A Bit of the English Countryside

Well my friend's and mine first stop on the trip was off to Oxford.  After we finally got our car and got out of Heathrow, we headed off toward Oxford.  We arrived there just in time to throw our stuff in the hostel and we were off to walk around town for a night tour.  It was after 10pm and tons of people were out strolling and biking.  The city is an old beautiful town with Oxford University spread out all over.  We walked around just taking in the sites and attempting to find something to eat and somewhere to sit for a bit as we were very jet lagged.

The next day, we stopped in town to walk around again so my friends could see it in the daylight hours then we were off to the Cotswold region of England.  The Cotswold is a region of approximately 50 x 100 miles in England that was all sheep farming country.  It is dotted with a bunch of small, quant little towns all over.  Since we had our own car, we were able to enjoy some of the beautiful country.  The area is just covered in rolling fields of green with several areas of sheep all over the place.  My friends were laughing at me cause I thought it was the neatest thing to be able to see sheep roaming around.  There were these huge fields of golden flowers all over as well.  We think that they must have been growing these and havesting them for something, but they were absolutely stunning.  We pulled over at one point on the side of the road, carefully crawled under a barbed wire fence and hopped over into the field to take some pictures.  The plants with the gorgeous yellow flowers came up to our shoulders, give or take so it truly felt like we were in the middle of flower fields.

We found the town in the Cotswold we were staying in for the night and headed over to the tourist office where the very nice gentleman who runs it helped us map out a route for the day.  We saw a bunch of towns, all of them small little towns that had an old feel to them.  It felt almost if you were stepping back into time to the 1700's or so with the exception of cars and electricity being present.  We enjoyed lunch at a small cafe in one of the towns and strolled down the main street in several of the towns as well.  The houses were very cute, with gardens and flowers galore.  We stopped for a little ice cream as well even though it was freezing.  We were driving around this region all day just taking in the sites everywhere.  My favorite town was this little town called Bilbury that has really not much more than some houses and a trout farm, but it is so cute.  There is this row of houses there that are the oldest row houses in England and also one of the most photographed sites in the country.  The exterior looks straight out of the 1500-1600's or so.  The thing that gets me is people still live in those houses today and supposedly they cost a fortune. You look that them have it is exactly what you think of when you hear English Countryside.  We also saw several structures in towns in this region with thached roof houses.  These again are not something we see in the United States, but they reminded me almost of being on a movie set the way they were constructed. 

We attempted to see all of the cities that were recommended to us, but as luck would have it, we were unsuccessful at locating the town of Staton in the Cotswold.  We asked directions and tried to follow the signs, but for whatever reason and after 3 seperate attempts, we gave up and called it a day.  However in the process of trying to find that town, we ended up seeing the town of Broadway, 3 different times as we kept ending up in the same place.  Between three of us in the car and three different maps, you would think we could figure it out.

It truly is a side of England that many people often likely do not see when they come here.  It feels the complete opposite of London, with it's busy city life.  This area of England is all country and farming area.  There are still sheep grazing and roaming, and other farm animals as well cruising around.  It has the feel of a much more calm and peaceful pace of life.  It seems serene and during the night when we were there, after toursists had left for the day, the town was quiet and there were very few people out other than a few locals. 

On Monday, we got up and headed out the door early for Stonehenge and Avebury.  We arrived at Stonehenge where we proceeded to walk around the entire circle taking in the site.  It is really impressive to see as they are massive boulders that you look at and wonder how they managed to get those in that shape and location back where there were no modern day machines as there are today to move them.  Very impressive.  The stones are set in the middle of a large open field surrounded by green grass on all sides and on a slight small hill.  Next we were off to Avebury, which is another ancient site such as Stonehenge, but this one is much larger and you can walk up near the rocks.  In Avebury, the stones circle is very large with a small town built around and in the circle.  They were saying it is likely the only place where you can find a pub and a church within ruins like that today.  They are not sure what the exact origins are of either or why they are there, although there are some theories.  Both were very impressive to see.  While in Avebury, we headed into the town church where the woman who was fixing up the altar covering (which was over 100 years old) proceeded to ask us our opinion on the fabric color that we thought went best with it.  We stood there chatting with her for a good 10 minutes or so about this.  Little things like this are what makes my trips as I really enjoy these types of discussions and conversations. 

Next we headed back to Heathrow to drop off the rental and head into London.  Driving over here has not been terrible, but it has been an experience.  There are virtually no lights and everything is done by roundabouts instead, which I am not used to as we don't use those nearly that often in the US.  Luckily, my friends were able to help me look at signs and figure it out.  More than once, we were going the wrong way, ended up on the wrong street (not on the wrong side of the street though), or ended up on the wrong highway.  I was able to drive stick with my L hand better than I was anticipating and I only hit the curb 2x, which I didn't think was too terrible considering I was driving stick with my L hand, on the opposite side of the road sitting on the opposite side of the car.  The hard part came when we had to fill the gas tank.  We had a practically brand new Fiat.  I got out to fill up the tank and couldn't get off the gas cap.  It just spun round and round and would not come off.  After messing with it for a good 5 minutes, I had my friend Jessica get out to try it and Tina look in the owners manual to try and figure it out.  Seriously, we are all educated and intelligent people and we can't figure out how to take a gas cap off?  Finally, we figured out that you have to use your car key to insert in the middle of the gas cap to unlock the stupid thing before it will come off!  What a pain.  10 minutes later and three people later we finally figured that out!  We then dropped the car off at Heathrow and into London we went.