Still in Niagara - day 3

 Today's plan was hit the Falls and make some use of the bus passes we'd bought. But first breakfast. Everyone was up late, but we seemed to get moving fairly quickly. When I'm on these jaunts I tend not to keep checking on the time, unless there's something specific to aim for, and today it was just making good use of the time. We'd decided to make our way over to the Queen's Coach again, a wise move given the availability of vegan comestibles, and the fact that it was only ten minutes from the Aerocar parking lot on the Niagara River Parkway.

The Queen's Coach was not quite so busy, so a little easier on my ears. The vegans went vegan, and I opted for the cheap default breakfast again, which I knew was going to negate the need for lunch. The bill was still fairly reasonable for four people, so I think the Queen's Coach gets a thumbs up from all of us.

It really was a short hop to the Aerocar parking lot. Because it was free parking, we weren't sure how busy it was going to be in the middle of the day, and had a backup plan if we couldn't park there. The main, and very large parking lot for the Falls was our fallback, made possible because the WeGo bus pass allowed us to park there without paying the $36 fee, which I thought was quite the deal. As it turned out, we didn't need to drive into the Falls because there were plenty of parking spaces at the Aerocar lot.

The young ones booked Aerocar car tickets for the afternoon, and we all piled onto a bus and let it take us into the chaos of Niagara Falls on a summer Thursday. The bus was slow and very full, although the driver seemed to be equipped with superhuman patience as he exhorted people to move down the bus, and to get able-bodied people out of the "Mobility" area, to allow people with mobility issues to sit. There may even have been a wheelchair loaded, I couldn't see from the back, but either way he had everyone boarded and charged headlong into the heavy Falls traffic.

At the Table Rock Center, the shopping mall that sits just feet from the edge of the Horseshoe Falls, it was manic. There were lines for the toilets, lines to buy tickets for the various attractions, and above all noise. I had to retreat to the outside and wander around, marvelling at the Falls and at the all the people milling about rather have to deal with the assault on my ears. To be frank, I wouldn't normally attempt Canada's most visited tourist attraction during the summer, but when there's a school-aged child in the mix, there's no choice. That said, it is part of the overall experience, and the crowds are very International. Tourists from China, Japan and Korea flock to the Falls, as do Americans (the US is literally just on the other side of the river), and of course, Europeans. I saw footy shirts being worn, from Chelsea, Arsenal, and Shamrock Rovers of Dublin. As I said, a truly international gathering.

We sauntered up towards a position opposite the American Falls, but didn't get very far. We watched various iterations of the "Maid of the Mist" boats driving loads of poncho-wearing tourists into the spray at the base of the Horseshoe Falls, and we took in the sights.

What we didn't do was head up Clifton Hill, which is a street that runs up from the river into the Hotel District. It's Canada's answer to Blackpool, or Pigeon Forge, a street so full of tacky diversions and ways to relieve you of your money that I would pay good money just to avoid it. Yes, I'm getting old and grumpy, and maybe Charlie will appreciate it when he's older, but for this trip, we kept away from the place. The strip of land along the river on the Canadian side, and pretty much most of the way to Niagara-on-the-Lake, is controlled by Niagara Parks, a quasi-Governmental organisation that still has some standards. Yes, the attractions along the river are expensive, but all of the outlets are Niagara Parks branded and you know that some of the money is going back into maintaining the place and not into some wealthy person's already bulging pockets. The Parks also limit the worst commercial excesses, and if you want to know just how bad the Falls area could be if left to private enterprise, just visit Clifton Hill.

While I'm on the subject of who runs what, I have to say a word about the WeGo buses. There are a couple of routes, one along the river and one up the hill into the town, and they run every fifteen minutes during the day. The vehicles themselves are the lovely "Bendy" buses, and while fairly new and full of innovate things like wheelchair ramps and "kneeling" suspension, they did scrimp a bit on the seat padding. I'm certain they're operated by a local bus company, but it's all under the auspices of Niagara Parks again, which keeps them honest with scheduling and the like. When we visited last time, a long while ago, the buses were the green and white Parks buses and they stopped running after Labour Day. Just take that in; Canada's most visited attraction and the transit system stopped at the beginning of September. That was old thinking, where it was imagined that everyone went back to work in September and nobody visited. Thankfully Niagara Parks has moved into the twenty-first century now and the WeGo buses run all year round, albeit on a reduced schedule away from the summer. There's also the link up with the attractions and the parking, where you can by one ticket that covers everything, which is another innovative move, although I have to say that it was long overdue.

Anyway, back to our day. We decided to buy some tickets for the "Behind the Falls" attraction, a walk in the tunnels behind the cascade, and out onto a deck right at base of the falls, pretty much where the Maid of the Mist boats travel to. We had to time it so that we could get the kids back to the Aerocar for their trip over the Whirlpool, then come back to the falls for the tour, and that involved yet more bus rides. We were getting value from the tickets we bought.

We were early for the timed ticket entry for the Aerocar, so hung about the gift shop and any shaded areas we could find, because it was a very warm day. They wouldn't let the kids in to the ride until 3pm, and even then it was a twenty-five minute line up before they could get on the Aerocar, but the they did get on, and I think they enjoyed the ride. For those that don't know, the Aerocar is a big cable car that runs across the Whirlpool, the circular pool in the river formed by the river taking a right angle turn at that point. The river does fairly rush through a narrow gap before entering the whirlpool and then lurching off towards Lake Ontario. When you remember that Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie all drain through this little gap, you can imagine the quantity of water that's gone through there to create the whirlpool.

Aerocar trip completed, we boarded the bus again and made our way back into the Falls area. On the way, the bus diverts from the Parkway into the town of Niagara Falls and the combined GO railway station and bus terminus. I have to say, and others on the bus said it too, that two blocks off the Parkway and you're into a seriously run down area. Boarded up buildings, empty lots where buildings have been pulled down, and even Queen Street, the main shopping area, looks as run down as any little Ontario town. Then, two blocks east and you're back on the razzle-dazzle of the Parkway. 

The tour of the tunnels under and behind the Falls was self-guided (although we knew that), but involved a forty minute line up where you collect a yellow plastic rain poncho and line up for the elevators. Part way along was a young man in charge of a camera, whose was taking pictures of people with an exciting backdrop. I didn't want my picture taken but was nudged into position by one of the youngsters. I kept my hat down over my eyes, too. The photographs were available at the end of the tour, but we passed on that, and I didn't even take note of the cost, which I'm certain would have been exorbitant.

Down in the tunnels and out on the terrace there were too many people to make it enjoyable. That said, standing at the base of Niagara Falls is quite the experience. The noise and the spray frame the view up as millions of gallons of water continually cascade over the lip of the falls. We'd done the tour before, but even with all the people, it was well worth doing it again.

Back up above the falls, we made for the bus stop and yet another journey out the Aerocar parking lot to collect the car. It's worth pointing out that all the attractions have good public washrooms available, and that I put down to Niagara Parks influence; I doubt commercial enterprises would be so keen to provide such things for free.

In the car, we opted to go straight back to the Lemon Tree restaurant in St Catherine's for another vegan food-fest. Second time around it didn't have quite the wow factor, but it was still a good way to end a busy day. Of course back at the hotel, there were a few ships to watch through the lock before bedtime, ad I felt the choice of the Inn at Lock Seven was inspired if only for the canal excitement.

I would be packing up day tomorrow, and an end to the trip. There was one more excursion, though, which I'll document in the next post.

Still in Niagara - day 2

 Our first full day here was a quite mix. We started by watching ships in the canal lock (of course we did), before driving over to popular eating spot called "The Queens Coach". I say popular because it was packed.

Breakfast and lunch places are very common in Canada, and many follow a certain pattern, and clientele for that matter. The restaurant will generally be dark wood, as was this one, and the patrons will be of a certain advanced age, as was they were this fine morning at the Queen's Coach. It was packed, too, but we were efficiently ushered to a free table and menus arrived forthwith. The serving staff were very busy, but coping, until two of them collided and upset a few tumblers of cranberry juice on the white outfit of the unfortunate lady at the end of the long table they were sitting at. A brief altercation between the staff ensued, but they all quickly turned their attention to the now pink-suited customer. A free meal was offered, and I suspect that the rest of the party would have been offered a similar deal, if only the party hadn't been one of at least fifteen people. I think the wet customer was very unhappy, as she had a right to be. I hope the manager offered her a little more than free meal.

Our breakfasts, vegan platters for the vegans and a standard sausage, egg and home fries for me, was ordered and delivered in quick time. My coffee was regularly topped up, too. Because my meal was the default breakfast, it was $7.95 before tax, which is really competitive, at least compared to Chatham. We were happy bunnies as we left.

Our next port of call was a farm shop on the Niagara River Parkway that hosted a real church in a garden shed, or at least that's what it looked like to me. It's a show stopper and gets people in the shop, but there was a constant stream of tourists having their photographs taken one the church step. That's step in the singular of course, it being a very small church.

From there we motored over to the port of Dalhousie, just west of St Catherine's, to visit a couple of lighthouses there. The run over there took us through the famous Niagara wine producing area, and the rows of vines were present for miles around. Did you know that warm air is wafted over the vines in the winter to stop the plants from freezing? I didn't, but I do now. If we were more winey people, we'd have loaded the car with local wines, but we're not so we didn't.

The lighthouses were a bust, for Charlie at least. They're not big stone affairs, but rather wooden structures built to mark the harbour entrance. The old, disused but preserved one was all fenced off, and Charlie took against walking to the end of the breakwater to see the active lighthouse, so it was back to the car with very little to show for our efforts.

Just across the harbour, though, was a very interesting attraction that we decided to visit, namely a lovely, preserved Merry-Go-Round, just by the beach at Dalhousie. It was $3 to park, and the parking lot was busy with beach goers, but the Merry-Go-Round was excellent. It was housed in a purpose-built roundhouse, it was every bit the classic fairground ride, with prancing horses, mirrors, and fairground organ music. The fee was a five cents a ride, but if you didn't have five cents they let you ride anyway, and Emma, DW and Charlie all had rides. I'm a bit of a martyr to motion sickness, so gave it a miss. But what a great thing for the people of Port Dalhousie and its visitors! I didn't take any photos of the Merry-Go-Round because pointing a camera at lots of other people's children really isn't the done thing these days.

After a fairly long stay there, we motored back to the hotel for a break, and to watch ships in the lock again, before going almost all the way back to Dalhousie to visit the Lemon Tree Restaurant in St Catherine's. The Lemon Tree's menu is 100% vegan, although you'd never know it from the choices. I won't bore you with the meal details, but it was fabulous and all four of us had to carried to the car in wheelbarrows afterwards as we'd eaten so much.

The night was still young, so we drove over to Niagara Falls, yes the one with the waterfalls, the tourist tat, and the tourists. The Falls area gets ever more commercial and ever more busy, particularly given that its the summer holidays We drove right down past the falls, but baulked at paying $36 for a car park when would only be there for an hour or so. We turned the car around, drove past the falls in the opposite direction and headed away, along the Parkway again. When we reached the Whirlpool and the Aerocar attraction (a big cable car that runs across the Whirlpool in the Niagara River), we pulled into the parking lot to see what was what because Emma and Charlie wanted to ride the Aerocar. While were there, a couple of WeGo branded buses came and went, and, realising that the parking there was free and we could access the Falls area by catching the bus, we made an on the spot decision to buy a couple of 48-hour bus passes for everyone. As if to prove that it was a brilliant wheeze, we boarded the bus and rode the thirty minute bus journey right back to the Horseshoe falls. 

The bus, a noisy and quite uncomfortable "bendy" bus, duly dropped us at the Table Rock Centre and we alighted to give young Charlie his first glimpse of the mighty falls. For a five-year-old he looked quite impressed. As usual there was a lot of wet mist coming up from the base of the falls, but for some odd reason, it suddenly started to rain huge amounts of spray, so much that thought it was rain. Like so many of our fellow gawkers, we were soaked in seconds. We retired from the fray, (or should that be spray?) to go inside the shops there and buy a couple of plastic rain ponchos and in my case, a $30 baseball cap to keep my specs clear. We had hoped to stay to see the Falls all lit up as the night drew in, but it was so busy and so wet that we decided to call it a day and head back to the car on the WeGo bus. We did at least see the lights, all LED and fancy now, but it wasn't yet dark enough for them to make an impression on the falls themselves.

Back at the hotel, we watched another ship transit the lock and finally crashed out at about 11pm. A busy day for sure, but will we match it tomorrow?

Blighty 2025 - Flying Home

Flight day dawned. All the bags had been repacked and reweighed, and all of them, thankfully, came in under the 23Kg limit. I eschewed breakfast on the grounds that I didn't need to spend another £20 on food when I'd done nothing but eat over the past month, and we moved seamlessly to getting the bags downstairs and loaded into the rental car again.

It's only a couple of minutes drive from the Hyatt Place to Terminal five, but I still manged to be in the wrong lane, and subsequently on the wrong road when trying to get back to the car hire drop off point. I managed to correct things without going too far out of our way, but still struggled with the complicated instructions on how to get to the drop-of point. Essentially it was a case of driving almost all the way around the T5 Sofitel Hotel before finding the entrance. They have a kind all 360 degree scanner you drive through when you leave, and again when you return. I guess it compares dents and scratches and the like without having someone come out and check. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn't added to the car's patina, so that was all good. Apart from dropping the key back in to the office, we didn't have to do anything other than unload the car - onto three trolleys - make our way back through the Sofitel and head into the departures hall of Terminal 5.

Dumping the bags was the first order of the day, so we did a self-service bag drop and boarding pass collection, which was all we needed to do having checked in online the night before. DW and I sat and relaxed before going through security, while Emma and Charlie went for a ride on the T5 Pod system for twenty minutes.

Going through security was relatively painless, for us at least. Emma had her bag opened and manually checked thanks to her carrying a big, resin, Lilliput Village church in her carry on baggage. Time had slipped away quickly, so we decided to head straight out to the gate, which was about as far away as you get from where we had arrived airside. You can walk it, and we have done that in the past, but this take we took the "transit", a little underground train that doesn't run often enough to make it a comfortable trip because it's always so crowded. Heathrow seems to specialize in not realising how many people move through their place; I remembered with horror the wholly inadequate lifts in Terminal 2, lifts that had no viable alternative, and were always bursting at the seams. The world's busiest airport really needs to do better, I think.

Our transport for the flight home waiting at the gate, and with the power of the Internet at hand, I interrogated it and found out that our aircraft was a 2025 Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It has come back to London from Barbados the previous day, and Toronto was its only flight this warm afternoon. How informative.

In our World Traveller Plus cabin, I was surprised to see the seat configuration was 2-3-2 and not 2-4-2 as it had been on the Airbus on the way over. Indeed, the seats were bigger, better padded and altogether an improvement over the outward leg. The Dreamliner also has fancy LED windows that lighten or darken at the push of button and, more pertinently for the crew, could be controlled as one from the flight deck, so no messing about with getting people to lift the window blinds for take off. 

We were sitting over the wing so were treated to a lot of wind and engine noise, and the sight of the Boeing's wing lifting and wobbling. It's a good job I understand the principals of flight or I might be a bit worried. The last time I flew on a 787, I remember it being quieter, but I'd trade the noise for the better seats any day. Flights are as flights are, pretty boring. The food was better this time, and I did enjoy a short while with Charlie on my lap watching Paw Patrol, which is so much better without the sound.

Then we were banking out over Lake Erie for a rare northward landing at Toronto Pearson Airport, getting a great view of the Islands and the CN Tower, which was all the better as it had been cloudy since we passed over Ireland. The airport wasn't much fun, though. Terminal 3 was packed, the customs kiosks were playing up and it took an age for two of our bags to show up in the arrivals hall, thanks to a technical fault in the conveyor system. The magic of Park and Ride was working well, though, as a Valet Parking bus was waiting at the curb, and as I'd already notified them through their phone app that we'd landed, the car was sat in the lot waiting for us. I do like Park and Fly, and it did take the edge off the fact that it had taken us two hours to clear the airport. 

Opening up the back of car to load our many bags, it was quite comforting to see that our Canadian (made in Ontario) Honda CRV had quite a bit more luggage space than our Skoda hire car, so the game of baggage Jenga wasn't quite so difficult. Mind you, two bags "self-unloaded" when we opened the tailgate at the On Route in Cambridge.

We arrived home tired, of course, and out of sorts given that it was 3am according to our body clocks. Still, we'd completed quite the epic journey. A month, give or take a day, and no major dramas (bar the Manchester accommodation), and we did most of the things we'd set out to do. Now, as we Brits are wont to say "we need a holiday to get over the holiday". Next week, people, next week.

Blighty 2025 - Full Steam Ahead, and other silly sayings

Today we made the fairly short trip to the Cotswold village of Broadway, and the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Steam Railway, better known as the GWSR. For my North American readers that's the "Glostershure and Worrickshure Steam Railway".

Broadway is better known for it's idyllic main street, broad and lined with Cotswold Stone buildings, albeit that it's all gone a bit high-priced and touristy these days. But at the bottom of that street is the old Cheltenham to Stratford-Upon-Avon railway line, raised from the dead by a dedicated band of volunteers and now running regular jaunts between Broadway and Cheltenham Racecourse, with trains normally hauled by steam locomotives. Heritage railways are on the up in the UK, and the GWSR is an excellent example of how to do it correctly.

There is a good history of the line on the GWSR website, from it's original inception in 1899, to the present day, and you can read about it here.

Our drive over there through the pretty, if twisty, roads of the Cotswolds was easy, and the weather was set fair as well. There's a car park next to Broadway Station, operated by the local council, and it was there that we pulled in and I went to pay. Now parking in the UK is expensive, and these days dominated by parking apps for mobile phones; witness the parking at British Rail stations. But here it was either coins, of which I had none, or a parking app that I didn't have on my phone. I loaded the app using the data only e-sim I've been using to avoid the scandalous charges by my Canadian cell phone provider, but of course the app wanted to confirm the phone number by sending me an SMS message. OK, I switched e-sims and fired up Rogers Canada, only to find no signal. Bugger, I thought.

Dear Wife legged it on up to the station to buy our GWSR train tickets, while I nipped into a little petrol station on the roadside and bought a chocolate bar with a £10 note, asking for my change in £1 coins. Oh my goodness, you'd have thought I'd have asked him to sign his daughter into slavery! What a face on the man! Still, he did cough up the requisite coins. Back at the car park, I shovelled five coins into the machine and received two tickets, one to go on the dashboard of the car, and one to exchange at the station ticket office for a £3 discount on the train fare. Result. I was a wee bit crestfallen when Dear Wife and Emma expressed surprised that I'd had the gumption to read the tickets and bring one up to the station, how nice it is that people have confidence in my abilities.

The train was standing in the station, big green Merchant Navy Class locomotive at the front, Peninsular and Oriental (P&O for the ordinary folks), number 35006, ready to haul us down to Cheltenham Racecourse. The carriages, or cars, were not new but were considerably newer than the loco, and took myself and Dear Wife back in time to when we were taken on train trips as kids ourselves. Charlie of course was ecstatic.

The loco huffed and puffed and we set off south through the lush, and I mean lush, Cotswold countryside. The rail line has a lot of infrastructure that has to be maintained, stations, bridges, viaducts and tunnels, and everything looked so well cared for. The stations on the line had more or less been demolished when British Rail closed the line, but the GWSR has brought them back, from rebuilt signal boxes, to new platforms and old station buildings, and right down to some period signage and posters. For a train nerd, it is absolute heaven, and for us oldies, it really stirred some memories.

We had traditional card tickets, which were duly "clipped" by the train's guard part way through the trip. The sound and smell of the steam loco was magical and our stately progress allowed us to soak up the Vale of Evesham and the Severn Valley views, and the hills of Malvern and beyond. The weather was bright and sunny, and that added to the enjoyment.

At the Racecourse we alighted and watched the loco uncouple from the front of the train and trundle around to the back, to be coupled on there and be ready for the return trip to Broadway. We availed ourselves of snacks from the outlet on the station, which bore more than a passing resemblance to a garden shed, and boarded the train once again for the slow run north.

Back at Broadway, we watched the loco get relocated from one end of the train to the other again, only this time, when the loco was ready and they were waiting for the signal, the driver let Charlie, and a couple of other kids, up onto the footplate. You can imagine how delighted the little fellow was to be standing on a real, fired up and working steam engine. That was such a nice touch at the end of a day when everyone associated with the railway had been so lovely.

Heading home, we climbed (in the car) the very steep Fish Hill, and paused at the top to visit Broadway Tower, a folly built right on the edge of the escarpment and commanding amazing views. Of course it was just closing up for the day, but we stopped for a few minutes in the car park and took in the view, which was breathtaking, at least in a bucolic, English way. We were actually chivvied out of the car park by an anxious worker there, keen to lock the gates, so we climbed back into the Carrot and headed home. 

When the the lady in the Satnav became unexpectedly quiet at a key intersection, I naturally took the wrong road of the two available, but we enjoyed a short and pretty diversion through the tiny village of Upper Oddington which, apart from having the narrowest roads in the UK, was really nice.

A quiet evening in was capped by watching our beloved Chelsea Football Club win the UEFA Europa Conference League final, streamed for free through Discovery+, and shown through a nice TV in the cottage using a "borrowed" HDMI cable (I put it back when the game was over). A good day, I think.

Blighty 2025 - Bourton-on-the-Water

 

We decided to visit Bourton-on-the-Water, the scarily pretty Cotswold village that sits astride the River Windrush. I say river, it's not much more than a stream, but the good elders of Bourton have seen fit to build little bridges over the river and to keep the whole place picturesque. In retrospect, maybe a Bank Holiday Monday wasn't the best day to visit.

I knew it would be busy, but I didn't anticipate that half of Birmingham would be there (judging by the accents), nor the coachloads of foreign tourists. That was my error, I suppose.

The run over from Shipton was easy enough, apart from the entitled twat in a Range Rover (what else round here?) who decided he'd pull across and block a mini-roundabout when his exit wasn't clear, Nice move, holding up traffic in two directions. I'm still getting used to the 20mph speed limit in all the villages you pass through in England, but I'm not complaining because I think it's actually a good idea, but I still have to check myself as I hit that limit sign. It seems that the majority of drivers are OK with the very low limit because compliance seems quite high. It also helps that the rented car we have has a little audible alarm that goes off every time I go over said limit. I've a few weeks to get used to it all, I guess.

The car park at Bourton, or at least the one on Rissington Road, was a nightmare, with people waiting for others to vacate slots, but blocking up others trying to enter or leave. It was GBP4.50 for two hours, which is a bit steep, but there was no shortage of takers.

The village itself was heaving with visitors, which made walking beside the river a wee bit hazardous. You'd only get wet shoes if you were knocked in, but who wants wet shoes?

We went into the famous Bourton Model Village, a walk around model layout of the actual village, originally constructed in 1936 and used the same materials for the model houses that the real buildings were made of. It's not very big, and the pathways are small, but we were sharing our visit with so many other people that it made things a little difficult. It didn't help that people were trying to get photos of each other in among the buildings, and the people milling around. With so many people jammed in there, I gave that pleasure a miss.

After the Model Village, which frankly was a bit of a let down, and rather shabbily exited you out to the front door of a bar in the New Inn next door, it was time to brave the crowds along the river. When I say crowds, I do mean crowds, and there were hoards of dogs in the mix as well, and yet more people trying for photographs of each other in amongst the throng. It was all a bit much for poor Charlie, who had had enough and forced us back to the car. Ah, still, we did manage a visit.

The run home uneventful, and we were able to see many of the re-introduced birds of prey, the Red Kites, wheeling around above the farmland. They really are fabulous birds, and so successful after breeding pairs from Wales and Spain were set up in the Chiltern Hills in 1990. Goodness knows how many of them are flying now, but they've spread a long way from the Chilterns in the intervening 35 years. Read about their success here.

Tomorrow is a big day, up "in the smoke". Stay tuned for more exciting adventures.

Blighty 2025 - In another country

 

It was a late start for us today. Well, not for me, I was wide awake at 6:45 in the morning, but no one else surfaced before 11am. I was being very calm, though, and the plan for the day looked like it may have to be limited, but we could still do the main part.

We set a course for Raglan Castle, near Raglan, Monmouthshire. Those with a keen eye for geography will know that Monmouthshire is in Wales (just), and is another country.

Our Satnav set us on a cross-country route that avoided any centre of population, except Stow-on-the-Wold, and had us go north on the M5 for a bit, then south west for quite a while on the M50. The route was a little longer than the more direct A40, but the motorway sections made it quite a bit quicker. It was a good choice of route, too.

The run to Stow was certainly bucolic; mile after mile of narrow lanes, twists and turns, and a few small hills and dales. The countryside around these parts is wonderful, with mature woodland, hedgerows and small hillocky hills. If you know about this part of the world then you'll also know that it's famed for its wool, and even now the hillsides were dotted with sheep. Burford, Stowe, and the rest, may have lost their trade in wool, but it's still being produced in these parts, which was quite reassuring.

The only thing that didn't quite ring true was the overwhelming evidence of money. Farmers can be wealthy, for sure, but there were too many Aston Martins, Porsches, Mercedes Benz, Range/Land Rovers about to belong to the farmers. Then there were the big, expensive houses dotted around, none with sheep sheds or tactors. I recently heard the Cotswolds described as Britain's answer to the Hamptons in the USA, and I'd say that was becoming a fair statement. Stow-on-the-Wold was teeming with expensive cars and expensive looking people (it's the long weekend here). I guess they have to live somewhere.

The run over towards the M5, a few miles north of Cheltenham, was a little less like the Hamptons, but just as enjoyable as the run up to Stow.

I had never been on the M50 before today. It's a short, two-lane motorway running down to Ross-on-Wye, where it links up with the A40 heading west into South Wales. This being a long weekend, there was plenty of traffic, but we made good time and were rolling up the access road to Raglan Castle pretty much on schedule, despite the late start.

I won't go on about the castle too much, except to say that it was established in the 1200s to help with the defence of England (from the Welsh), and had been in constant use as a big home rather than a defensive stronghold, right up until its partial demolition by Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarians after the end of the English Civil War in 1653. It now stands as a craftily restored ruin, and is as beautiful a ruined castle as you'll ever see.

Because it was the long weekend, there was lots of other "stuff" going on at the castle, including a Medieval Murder Mystery, with people dressed up in period costumes and demonstrating some period crafts. Personally I'm not much into this dressing up thing, but it certainly added a bit of colour.

We wandered around the castle, went up to the top of the Keep and enjoyed a splendid view, then ate our picnic lunch in the castle grounds, which was all most enjoyable, despite the blustery wind. I should also mention the Swallows whizzing about the ruins. I had never seen a proper British Barn Swallow before going to Raglan some years ago, and here were the Swallows, almost certainly related to the ones I'd seen before, rushing in and out of the ancient building. Excellent stuff.

Obviously we raided the gift shop before leaving, it would be impolite not to, and kept Cadw, the castle's stewards, going for a few more months. 

We had planned to maybe visit Goodrich Castle, a "proper" fortification built on a cliff above the River Wye, but were really short on time, so we headed south down through the steep-side valley cut by that same river, and made our way to Tintern Abbey. There are quite a few ruined abbeys in the Britain, set up by various orders of monks, then sacked by King Henry the Eighth as part of his break with the Holy Roman Church. Tintern is one, and goodness is it ever a beautiful place? On a bend in the river, the ruins stand tall against the steep valley sides and look just fabulous. We hadn't planned on going in, it was just closing up for the day anyway, but just to admire the place from the pub garden next door (with a pint of Welsh beer in hand, of course) was enough.

Then it was time to head home. We made our way back into England on the old Severn Bridge, with no toll going eastwards. The Bristol Channel is impressive, but it was seriously windy out in the middle. On the M4, outside Swindon, we stopped at a motorway service station and the girls topped up vegan pasty and sausage roll supplies from Greggs and the West Cornwall Pasty Company. Service stations are not the most exciting places on earth, but when the shops like Greggs are very much a novelty for the overseas visitor, they seem quite exotic. Not so much excitement for the petrol, of course, because it was a full twenty-five pence a litre more expensive than anywhere else - that hasn't changed since my days in England.

On the way home we stopped for a very bland take-out pizza at Dominoes in Carterton, well it is the long weekend, and rolled back into Shipton at around seven in the evening. A long day, for sure, but really very interesting, and successful given the late start. And it didn't rain!

Tomorrow, as they say, is another day.

Blighty 2025 - Unplanned Oxford

 A sound sleep did help, but not as much as I'd have liked, and it was still a stressed morning as everyone started to find their feet in their new surroundings. Still, the shower was nice.

We had another run into Witney to complete the immediate supplies requirement. It was still busy through Burford, where despite a perfectly good, and free, Car Park at the bottom of the town, people were causing all manner of traffic-related problems while they tried to park at the side of the main road. 

Sainsbury's in Witney was very busy, which is something we're not used to, comparatively speaking. Charlie was "wired" and had to be withdrawn from the fray so that Mummy and Grandma could complete their shopping without losing their minds completely. Back at the cottage, Charlie's excitability continued, so his mother decided that a ride on a train might help. With remarkable spontaneity, off we trotted to the village of Charlbury where a reasonably priced train ticket could be had for the seventeen minute run into Oxford.

I'd never been on "The Cotswold Line", and like a lot of Britain's railways, it's been brought back from near death over the past few decades by paying passengers wanting to go into London after moving out into the countryside. The train, a nine(!) car Hitachi set in the dark green of the Great Western Railway company, pulled up at the tastefully refurbished station. (I just read about the station, and it's second platform and double track were reinstated in 2011 after being removed in 1971. The reinstated platform was extended to accommodate the nine car sets in 2018). It had come from Great Malvern and was heading into London Paddington, carrying a fair few more passengers than I'd expected, especially given that it was a Saturday. I pulled a face about the nine car set because that's a very long train compared to the five car sets on most UK Cross Country operated trains that do far longer distances. Indeed, there was even an hourly service in each direction on that route, which kind of knocks spots off Canada's VIA Rail's sad attempt at providing a service with a four car train only four times a day servicing Chatham Ontario.

Anyway, a swift seventeen minutes later we were walking into an incredibly busy Oxford, not looking for anything in particular. Goodness, but Oxford is vibrant. Obviously it's a university town, the university town I suppose, so there are hordes of young people about, but it was also full of day trippers and longer-term, more serious tourists as well. With Charlie in tow, it's not easy to walk around too much, so we visited a Pret A Manger store for a snack, a gift shop for some gifts, and did a small circuit that included Cornmarket Street, the Covered Market, Turl Street and Broad Street. It is a fabulous little town, even when crowded, and I'd recommend it to anyone visiting the UK, and that's not mentioning all the fabulous colleges and museums that you can visit if you stay longer. The high point of the day was witnessing one of Farage's Reform/right-wing "National Strike" demonstrations in town. There were about a dozen "Reformers" waving Union flags (the biggest of which was upside down), two dozen Police officers, and hundreds of counter-demonstrators waving Pride flags and easily out-demonstrating the Reformers. Fun, fun, fun. 

When Charlie started to get anxious about missing the train, we made our way back to the station, and then back to Charlbury and the car. We took a detour around the lanes to get chips from a place in Witney, but the little fellow had crashed out in the car and he wouldn't even eat his vegan nugget thingies when we arrived home. He cuddled with his mum and went to bed, which was really him doing what we all wanted to.

If things go according to plan, we'll go a little further afield tomorrow, but that's another day.