Long Post, sorry!

Haven’t had a chance to post for a bit. We are in York today, the 25^th. We spent our last days in London at the Tower (in the pouring rain), had fish ‘n chips for lunch, then walked what seemed a mile through subway tunnels to get to St. Paul’s just too late to get in before evensong preparations. So then we fought London rush hour human traffic to make our way to the British Library an hour before closing; fabulous, but we needed more time there. Next day, we went to the Victoria & Albert museum in the morning; again, an amazing place with much more to see than we could possibly do in the 3 hours we had. Picked up the rental car Saturday afternoon and had a very tense time finding our way away from Heathrow on THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD! Don is amazing though and we have survived and only been honked at twice. We found our way to Avebury, which is another ancient stone placement site like Stonehenge, but not as showy. Also, not as touristy according to my reading, and you can walk right amongst the stones which you can’t at Stonehenge. We were actually planning to go to Stonehenge, but when we found ourselves on the right road for Avebury, we decided to go there for easiness sake. It was fun too as we happened to get there shortly before sunset. I don’t know if it was because it was the weekend right after the fall equinox or just because it was the weekend, but there was a group arriving with robes and musical instruments and, in one case, a guy with deer antlers on his helmet. Kind of fun, but we decided to move on. Originally, I had planned for us to visit Cambridge, but it was too late to go that far. But we weren’t far from Oxford, so we tried to find a room, and tried and tried. No luck. We ended up at a Days Inn and even that was full, but they sent us up the highway to a rest stop near Stratford on Avon and another Days Inn and we ate Burger King!? for dinner. There are very nice rest stops in England. But these roundabouts can be a bit scary if you’re trying to read the signs and not get hit or be hit by others. Also, people park in the middle of the road if they feel like it. Anyhoo, after a very brief drive through Stratford, we settled on going into the Cotswolds, to Chipping Campden. Had lunch in a lovely little tea shop in the High Street and then a walk through the sheep pastures on the public rights of way. The weather has been quite nice for us, except at the Tower of London. Then back on the highway to make our way to York. We decided to do the highway rest stop thing again because the driving really is hard on Don and they are convenient and cheaper for a family of four. We made it as far as Mansfield before getting stuck in a traffic jam behind a several car pile-up and fire. So we are in a slightly nicer room in another rest stop on the M1 and will hopefully have a good day in York today before heading to Manchester and flying out early to Dublin tomorrow (Tues). See you later, or rather, cheerio!