Week 2 - UK countryside & Final Days London

7th March - 14th March

Right this entry will definitely be brief, hopefully (I seem to say this lots but it's never true), as I have many more entries still to catch up on!!!

Sunday:

Dan took his mummy to the British Museum. I decided to stay at home and avoid dealing with the Tube, which had many 'planned engineering works' this weekend. By all accounts they had a lovely day looking at lots of old things, but the good old transport system caused a few headaches. I had prepared a lovely meal of arancini and cannelloni for them when they returned!

Monday:

We picked up our hire car bright and early Monday, a lovely VW Golf, and had a baptism with Dame Judy Wench (our recently acquired Sat Nav system). She directed us brilliantly to Portsmouth, where we found our lovely seaside hotel. The hotel was gorgeous, and we even got a free plumber in our room when we checked in. Cheryl was certain that it Faulty Towers was based on this place… After we dropped bags we had a quick look in some shops in the nearby shopping strip, before pigging out at Pizza Hut buffet lunch.

After lunch we drove down to the historic dockyard and had a look about. We saw HMAS Victory - Lord Nelson's Flagship, which he died on during the Battle of Trafalgar. She is the oldest naval ship still in commission, which means current Naval Officers still look after her even though she is sitting in a Dry Dock.

If we had have been able to visit a few years in the future we would've been able to see Henry VIII's boat, the Mary Rose - They've only just brought her to the surface and are doing restoration work to turn it into a museum.

After the docks (And all the souvenir shops inside) we headed over to the Gunwharf Quays - a DFO type shopping place. We all did some shopping (some more than others) before heading back to pick up the car and head back to the hotel.

Dinner was at a lovely 'Slug and Lettuce' chain pub, which offered a ½ price meal on Mondays.It was then back for sleepies!

Tuesday:

Dame Judy took us to Stonehenge, where we did the walk around the rocks, took the photos and listened to the dull audio guide. We thought that whilst in the area, we'd see if we could remember to get to Woodhenge, we could, so we went and had another play on the stumps of wood.

We had then planned to make our way to Glastonbury, via a White Horse, however that didn't work out. Before we'd left London I'd spent countless hours finding the co-ordinates of all these rural places and programmed them into the GPS. So we set off for the White Horse (which should've only taken 20 minutes to get to, and was also directly on the way to Glastonbury) but we ended up in Avebury, almost an hour away, looking at the Stone Circles. We had planned to visit these on Thursday, on our way from Bath to Oxford. All the technology in the world won't solve chubby fingers on a touch screen.Regardless we had a lovely visit to Avebury before making a rather long journey back down to Glastonbury.

We checked into our pub/hotel accommodation in Glastonbury - this one was Cheryl's job. It was spectacular. It was a 600(?) year old inn, in which Henry VIII reputably stayed and watched the Abbey burn from the bedroom window. We had the biggest hotel room I've ever seen, we could've easily had a party and invited all of our friends and we would've still had room to swing a cat. The reported "Ghost's" of the hotel could've also come to play.

We did a quick walk through the city - it only took 15 minute to cover the whole town - and decided that it was full of hippies and witches. The most alternative town we've been to in England by far. The options for food was limited so we decided to dine at the pub/hotel we were staying in. It was a great choice, the food was delicious, and it made the stumble up the stairs to bed

Wednesday:

Early morning we were up, ate breakfast at the hotel and then across the road to the ruined Glastonbury Abbey. We did a wander around the grounds and looking at some of the ruined buildings. Cheryl managed to find where King Arthur was buried - if you believe in fairy tales. After we'd checked out the souvenir shop we were in the car on the way to the Glastonbury Tor.

The Tor is basically a large hill/mound with the remains of a tower on the top. Legend has it that this is where Avalon is of the same fairy tale of Arthur and Guinevere. (I've probably just got all that wrong, as I don't know the story - wait for a comment from Cheryl to confirm or deny the validity of my claims!) Anyway we did the moderate walk up the hill, which gave fabulous views across the area. It was bloody windy so we didn't hang around long before making our way down the hill.

From here we drove onto the old Roman Town of Bath. We checked into the YMCA and headed for the Roman Baths. We did the guided tour again before sampling the water on our way out. Dan and his mum managed to sneak into the Abbey right as it was closing, for a quick look around before being booted out.

We had dinner at the same pizza restaurant we ate at last time we were in Bath - it was just as good although Dan was disappointed we couldn't have the ice cream again because the shop was closed! It was back to the hostel after dinner for an early nights sleep.

Thursday:

Drove on to Oxford where we checked into our lovely accommodation. We then made a 40 minute walk along the Thames into the city. Along the walk we were able to watch some rowing as they were holding some University rowing trials on the river.

We had a look in the 'Original Alice in Wonderland' shop (Lewis Carroll was a Math's professor at one of the colleges) before grabbing an expensive bagel lunch.

After lunch we headed over to Christ Church College. Just as we arrived and were waiting to buy tickets a group of 50 or so Japanese school kids arrived and because the man had a flashy badge they all jumped in in front of us. We weren't overly impressed.

We checked out the Dining hall, which was the inspiration for the Hall in the Harry Potter films. The myth is that it was actually filmed there, but we overheard a tour guide telling her group that it was just replicated into a studio because the one at the college only had 3 long rows of tables, where in Harry Potter they required 4. I was a bit disappointed that the pictures on the walls didn't move, but other than that it was pretty much identical to the one in the movie!

We had a look through the Quod (Yep that's how it was spelt - all these academics and they can't even spell correctly), where the Tom Tower, designed by none other the Sir Christopher Wren sits. We had a little walk through the College Cathedral (Reported to be the smallest Cathedral in London) and then past the student accommodation and library. Maybe I would've tried harder if I went to a school like this. And to think that there's another 20 or so just like this one in the city of Oxford!

We spent what was left of the afternoon checking out the shopping area of Oxford, before grabbing dinner in another chain pub. It was curry night and of the 8 or so on the menu, they could only offer us 2 different ones - they gave us some poor excuse about changing the menus. It was alright anyway.

We navigated a bus back to our accommodation before tucking in for our last night on the road.

Friday:

We decided that we all wanted McDonald's breakfast, so we plugged McD's into Dame Judy and she took us to the pedestrianised city centre of Oxford. We told her to find another one and she took us (I think a long way) to one on the way out of town. We made it with about 5 minutes to spare.

We made the short journey out to Windsor where the nice castle is. Surprisingly Lizzie was actually home as the Royal Standard flag was flying. We encountered a small amount of rain, but not enough to bother us as we made our way through the castle. The State Apartments were spectacular, done in a similar way to the ones at Versailles, but not as unbearably over the top.We looked through all the souvenir shops before making our way out for a late lunch.

Dan insisted that we had to go past Legoland since we were in Windsor. We found out way there (Although I'm convinced that Judy took us on the scenic route) to find that it was shut - not surprising - but we couldn't actually see any part of the theme park from the car park. We took a little disappointed Dan back to London where we returned the hire car without any issues at all. I think Cheryl has a career in chauffeuring if she ever wants it!!!

We were home around 6 and all pretty stuffed, so I made some pumpkin soup for us all before retiring to sleep.

Saturday:

Started off at Portobello Road markets, which were absolutely jam packed full of people. We spent a good 2 hours making our way up the road (Cheryl stopping for a few purchases along the way!!), but by the time we were halfway through the antique section I'd had enough of not being able to move through the sea of people so we headed back for the tube.

Next stop was Camden. This is one of my favourite places in London. I could sit for hours just looking at the people. My favourites are the punks who are stuck in the 80's with the colourful mohawks, torn tartan pants, chains and boots. We found lunch in the international food section of the market - yum yum - before browsing through the eclectic collection of shops.

After Camden we headed off to Madame Tassauds where we'd purchased cheap "After 5pm" tickets. We had a bit of a laugh at how it's all set up and making sure we weren't putting our arms around real people instead of wax figures. The ending of it was all a bit weird. We were taken into a dungeon type place and told "Live actors - Do not touch" it was all a bit creepy as we made our way through this nerve wrecking dungeon whilst actors jumped out and screamed at us. I was glad to be out.

We had dinner at the local pub before our evening's entertainment of 'Watching Cheryl pack all her purchases into the suitcase'. She did a pretty good job actually, she managed to fit way more in that I'd expected.

Sunday:

Cheryl's last day in London, so we decided that we'd take her to do some more shopping, for things she couldn't fit into her case. Carnaby Street was first - although because it was Sunday nearly all the shops were closed, Then we had to wait 10 minutes for the greatest toy store in the world, Hamley's, to open. 7 floors of toys!!! We all played for a while before we headed off to Oxford Street where we found a small little pub for our Sunday roast. We thought we should treat Chez, as it was Mother's Day after all! We had a bit of a look up Oxford Street before heading back to collect bags before heading out to Heathrow. We said our goodbyes (I of course got teary, but that was to be expected!) and waved her on her way.