Just as I started this grand tour in the company of friends, so I closed the book with friends. After surviving Milton Keynes, I finally arrived at the front door, knocked, and was taken in to all the comfort friendship affords. We talked and thought and laughed and went out and came back in--just as though this could happen any time, not just this one time. Dramas were playing out in the streets. A lucky couple of nice kids had a baby boy. Everyone. Literally. ...

Roughly half-way between Oxford and Cambridge, not by accident, is an old estate named "Bletchley Park." I know about it because of a PBS series, "The Bletchley Circle." I should know about it because I'm a member of the Free World. Sigh...just when you think you know history, you only discover how very little you know of history. Britain knew early that a storm was hitting Europe, and created a center for code-breaking at Bletchley. Purposely convenient to Oxf...

I've never visited The Fens. Flat, originally watery marsh. Devastated and flooded. Reclaimed. And in the middle, Ely. A massive cathedral rising on the edge, on one of the very few clay hills. The Fens are still flat, of course. Crossed by waterways. Rich in cultivated vegetables--I passed potatoes and cabbage and cauliflower and vegetable markets. The water's been managed. But Ely, beside the River Ouse, is still called "The Ship of the Fens." I drove down ...

If my heart had to choose were to live, it would live at Haddon. It's old. It's soul is old. The chapel's bones are Norman. They've uncovered beautiful paintings on the walls, which were painted over during the Reformation. I climbed a hill and went through a crooked arch and out into a brilliant, sun-bleached courtyard. You can stand there and see how the castle was built over 100's of years. You can see the walls don't quite hit true; you see why the arch had...

As you enter the Cavendish estate, on your right is a village. It is beautiful. There are high gates and cattle guards, so the Chatsworth sheep don't eat their gardens, but you are welcome here. It is called Edensor. Once upon a magical time, a beautiful young girl far from home and an English boy who was bright with promise fell in love. Darkness was looming and war was imminent, so they married young. Billy was killed early. His body lies in Belgium. Kathleen...