We are visiting a castle today so I will start this by saying……Once upon a time……as in….. Once upon a time there was a girl who didn’t drive a car until she was 23 and her eldest son Patrick started school so she had to learn to drive just to be able to get him there….. And I have to admit as an embarrassing aside that one of the very first times I drove him to school I then took Oliver to pre-school and when I went back to the car cheerfully hopped in and put my seatbelt on only to discover there was no driver….. As in I’d automatically gotten in the passenger’s side…..as a solution to this predicament I adopted the strategy of a slightly awkward “pretend to be searching in the glove box action” whilst discreetly as possible undoing the seatbelt then casually re-opening the door and walking around to the driver’s side….. Like doesn’t EVERYONE sit down in their car and buckle up to address the dangerous potential of their glove box??
Anyway that is all a precursor to say that I am by no stretch of the imagination a natural driver. Unlike Liane who is one of those gifted people who can jump in any car and drive happily away with confidence (even when it stalls in a mysterious fashion!), I am more of a reluctant driver. Don’t get me wrong, I am very comfortable driving my own car (admittedly preferably without distracting passengers who may be secretly critiquing my performance) and happily drive around with Triple J blaring as I whizz around town or up and down highways etc but yes I’m not a natural and I intensely dislike driving other people. It would be totally unfair though to not drive on this trip as that would leave it to Liane to do all the driving as unfortunately Gwendoline (who is a born driver just like Larn) is not 25 until a month after the trip ends so the insurance was ridiculously expensive. I am kind of wishing I’d taken out the second mortgage required though after yesterday as that was our excursion up to Warwick and I offered to drive……
I think you will get a hint of what is to come when I tell you that it is many, many years since I suffered a full blown panic attack….. Oh and that I would not recommend having one whilst driving on the extreme right hand lane of an English motorway with a million lanes of speeding cars between you and a suitable exit…. Oh my God - like all my nightmares truly come to life!!!
I started off doing OK, well that’s not strictly true, it took me a bit to warm up but after a while, though I wasn’t loving the experience, it felt quite doable. The streets, especially through the little villages (like Chipping Camden which I barely saw past my white knuckles on the steering wheel) are ridiculously narrow and yet cars park on the side of them and then it’s a case of running the gauntlet on a mad dash down the wrong side of the road to pass them before another car comes the other way. Liane has been wondering if there is some sort of etiquette as to who has right of way but Gwendols reckons it probably just a free for all and says it’s like “playing chicken”…… which is possibly true but not really a game that I’d prefer to be participating in. Still I managed and was thinking “mmm OK maybe this isn’t THAT bad” when we joined up with the motorway…… The cars in England go VERY fast and I could feel myself tensing up and getting a bit teary, probably from the ache in my jaw from my clenched teeth but I was still doing OK and then we must have taken an exit I guess as we came to a roundabout not entirely sure of which lane to be in. Now this has happened to Liane multiple times and I have watched from the back seat as she blithely asks the question as to lane requirements and then puts on blinkers, merges and makes the necessary adjustments all in the space of the blink of an eye but….. Well for me it just aint that easy! I did manage to get us where we needed to go and there weren’t even any near misses or blaring horns so it seemed alright but as we continued along I felt my heart begin to race and my palms began to sweat. Oh I thought, I remember this feeling, oh god no I do remember this feeling….. I tried to take preventative measures, breathing in through my nose and slowly exhaling but in retrospect I think I may have made it worse and started hyperventilating. I could hardly keep my hands on the wheel because of the sweaty palms and the shaking of my hands and I had that horrible overwhelming panic coursing through my body. If I had an ejector seat button I may have just abandoned ship but of course I had the girls lives in my hands so I had to just keep breathing and try to control it. By this stage I was openly sobbing so they had realised something was very wrong. Gwendoline (who was in the front passenger seat) spoke very soothingly to me and between her calm voice, Liane’s added assurances as to empty lanes beside us and the miracle of an extremely well placed petrol station I was able to cross over through the other lanes of fast and furious traffic and pull off the road before the final meltdown….. Then of course I could completely breakdown…. It was truly awful but I have to say that NEVER in the history of the world could I imagine two better people to be with through such an experience. They were both just simply wonderful.
Once we’d all settled down after sharing such trauma Liane took the wheel again (yes surprising I know but I just didn’t feel like driving right then!) and we headed off up to Warwick. It took us a few twists and turns before we found the Castle and OK I have to admit, idiotic as it may be, that we mistook a church for a castle (in our defence it was an extremely large church tower!) but all in all we found it quite easily and Liane aced a brilliant park without any trouble. The Castle is interesting; we’d heard references to it being too touristified (which I realise is not a word but hey if Shakespeare can make up words why can’t I - yes Stratford was the next stop!) but we all rather enjoyed being there and walking around a REAL castle regardless of those “added extras”. Gwendoline had some slight difficulty with the height aspect of the steps and battlements; that is to say she was moaning, groaning, squealing and pulling extraordinary faces but she continued to push herself and coped splendidly. We don’t know quite how we are going to manage the London Eye as we are both terrified of heights but on this occasion (possibly because I had used up my daily allotment of drama) I actually didn’t find any of it a problem. (L)This is where the YOLO part of the trip comes in.. we decided You Only Live Once so we have to push ourselves to do things that may otherwise be out of our comfort zone... end (L) After a couple of hours there we made our way over to Stratford-upon-Avon and enjoyed some time there visiting various Shakespeare related places. I hadn’t been that fussed really about this aspect of the trip but I must say we all actually found it incredibly interesting to see and hear things relating to both the man and his time. For me at least possibly the most intriguing thing we learnt was all this information about the origins words with “board” in it…. I can’t repeat it ALL here because it really is so extensive but a basic re-cap is that is started as they used to have tables with removable tops (boards) that were used by visitors to eat from and then sleep on…. Hence room and board, boarding house, bed and board and similar phrases. Also only the head of the household had a chair, everyone else around this boarded table sat on benches - so he was the chair man of the board…. How cool is that? Another one was that if they had a spare board it was kept at the side so was called the sideboard and then they put shelves on them and hung cups so that was the cupboard….. It goes on and on and seriously blew our minds!!!
We fully intended today to be an early day, the plan was to get home by three to have some “chill time” but we kept adding stops and saying we’ll JUST do this etc etc so it didn’t end up that way. Our last visit for the day was actually a return visit to Broadway Tower and we were very glad we did as the light was lovely. We finally got home around 6.30 but didn’t regret a thing as we had enjoyed yet another wonderful day…….

(L)The plan today is to get to Warwick Castle for opening time at 10am so at least we don’t have to be up and out too early. It took a bit longer than the half hour Google maps had suggested however with road works, some confusing signs and a couple of wrong turns ( well ok lets not call them wrong turns, lets call them “alternate routes” ) we managed to arrive at the Castle just a little after 10. Jane, the sweet soothing voice of our Tom Tom, stayed very calm as we ignored her dulcet tones and very obligingly plotted another course for us to follow… I’m surprised she isn’t yelling at us by now as we constantly refuse to take her advice!
We had bought the Hudsons Heritage Explorer passes online and had picked them up in Oxford our first day. These cost us GBP 49pp and entry into the castle is around 25 so we have used at least half of the initial cost already. Warwick Castle is absolutely beautiful, you can feel the history and imagine all the battles and grand feasts. The first walled building on the site dates back to 1068 and over the centuries it has become the magnificent castle it is with all it’s towers, ramparts, great hall and even the dungeon. We climbed the 500+ steps around the walls up and down the tower, wandered through the great hall then went in search of a snack. We decided to share some scones, jam and cream with a tea… very English…. But were surprised to find the scones had sultanas in them, seems this is the norm here! From there we found our way to the gardens and then onto the Falconry Show which was very interesting, those birds are huge and so powerful.
By this time it was about 1pm so time to move on to Stratford Upon Avon for a bit of culture in the guise of Shakespeare! Jane led us efficiently into town where we immediately found a car park and then we were off to find some lunch. I won’t say too much about lunch except to say we found a lovely little place called Henleys Tea rooms and I’d definitely recommend it as the meals were fantastic. Deb had a warm mulled wine, I had a Baileys coffee and GJ a coke and together with our meals it came to GBP 36.45 (about $60). At Shakespeares’ Birthplace Centre we gained access once again with our Hudsons pass taking the total entry costs now over the initial GBP49 so definitely worth getting.We went to 3 of the 6 houses in Shakespeares’ “trail”.. it was all very interesting even though I’m not really a “fan”. We had intended to do all 6 houses however by about 5.30 we had well and truly had enough. Heading home we made the decision to go back to Broadway Tower for GJ to get her panorama shot (the phone died the day before remember )….. Jane doesn’t work so well on the small laneways that crisscross the countryside, I think she’s a city girl cos she is always sending us down the biggest roads she can find when we really want to go the scenic route so we let her have a rest. We have had to make the rule that there will be no wrong turns and no U turns because around each corner there is another gorgeous village or spectacular vista and all roads eventually lead to where we’re going… it’s really no wonder it takes us an hour to do what should be a 10 min drive as we are constantly stopping for the perfect photo. Honestly I’m sure some of the “roads” we have driven down and some of the villages we’ve been through have only ever seen the most intrepid travellers passing by, we are certainly wandering the roads less travelled!! We have had many moments where we all start laughing and say "well we do like to go the long way around" or " we were meant to go this way cos we couldn't possibly go the most direct route" With perfect timing we arrived at Broadway Tower just as the sun was setting then finally home for a night in.