were by Antonio Salviati (1816-1890), who adorned The Altar of Westminster Abbey. Adoring Angels flank the Lamb with flag, and a pelican feeding its young, symbols of Humility and Sacrifice. Here are the adoring Angels.

This church like many churches in England is steeped in history. You can read more about it here.

On our tour of Windsor Castle we walked through St. George’s chapel which was amazing but they did not allow photographs inside so I will leave you with the outside shot of the Chapel.

We really enjoyed our time in Windsor and I’ll be sharing more from Windsor Castle and The River Thames in the future.

I’m linking to InSPIREd Sunday hosted by Beth and Sally.

The Rest of the Story…

…when website photos lie. I already moaned about our hotel in Henley-on-Thames here, but I’ll be moaning a little more with chuckles thrown in and tell you more about our experience which sadly we had to pay dear money for.

As I mentioned before the location of the hotel was right across the street from The River Thames.

When we checked in we took our suitcases to the room with no help offered. The room looked nothing, absolutely nothing like any of the rooms shown on the Website. The website showed photos of a nicely appointed hotel with nice rooms. Our room charge was 150 pounds so we were surprised when this was the condition of the chairs in our room. We left for a walk into town for lunch. When we came back to the hotel to freshen up before doing some more walking, the water in the room was not working. When we went down to the front desk there was a sign stating the water would be off until 6:00 P.M. Just a sign no one attending the desk. We didn’t understand why they didn’t inform us of that little fact when we checked in. After dinner and an evening walk we returned to the hotel and we went into the hotel bar to order a drink. The very young bartender said he was sorry but they did not have any gin. No Gin in a British bar? I just chuckled. We headed to our room and managed to get some sleep with our window open for air and the large portable fan on.

The early morning views were beautiful and still could be appreciated over the noise of the early delivery trucks on the road below our window. We got ready for breakfast and we headed down to the lobby to try to find where breakfast would be served. No one was in sight. No one at the front desk. When we checked in the person behind the desk had pointed in the general direction of where breakfast would be served. We walked that way and spotted a room with tables set for service and took a seat.

Our first thought was well this is nice maybe breakfast will make up for our less than comfortable night until… we waited and waited and waited and then Dear went out to try to find someone who would serve us some breakfast. There still was no one at the front desk. He finally found someone and we had to leave this nicely appointed room and head further down the hall to another room without flowers on the table.

The breakfast staff consisted of two young guys who didn’t seem sure of what they were doing. It honestly felt like they were pulled off the street that morning and shown quickly what to do. Notice our empty coffee cups. It took a long time to get coffee and a longer time to get our breakfast. We checked out, shook the dust off our shoes and headed to our next location for our last two nights that proved to be the balm we needed after this disappointing stay at the Red Lion Henley. We were so glad we had only booked one night here.

We do not recommend The Red Lion in Henley. We would love to re-visit Henley-on-Thames but we will do some better investigating on where to stay…

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: England