Singing Across England

The summers of 1973 and 1974 were highlighted by tours in England with the Contemporaries. The Contemporaries were a Christian Rock Group on a mission to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ with concerts and personal testimonies. This last weekend some of the members of this group from forty some years ago got together for a reunion in Southern California. Dear and I were not able to attend but we were texted photos of the event.

Five of these members that got together this past weekend are in the photo below from the seventies.

We are all a little bit older today. Dear and I are in the upper row on the right.

My pop and me at the airport before we left for one of our tours to England in 1973.

Tea was delivered to our bedroom door each morning and I enjoyed it in bed…

I was always taken aback when we’d be surrounded by school children wanting our autographs.

Chalk Church in Gravesend

Canterbury

A drawing by one of our fans!

London

Stonehenge

Tintagel

The coast in Cornwall.

1974 departure from LAX to London.

Windsor

Stratford Upon Avon

An early wedding gift from our dear hosts in England.

Once in a while I’ll be posting flashbacks on Fridays as I catch up on scanning old photos. It’s another way to document some of the events in our lives. Wow! It’s Labor Day Weekend already. We will mostly stay at home except for a Sounders Soccer game on Saturday night and church on Sunday. What do you have planned? Do you get Monday off?

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.

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.

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.

Need a Tea Break?

Since we are all friends I have a confession to make…

…although we passed quite a few tea rooms while we were in England I only had tea once and it wasn’t in a tea room. Oye. I will show you all the lovely tea rooms that you can choose from if you travel to England.

This one was in Broadway in the Cotswolds.

Our daily timing was way off for stopping to enjoy a cup of tea in the afternoon. By then we were usually a bit warm and needed something cooler to drink.

Love the name of this one, Mrs. T. Potts…pretty clever. It was real close to Martha’s coffee house on the main street running through Moreton in Marsh.

On our way to Banbury we saw Mrs. Brown’s Tea room.

In Bourton on the Water there were a few tea rooms to choose from.

This restaurant/tearoom was less appealing than the Small Talk Tearoom above.

If we didn’t manage to walk right past a tearoom we enjoyed seeing signs for tearooms.

We got a little closer to a proper tea experience with these delicious scones and clotted cream but the drink of choice on this morning was coffee.

On one of our last days in England I decided it was high time to have some tea so as not to totally disappoint my tea drinking readers.

It wasn’t the finest of tea services in the bar of our hotel. The scones were no where near as nice as the ones we had in Hay on Wye.

This was my tea and tea experience. One hot and the other one cold. The cold one may or may not have had some alcohol in it. Most of our afternoon tea experiences looked more like this…

Not too light, not too dark, and it had to be ice cold.

Katie and Andrew are moving into their new apartment today. I’ve been cleaning off some furniture we had in the garage for them to use. As soon as I get the call that they are close to the apartment with the pod of their stuff I’m heading over to do what I can to help. I have 2 fans in the car because it’s warm today and their 4th floor apartment is not air conditioned. On most days here in the Western Washington area you can live comfortably without A/C. I don’t think we’ll be drinking tea this afternoon…

Happy Monday to you all!

Exaggerate ~

Represent (something) as being larger, greater, better, or worse than it really is:

We arrived early for our flight from Heathrow due to all the hype that was put out in the news about the batteries in electronic devices being checked. We were told and alerted by our airline to make sure all our batteries were fully charged as they would be subject to confiscation if the device did not turn on properly.

The reality for Dear and me was that none of our devices were checked to see if they would turn on. We made it through security lickity split and had a relaxing wait for our flight.

Here’s a little travel tip for you when traveling to and from Heathrow airport. Souvenir type items can be bought at the terminal and they seem to be priced lower than the street vendors and stores in London. There are several shops to choose from. We came in and out of terminal 3. I’m pretty sure terminals 4 and 5 had more shops than teminal 3. The Harrods shop you see in this photo had items clearly marked as less than their store in Kensington. The Starbucks at the airport had mugs from several locations in England, Scotland and Wales and the mugs were just under seven pounds each. Her’s the one I chose this year.

Since we were in Wales on this trip and once before I thought it a good choice. The mug on the left I purchased at England’s version of T.J. Maxx called T.K. Maxx!

Here’s something we can’t overdo or exaggerate, being thankful to God. We are thankful for His watch care over us during our whole trip and everyday of our lives. This sign was on the doorpost of The Parish Church of St. John the Baptist, on High Street in Windsor. We walked around this church on our last full day in England.The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Isaiah 40:8

When you travel abroad you really should make sure and walk into the magnificent old churches. I will be doing a post in the future with the surprise that we were treated to by visiting this church.

So we are home and enjoyed a good rest in our own bed last night. Our son Josh picked us up from the airport where going through customs was a breeze. He took us to our favorite Mexican haunt on the way home for a little taste of Mexico that we had missed while in England. Today we are working on getting a little organized, washing up some clothes, and getting over jet lag. Hopefully by tomorrow we won’t resemble this…

Gargoyles are so interesting and creepy. More from England coming soon when my thoughts are more coherent. Have a wonderful weekend.

Cheers From England ~ The End

Today Wednesday July 16th was our last full day in England. Tomorrow we will head to the car rental agency to return the car and to Heathrow.

We leave here noonish on Thursday and arrive home at 2:30 in the afternoon on Thursday. So weird.

We enjoyed an early walk on the property where we are staying and then headed into central Windsor to see about catching a boat ride on the river Thames. We arrived in time for the first 40 minute boat ride of the day which meant we weren’t packed in like sardines and enjoyed a relatively empty boat. We met a couple from Australia and exchanged our travel experiences.

This was our turn around point. To go farther on the river we would have had to wait for the locks.

On our way back to the dock we got a great view of Windsor Castle.

We did our last minute shopping in Windsor and enjoyed our last very English meal at the Duchess of Cambridge.

A steak and ale pie on top of a bed of mashed potatoes and peas smothered in gravy for me and fish and chips for Dear.

We walked by this next shop and decided to attempt a Selfie which is not easy with a big Nikon camera and a 4 inch lens on it. Are you suppose to look dorky on a selfie?

We are really enjoying this last spot we chose and have had some good relaxation before we head home to the reality of a lawn that needs mowing and renovation work that begins full swing on Monday. Thanks for following along with us in real time. Your comments are always encouraging to me. The next time I post will be from Pacific Time. I have so much more to share from England. Cheers for now from Jolly Old England!

Don’t Cry For Me…

…Argentina Fellow Bloggers!

After my rant about the hotel we stayed in last night I wanted you all to see our new home away from home for the next two nights. Do not feel sorry for us. We are truly content and blessed as we wind down our trip to Jolly Old England.

No roads outside our hotel window and a nice green lawn down to the river Thames. A wonderful way to end our time here and to forget about the last hotel we stayed in.

Here’s Dear having a little shut eye in the shade at the rivers edge before we check into our room. We also enjoyed the peaceful time watching the boaters and rowers glide by.

We are enjoying this roomier space with chairs that are in good shape…

as opposed to these poor worn chairs at the last hotel.

A nice king sized bed instead of our smaller sad bed last night. The only thing we hear outside with our windows open here are birds, an occasional boat horn, and distant planes leaving from Heathrow. We are steps away from the river Thames and a few hundred yards from the main road.

Today before we checked in here we spent a few hours in Windsor including a tour of Windsor Castle. While in Windsor we happened to meet a family from Argentina and talked with them about the disappointing loss to Germany at the World Cup. We ate lunch close to the riverside and then headed back to our hotel to check in. One more full day before we head to Heathrow early on Thursday to deal with all the new security checks.

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Repetition…

For my flashback this week I’m going back to England in 1973/1974. When we travel to England this coming July we hope to duplicate some of our visits from the 70’s.

Chalk Church Gravesend