Neither Liane nor I slept well on the first night; I know she ended up with a dodgy bed but I had no real reason as my bed was comfy and it was really quiet etc…. all the right ingredients were there but yes my brain kept going so whilst I got a good initial 3 hours and then 2 hours of drift off, wake up over and over, around 3.30am I eventually just gave up and wandered downstairs. Down here I discovered Larn in the same boat so we commiserated together and had coffee and chatted about the day to come……
We started off with some scrambled eggs, tomato and avocado (it is SO great to have your own kitchen like this) and set out for our day’s excursions. The plan was to do some local touring around the area - no set goals in mind other than Gwendoline REALLY wanted to go to a town big enough for shops as it was starting to rain a bit and she hadn’t brought a rain jacket….. Ummm yes kind of surprising to come to England without taking the rain into consideration when packing (that would be the packing in the middle of the night 7 hours before leaving maybe?) but in her defence (because if I don’t mention it she will say it to me later!) she was incredibly busy in the lead up to going away with work and one of her best friend’s wedding etc so didn’t get around to doing the shopping for the trip she had planned. Liane had also been having all sorts of trouble with the Sim card she had purchased for her phone in Aust for the trip so she was planning to try sorting that out too. We picked Cheltenham as it looked like a pretty biggish town and we thought if we did that straight away in the morning whilst the rain fell then in the afternoon when it was predicted to clear we could go driving around some gorgeous villages and in particular visit a hedge maze Gwendols and I had our eye on…….
We spent THE most frustrating annoying time in Cheltenham ever…… it was one of those shopping excursions from hell where you know what you want but just can’t find it. After 2 hours of witnessing Gwendoline try on what was seemingly every single jacket in every single shop in Cheltenham we were no closer to the goal and poor Gwendoline still didn’t have a jacket and poor Liane and Debra were just wanting to leave town…… Gwendols had a slight little meltdown but pulled herself together and decided to put it behind her and not worry about the possibility of getting wet and we took off for our adventuring…… the first village we went to was Bourton on the Water and around the second corner we walked Gwendoline spotted some rain jackets outside a shop……. 5 minutes later she had the perfect jacket she had been searching for….. And it was the cheapest one she had tried on all day…..Phew ….. I think we all had a big exhalation of relief at such a serendipitous discovery!
The sun was shining beautifully by this time and we thoroughly enjoyed a relaxed stroll around the village constantly pointing out things to each other and of course taking photo upon photo upon photo…… this area is seriously a photographer’s dream as everywhere you look is just a perfect postcard picture….. That is if you can be patient enough to wait for the other tourists to get out of your shot and of course you can frame the photo so you miss the cars and/or bins and/or signs etc…… Somehow it seems odd and just kind of wrong to have these modern intrusions amongst such old and beautiful buildings…… but yes I guess it’s a reminder that people actually live there! You do feel funny sometimes taking photos of the adorable houses etc when you stop to remember that these are real people’s homes and so it could be considered kind of rude really to be poking lenses into their lives…… but then again if you are lucky enough to live inside a jigsaw puzzle picture then I guess that is the price you have to pay!
One of the reasons we had targeted this village as a first stop when the sun came out is that Gwendols and I were really keen to walk through a hedge maze and there is one there called the Dragonfly Maze. We were so excited at the thought of it but when we got there we were devastated to discover that it was closed! As I mentioned it had been raining but now the sun was shining and it was a lovely day….. We think though that they perhaps had made the decision earlier to close due to the weather - no other explanation we could think of as the Birdland attraction next door was open for business as usual.
Ah well not to worry as every missed opportunity from a closed exhibition to a wrong road turning leads on to something else instead. We took so many odd little lanes (no way could you flatter them by referring to them as roads!), supposedly two way but when two cars meet one of them would have to reverse into a byway so the other could pass. There really wasn’t that much traffic though on those little back lanes and we happily crisscrossed our way around the place finding different villages and basically relying on instinct and luck to find our way even though we had written maps, GPS and Tom Tom etc - MUCH more fun to stumble willy nilly around and discover accidental treasures one might not have discovered otherwise! We were out for 8 hours so put in a full day’s work sightseeing and oh how lovely it was to come back to our own little home after such a busy day. We made some lovely pasta and veges for dinner and meandered down the street to “our” pub for a drink before bedtime….. Another fabulous day done……

(L) Not too much to add to Debs account really... now here is where I say sorry if you get a double up of the days activities but hey you're really getting two for the price of one!! I think I've worked out how to make this co-blogging, ghost writing, shared blogging... call it what you will... work. We will certainly have a slightly different perspective on things and I will tend to be somewhat more practical in terms of times, cost etc.
Jane did a splendid job of getting us to Cheltenham after a slight misunderstanding.. she thought we wanted to go to Gloucester for some reason but with a few stern words and reprogramming by her boss, Gwendols, we were once again pointed in the right direction. We had to drive around the block a few times to find the undercover car park but did eventually manage to park securely and made our way into the Regents Arcade where our first stop was The Bridge Cafe for a very English lunch of baked spuds.. I had beans and cheese, the others had bacon and cheese.. very yummy!! As Deb said we then spent a fair bit of time looking for a coat for GJ, I at one point wandered off and found the Vodaphone shop where a very friendly Daniel set up my phone with an english sim with a gig of data for GBP30.... I reckon that's the way to go. From here we went on to Bourton on the Water which as Deb said is gorgeous and then through Lower and Upper Slaughters. The name of the village of Lower Slaughter stems from the Old English name for a wet land 'slough' or 'slothre' (Old English for muddy place)
upon which it lies.... so not the scene of some awful massacre as the name implies. This is a lovely little village with a stream running through with the old mill and original water wheel still there.