Cheers From England ~Day #6

Today we hopped on a train in Moreton in Marsh and headed to Oxford for the day. We chose today since there are rain showers moving in the rest of the week and we wanted a dryer day since we’d be on our feet and away from shelter for most of the day. The above photo was taken in the courtyard of Magdalene College.

We kept off the grass.

We payed for a 2 hour walking tour of Oxford at the visitors center.

On our tour we met a retired couple from Vancouver Island who do house sitting around the world.

We visited several colleges and learned the history of the Oxford Colleges.

We enjoyed a meal at the Eagle and Child where we met a family from the Bay area and enjoyed a lively conversation with them.

We re-visited Magdalen College where C.S. Lewis and Tolkien would stroll and discuss philosophy.

We headed to the oldest pub in Oxford and chanced to meet up with the couple from Vancouver Island and enjoyed a table together with our refreshments. More enjoyable conversation about their retirement lives spent on the island and in other parts of the world.

Back to the train station we jumped on the wrong train first and realized it in time and hopped off.

When the right train arrived because of problems on the line between London and Oxford we were packed in like sardines. We were happy to finally make it to our stop and hop into the cool breezes.

We stopped at the grocery store close to the train station and bought a few items to enjoy for a evening snack. We arrived home exhausted but filled with appreciation for all the wonderful sites and people we met and talked to.

Now we are chilling at the cottage and watching Argentina play Netherlands.

Christ Church, Oxford

I will have to devote a few posts to all the wonderful colleges and architecture of Oxford after I get home.

Hope all is summery where you are!

Stow on the Wold ~ Day #5

It’s Tuesday and our 5th day in Jolly Old England. Today we spent a more leisurely day taking a short drive to a nice market town, Stow on the Wold. I’m doing a full post about this little town today since we are relaxing the afternoon and evening away at the cottage.

We visited this town last September with Josh and Laura but we only spent about a half hour here. Today we spent close to 2 hours walking around.

“Ancient and historic Stow on-the Wold is the highest town in the Cotswolds standing 800 feet above sea level. Stow is located at the junction of six roads making it an important and natural meeting place of the Cotswolds. One of the renowned Cotswold routes meeting in Stow is the famous Roman road – The Fosse Way. “

“History and hospitality is never far away in Stow. Stow is the location of the oldest inn in England with a history reaching as far back as 987AD.”

“The Square is a reminder of Stow on the Wold’s heritage as the Cotswold’s major sheep market. In one of his Cotswold travels writer Daniel Defoe once recorded that 20,000 sheep were sold during a single day. Another reminder of Stow’s past is the little alleys leading from the market square. These were intentionally built narrow and winding as a way to control and count sheep.”

” The Kings Arms on the market square hosted King Charles I before the Battle of Naseby in 1645.”

I had to take a photo of this reader board outside to help me with the timeline that our visit includes with the last week of the World Cup taking place while we are here.

There were several different “thrift” stores in this little town that I enjoyed poking around in. I bought a couple of things easy to pack and bring home with me.

“A much later addition to Stow is St Edwards Hall in the market square. This was built in 1878. Money for the building came from funds left unclaimed in the town Savings Bank. The Hall houses the public library and exhibitions of Civil War artifacts.”

When I get back home I’ll do a full post on the church of St. Edward that Dear and I spent some time in today in Stow.

On our way back to the cottage we stopped at Warner Budgens supermarket in Moreton on Marsh to buy our takeaway dinner items. We chose a Cotswold locally fresh, not frozen, made Beef, Guinness and Ale Pie and some minted green vegetables.

Pricey but it was enough for both of us to split.

You should have seen the nice wedge of butter on top of these veggies, these were not frozen either, just ready to microwave.

The meal was delicious and it’s nice to enjoy a leisurely afternoon and evening at the cottage with the sun shining and a nice cool breeze blowing in the open windows. There’s Dear in the kitchen area of the cottage.

Tonight I plan to stay up late and watch Brazil play Germany in the World Cup Semi-finals. It’s so weird to think everyone in our home time zone are just beginning your day and we are winding down. Hope all is well wherever you find yourselves today.

Cheers From England ~ #4

On this Monday after our second English Breakfast that we made for ourselves at the cottage we would venture out to two gardens right next to each other. Before I move on to the gardens here’s a collage of our breakfast time with some visitors that came to our door begging when they caught wind of the sausages cooking.

We were warned by the owners of the property that their dogs would try to get us to feed them and they told us not to give in. The dogs looked so hopeful.

The first garden to visited was Hidcote Garden. It is a National Trust Property. We aren’t here in prime garden time having missed the roses being in their glory but we still enjoyed a lot of color at the gardens.

I will need to devote a few posts in the future to these lovely gardens we visited but for now I’ll only leave you with a couple snapshots.

The second Garden we visited was the Kiftsgate Court and Garden which was across the way from Hidcote.

We got a fair amount of walking and climbing up and down trails today.

This evening we have dinner reservations at the Ebrington Arms and while we have been relaxing in the cottage this afternoon a thunderstorm has passed over us with quite a downpour. We are hoping it moves on because we do not relish the idea of driving country lanes in a downpour!

Cheers From England ~ #3

Today is Sunday and we had a late start in our adventures out and about. I stayed up late to watch the Netherlands vs. Costa Rica World Cup Soccer game that went into overtime and a shoot out to determine the winner. Finally laying my head on the pillow at midnight made for a later than usual rising. On this Sunday morning we made ourselves breakfast at the cottage. We had eggs, handmade sausages from the butcher, sauteed mushrooms, fried tomatoes and toast.

Delicious. My toast was spread with a lovely Damson jam. We have been enjoying our French Pressed coffee each morning, too. We are glad we thought to grind some beans and pack them in our suitcase not knowing when we’d be able to make it to a grocery store.

I’m going to have an extensive post about our destination this Sunday and the reason I wanted to visit this town. This is a little clue of the name of the town and the statue I wanted to see. Think…nursery rhyme.

We are huge fans of country roads with a nice white stripe down the middle.

These roads with no white lines and inadequate space for two small cars to pass each other have caused us a bit of stress. My poor Dear is doing a fabulous job of driving but he is being stretched out of his driving comfort zone. I’m trying hard not to make terrified noises in the passenger seat that is really the driver seat and just plain weird to be seated in it without a steering wheel in front of me and to see the hedges up close and hear the branches brush upside my head. The scenery is gorgeous and I wish I was brave enough to drive so Dear could enjoy some of it.

We are so thankful and grateful to God for our time here and for the quiet country cottage where we can relax in the morning and the end of our day of adventures. It is so so quiet here and it gets so dark at night. There are no city lights, street lights, etc. that light up the sky here. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to see an owl while we are here.

Cheers From England ~ #2

We had a much needed good rest on Friday night. We woke up to birds singing and a light drizzle. Our second day in England and the Cotswolds specifically brought us to the town of Chipping Camden. We really enjoyed this town last year with Josh and Laura and it was nice to go back and explore it further. We also had the fun task of buying a few groceries to have at the cottage. We plan to cook an “English Breakfast” at the cottage on Sunday morning. We bought fresh eggs and a variety of sausages at the Butcher. We bought some tomatoes and mushrooms from the grocer. We bought a fresh baked loaf of bread from the Boulangerie. We bought some Damson Preserves and butter from another small shop on High Street. We also bought some local Cotswolds Cheese from the Cheesemonger. After we had all our supplies we enjoyed a great meal at the Eight Bells and had some fun talking World Cup Soccer with the locals. We braved some very narrow lanes to get to Snowshill to see some lavender fields in bloom, too.

Now we are back at the cottage and I hope to catch the Netherlands v. Costa Rica game on the telly soon.

Hope your Saturday is going well.

Cheers From England ~ #1

We arrived safely in Jolly old England on Friday the 4th of July at noon. After going through customs and retrieving our luggage we headed to the car rental agency and took the time we needed to become familiar with the car and set the SAT/NAV (GPS) for our first stop on our trip. It’s not easy navigating roads, especially the narrow lanes with tired eyes and little sleep but Dear managed to get us to our destination just before four in the afternoon safely. This is the wonderful cottage we will be staying in for seven nights. It is (what the U.K. calls) a self-catering cottage which means we pay to stay in a fully equipped space but we do our own pampering. No one cooks us breakfast or makes our bed each night. I will journal our days as much as I can while it’s fresh to me so I can remember our days when we return home.

When we unpacked the car and met the owner of the cottage we set off to get a refreshment at a Pub in a village close by that he highly recommended. Nothing is really that close to our quiet cottage so we will be navigating the narrow lanes of the Cotswolds a lot. After we return home I will post photos of the inside of our hand hewn, oak beamed, open vaulted ceilings and other very cool architectural features of the cottage and the setting it is in.

For today (Saturday) we will regain our balance and do some grocery shopping so we can make our own breakfasts at the cottage.

Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

Coupeville and Langley

When traveling on Whidbey Island we like to stop in Coupeville for Penn Cove mussels, Freeland for antique shopping, and our favorite town on the Island, Langley, for shops and a nice stroll.

On our trip last week after exploring Deception Pass we headed south to the Island County seat of Coupeville. My plan was to have lunch at Front Street Grill and introduce Lenny and Debbee to Mussels. Coupeville sits on Penn Cove which is known for their mussels. I forgot to take a photo of those mussels. Both Lenny and Debbee didn’t think they liked mussels but after they tried them they became fans.

Front Street Grill offers a whole page of mussels in different sauces that are delicious. This photo is from our trip to Coupeville with my cousin and we had the Coconut Green Curry Mussels. This time around we chose the Rockefeller sauce because someone in the group detests coconut! How can you go wrong with a sauce described like this “Spinach, bacon, Pernod, shallots, garlic and cream. The great thing is that all the sauces for the mussels were Gluten Free.

Debbee and Lenny with Penn Cove in the background.

I thought this was a creative name for this stand located at the end of Front Street.

We headed south again to our final destination on the island, the little town of Langley. We stopped at this garden store hoping some flowers would be blooming on these great trellises. The greenery was nice but we had missed the blooms.

Langley

Langley sits above Saratoga Pass.

My brother in law, Steve, sits on bench.

We got a refreshment here and then headed to the Cinton Ferry Dock.

I think this was Lenny’s first ferry ride.

It was a still glassy day on the Sound. Another great tour behind us we headed off the ferry to meet Josh, Laura, and Dear for dinner on the mainland. After dinner we said our goodbyes to Debbee and Lenny since they’d be headed back to Southern California the following morning.

We had a busy weekend around here and Dear didn’t get as much done as he had hoped to on the bathroom. You know how it goes with projects in old houses you end up finding things that need to be re-done when you open up walls and take a good look at old pipes. I have a couple days off before I put my tour guide hat back on and I’ll be sharing later in the week about the largest tour group I’ve been responsible for to date.

What’s on the list for your first full week of summer?

Deception Pass

On Tuesday of last week I put my tour guide hat on yet again and picked up my group to head to the north end of Whidbey Island. You can access Whidbey Island at the north by crossing a couple bridges and when you travel all the way south on the island you cross the Salish Sea/Puget Sound via a car/passenger ferry from Clinton to Mukilteo.

We stopped on the north side of Deception Pass on Fidalgo Island before crossing over the Deception Pass bridge.

“A group of sailors led by Joseph Whidbey, part of the Vancouver Expedition, found and mapped Deception Pass on June 7, 1792.George Vancouver gave it the name “Deception” because it had misled him into thinking Whidbey Island was a peninsula.The “deception” was heightened due to Whidbey’s failure to find the strait at first.” I thought it was called Deception because of the whirlpools and strong currents that can give boats quite a run for their money.

You can read the history of this Bridge and area if you click here.

We crossed over the bridge and found a parking spot at the State Park property on the Whidbey Island side of the bridge. I was happy I zipped over to Fred Meyer to pick up a Discovery Pass before I picked up my passengers. You need a Discovery Pass to park at the State Park lot.

On this side of the bridge there were several trails you could hike to get down to areas below the bridge with nice beach areas.

We had some fabulous weather and views for our “Island Day”.

We headed up on the bridge deck to get to the center to get more views of the Skagit Bay and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The North end of the island is also home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Oak Harbor. Oak Harbor is the largest city on Whidbey Island. We stopped in two cities on Whidbey Island, Coupeville, where we had lunch and Langley, my favorite city to visit on the Island. That will be another post.

It’s Sunday afternoon and just about 20 minutes until the U.S.A. v Portugal game kicks off. I’ll be glued to the t.v. hoping for a good result. The bathroom renovation continues, too, around here. I have told you in the past that I’m the sports fan at my house not my Dear. He’s putting in can lights and a bathroom fan and heater today before he seals up the ceiling with drywall. Fun times. Hope your Sunday is going well.

Good Fences ~ George Washington Inn

The George Washington Inn is situated on the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Port Angeles and Sequim with views of the Olympic Mountain Range in Washington State on the Olympic Peninsula. It’s a great choice for a getaway with easy access to Hurricane Ridge and the Olympic Mountains or Dungeness Bay. The third weekend every July Sequim is known for their wonderful lavender festival. This would be a great spot to overnight for the festival.

My daughter, girlfriend and I attended a George Washington Tea here on Washington’s birthday in February a couple years ago. On that day we were treated to a rainbow looking out the back of the Inn and onto the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

We were happy that George Washington was the special guest at the tea in his honor.

I will be linking up with TexWisGirl at Run A Round Ranch for Good Fences #12.

My Feedly source has been attacked for the second time in 2 days and I’m not getting my usual updates on the blogs I enjoy visiting. They are working on developing some protection and getting back online. If I haven’t visited you can blame it on the attacker!

Looking Back ~ Buster Brown

The Bellefontaine Cemetery had a great system for finding all the notable famous and fascinating people buried on their grounds. There was a clear white line in the middle of the road that you could follow and then each of the 58 notables were marked with red markers. Black markers showed Civil War notable people.

When I heard that George Warren Brown (1853-1921) the maker of Buster Brown shoes was buried here I wanted to see his grave site. When we were young my siblings and I would be taken to a shoe store in Montebello on Whittier Blvd. that carried Buster Brown shoes. Even though we always struggled to make ends meet my pop was determined we’d have good shoes to wear. We would get our new Buster Brown school shoes every year and a pair of shoes for church.

George’s brother Alanson (1847-1913) is buried across the road.

The Journey Through History book we bought at the front office at the cemetery gives the history of all the notables buried on the grounds. It was worth the $5 to purchase it. Here’s what is written about the Brown brothers…

“Traveling to St. Louis for a church convention, Alanson Brown found the city centrally located and populated with ambitious citizens. Seeing opportunity, Alanson decided to invest in a new wholesale shoe business in St. Louis.

His brother George Brown worked as his star salesman but found the shoes he had to sell did not meet the needs of his customers. When George could not convince Alanson to manufacture shoes in St. Louis, George set up his own company making shoes, including the still popular Buster Brown children’s line. Recognizing George’s success, Alanson’s company also began manufacturing shoes in St. Louis – then a city known for shoes, booze, and news and last in the American League.

Both brothers supported St. Louis institutions and focused on improving the lives of others. George’s widow set up the George Warren Brown School of Social Services at Washington University.

With parallel lives, the two brothers rest across the lane from each other at Bellefontaine – Alanson in a 1910 domed mausoleum by World’s Fair architect Isaac Taylor and George in a 1928 hexagonal tomb by the St. Louis firm of Mauran, Russell, Crowell.

I put out the call to my friends from Montebello on Facebook to help me remember the name of the shoe store on Whittier Blvd. in Montebello. They pulled through big time with more information than I ever knew about the couple who ran this store. Here’s how the conversation went…

To my Montebello friends…does anyone remember the name of the shoe store on Whittier Blvd. (on a corner) that sold Buster Brown shoes??? My brain will not bring it up.

Lana: Was it Kinney shoes?

Nancy: I can see it but I can’t remember the name!

Nancy: Lana would remember since she”s MUCH younger than us!!

Randy: It wasn’t Kinneys,that was up on 20th st and Beverly Blvd. Sorry

Judy: Was it Sandlers? It just popped into my head so it may be totally wrong.

Lynda: That sounds right Judy.

Ellen: Yes..Judy thank you!

Anne: It was Sandlers! Judy is right!

Tania: thanks for shaking up my brain Ellen. Maybe when it resets I can remember some of this stuff.

Gloriya: Sandlers sounds correct.

Steve: Sandler’s Shoes was on Whittier & I believe 5th Street, right across the street from the Deluxe Cafe. They had one of those old X-Ray machines where you put you feet into a slot and and Mr Sandler could see if my toes were touching the end of the new shoes in the mid 1950’s. Needless to say, the poor old man died of cancer in the early 60’s, which we now know was radiation poisoning from that machine X-ray device.

Ellen: Steve, thanks for the info. That is so sad about Mr. Sandler. Did his wife work along side him. My dad remembers a man and woman team in the store. They always commented to my dad that he only bought shoes for his kids never for himself…

Linda: I also remember my mom taking me to Sandler’s store to get Buster Brown shoes. She had my feet x-rayed there and trusted that the shoes fit better than anywhere else. She instilled on me that need. I have never had bunions or crooked toes thanks to her.

Steve: Ellen, yes there was a blond lady that worked there, that was probably his wife. Linda, I always wondered why my toes would glow in the dark when I was younger – LOL

Facebook bugs me in a lot of ways but when I can interact with old friends and get good memories like these it redeems itself for me.

Do you use Facebook and have you found some good ole friends there? Did you wear Buster Brown shoes when you were growing up?

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: Travel