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!