2023 England C2C

Our last day of sightseeing in England was divided between Warwick Castle, the ancestral estate of the Earl of Warwick, and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, the childhood home of Shakespeare’s wife. Warwick Castle today is sumptuously decorated throughout and the Great Hall, which originally served as an ornate hall where visitors were formally greeted, now contains an impressive collection of armor and various other weapons of war. Still impressive, one could argue, yet in a different way. Originally built as a formidable medieval defensive fortress it has been transformed over the years into a genteel manor home. As stunning as the castle itself is, the entire complex has the feel of an amusement park, with a Zog playground (for those not familiar with the English children’s author Julia Davidson, her books about the dragon Zog and his friends are a pleasure to read), a Horrible Histories maze, jousting tournaments and archery competitions. The majority of visitors today were families with y...

We had booked an 11:00 am Stratford City Walking Tour for today and decided to make one last laundry run before the tour. Once laundry was done and packed away, we headed toward our tour meeting point, wandering through a local craft market on the way. There was a bit of rain forecast for later today, so we took our rain jackets to be on the safe side. The rain held off during our walk, but absolutely poured as we walked back to our hotel. Even though we only had a few blocks to our hotel, by the time we arrived our pants and shoes were soaked through. We stayed inside for the remainder of the afternoon while we waited for the rain to stop and for our clothes and shoes to dry out. The tour itself was very entertaining and informative. We saw a number of 15th and 16th century buildings and homes still in use today, walked through Stratford's old town and then to Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare is buried. The tour ended at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre where we had been the nig...

We were scheduled to travel via taxi from Stow-on-the-Wold to Stratford-upon-Avon this morning. I had booked a taxi a couple of days ago to pick us up at our lodging at 10:30 am. We weren’t in a big hurry as we couldn’t check in to our hotel in Stratford until 3:00 pm, but I had booked a 1:00 pm tour of Shakespeare’s birthplace so we wanted to get to Stratford by 12:30 pm. After waiting outside our hotel for a good 15 minutes past the agreed upon pick up time, it was obvious our driver was a no show. The hotel had given me a list of @ 8 local taxi drivers, plus 2 others that provided more long distance/airport transportation. I called all the local drivers with no one even answering their phone before I finally resorted to calling one of the long distance services. At last! This particular driver answered his phone, and, although he was unable to help us, he did refer me to a friend of his named Mark. I contacted Mark and he was available.  This must have been early on in our wait ...

Today we decided to visit the Cotswold villages of Chipping Campden, Broad Campden and Blockley by bussing it to Chipping Campden (@ 10 miles from Stow) and then walking to the other two villages. This is a very rural area of England and bus service here is limited, to say the least. Our bus trip had to be carefully planned out or we could have ended up stranded in one of the towns. We first took a bus to the train station at Moreton-in-Marsh (via one bus company), waited @ 30 minutes and then caught a bus to Chipping Campden (via a very circuitous route with another bus company). This 10 mile trip took 1.5 hours! Chipping Campden is one of the larger villages in the Cotswolds, but not any less charming or picturesque than others we have visited. We spent a good hour and a half walking through the town, seeing the historic sites: the market hall and nearby WWI monument, an old silk mill, a 14th century wool merchant’s mansion, the estate of an influential silk merchant whose manor hous...

This morning after breakfast we set out for the villages of Lower Slaughter and Bourton-on-the-Water. The Cotswold are made for walking and there are numerous, well-marked trails throughout the region. I had bought an ordinance map of the area yesterday (most of the Brits we met who were walking the C2C had these maps) and we used it, along with trail signage, to guide us through fields and pastures. We walked through numerous kissing gates and even had to hurdle a couple of electric fence wires (not my favorite thing to do). The first village we came to was Lower Slaughter, a sleepy, picturesque place where we encountered less than a dozen people. Bourton-on-the-Water was @ a mile and a half further on, but what a difference that mile made! The British refer to this village as “the Venice of the Cotswolds” because of its quaint canals running through town. One could also argue it’s called this due to the crowds packing the streets. Before we even reached the town center we passed at l...

Today was another travel day, this time from Bath to Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds. I thought it would be fairly easy traveling to the rural Cotswolds but the terminus of our first train out of Bath was London Paddington and it seems any time one's on a train bound for London, the train is packed to overflowing. Thank goodness we had reserved seats. We had to change trains in the town of Reading with @ 8 minutes to do so. Again, I thought this would be easy, as Reading must be a small train station. Little did I know it's much bigger than I thought, being a major transfer point serving the Oxford University area. Again, the train was packed to overflowing, but soon emptied at the Oxford stop. The rest of the journey was uneventful, and we arrived at Stow-on-the-Wold in the early afternoon, where we’ll stay until Friday. From what we've seen of the Cotswolds towns so far, they're quintessential rural English villages and very picturesque. Hope to do some walking to s...

We spent the day immersed in Bath’s history, starting with its 1st century Roman Baths moving on to the 15th century Bath Abbey and concluding with Bath’s 17th and 18th century Georgian architecture and society. Our tour of the Roman Baths and adjacent museum was enhanced not only by the excellent audio guide provided, but also by the depiction of ancient Romans as they went about their daily life, including their use of the baths, how they worshipped and their societal structure. We were able to walk through the ruins of the temple courtyard, smelling the sulfur of the mineral water as we approached the great bath itself. We came away awestruck by the scale and grandeur of these ancient baths. Bird's eye view of the ancient Roman baths Pediment fragments from the temple Walking through the temple courtyard outside the baths We then visited Bath Abbey, an important medieval church and monastery, looted by Henry VIII during his dissolution of the monasteries when he sold off its val...

Today was all about Stonehenge! We were lucky enough to book a shuttle/tour bus to Stonehenge this morning and spent a good portion of the day touring the ancient site. Stonehenge was built in stages between 3,000 and 1,500 BC and was originally used as a cremation cemetery. Whatever its original purpose, Stonehenge still functions today as a celestial calendar. As the sun rises on the summer solstice the "heel stone" lines up with the sun and the altar at the center of the stone circle. This ancient site was originally constructed with a circle of monoliths and lintels surrounding an inner horseshoe shape of stones. It's amazing to think about how these Neolithic people not only transported these huge stones to the site (the largest monolith weighs 45 tons!), but also were able to shape and erect them. Truly an amazing feat of engineering and planning!  First close up view of Stonehedge The "heel stone" is that lone stone sitting off to the left Another view of...

Another travel day today, this time via train and in the midst of a railway “disruption” (not sure why they just don’t call it a strike).  From everything I was reading online, it didn’t look like our route would be affected by the “disruption” so we were fairly confident all would go smoothly. Our route took us from York to Bath via London Kings Cross/London Paddington, meaning we had to transfer via the underground between Kings Cross and Paddington Station.  I knew we were in trouble the minute I stepped off the train at the London Kings Cross station into a never ending stream of people. It was an utter madhouse! Luckily, our seat mates on the York to London ride had been a mother and daughter who were traveling into London for a concert. They helped us figure out which “tube” line we needed to take to get to Paddington Station so we were able to navigate that piece fairly easily, but it was still nerve racking with the crush of people. We arrived at Paddington Station wit...

We left Robin Hood's Bay the morning of August 17th headed to York where Rich and I will stay until Saturday. Cindy, Judy, Pam ad Gary headed onward to Edinburgh where they'll spend Friday sightseeing and then fly home on Saturday. Rich and I will be continuing our England adventure until Monday, August 28th. Once reaching York and checking into our B&B, our first priority was to find a laundromat as we hadn’t been able to wash out more than a few items by hand since Richmond and we had very few clean clothes left. Once that was accomplished and clothes folded and repacked we headed out to explore the historic city of York. We visited the ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey, built in the 11th century by William the Conquerer’s son and partially destroyed in the 16th century during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. We also walked part of the wall surrounding the old city, originally built by the Romans in the 1st century, ambled through numerous “snickleways” (basically nar...

Final leg of our Coast to Coast walk and the weather today was the best we've encountered during the entire trek. The scenery was also the most diversified, from the tranquility of Little Beck Wood and Falling Foss waterfall to the miles of featureless and boggy moors to the majestic cliff top sea views, it was a perfect, albeit tiring, day. Ready to tackle the last 19.5 miles to Robin Hood's Bay We left Glaisdale @ 7:00 am as we wanted to get an early start, thinking it would take us @ 9 hours of walking to complete this 19.5 mile "very challenging" day. Our first 4 miles to Grosmont were on country roads and dirt paths. We stopped in Grosmont for breakfast (brought with us) before beginning what was to be our steepest and longest climb of the day, @ 2 miles of straight uphill, at times with a grade of 33%. Whew!  While climbing the Grosmont hill, we spotted this herd of deer in a fenced field As the saying goes "what goes up must come down" and the descent...