Leah's Travel Diary: England

 Getting a car at Heathrow airport, we travelled to Windsor Castle and then to Salisbury where we saw the cathedral, Stonehenge and Old Sarum.  It looks like this is one of our farm stays. Although we had tour books which recommended places to stay, we often went to the local Tourist Office to find a place for our family of 5.  Farmhouses seemed to work well---we were often the only guests.  Note the photo below of the girls doing cartwheels at Salisbury Cathedral.  A week or so later in a horse drawn carriage going to Neuschwanstein, the man sharing our carriage asked, "Were you just in Salisbury with your girls cartwheeling at the cathederal?"  Guilty!

 

 June 6, we began my King Arthur Quest visiting Wells Cathedral and Glastonbury.  Then, we went to the quaint town of Port Isaac.  We had intended to go on down the coast of Cornwall, but fell in love with Port Isaac and stayed an extra day.  Port Isaac was later made famous a Port Wenn in the Doc Martin television series.  Then, we went up the coast to Tintagel (a King Arthur place) and Clovelly, another quaint village with streets so steep and narrow, you either walk down or take a donkey.

 

 

From Clovelly, we went to Bath and Stratford-on-Avon, which is famous for two things in our family:  where we lost Leah and where Rachel said her now famous quote, "Who the heck is Shakespeare?"  Her English major, Shakespeare-teaching mother couldn't believe she'd left out this part of their English education. And Leah?  Well we'd toured Shakespeare's home, gone through a gift shop and to the exit.  When we got outside, she was missing.  She'd taken a detour in the gift shop and was found in a corner reading a book---she never even realized she'd gone missing and we had walked along the street calling her name, before back tracking into the gift shop.

 

Then, we headed north to Hadrian's Wall, York and Yorkshire Dales where Dave's ancestors were from.  It was blustery cold at Hadrian's Wall---we even had to buy mittens and gloves at a local store.  We stayed at another farm where the kitten was the high point for all three girls. This was our first trip to England, so it was more about seeing OUR bucket list. After York, we headed down the east coast to catch a boat to continental Europe where we had a few child-oriented sites for the girls! For more photos of this trip, click here.

 

The photo of the girls on the beach is really Port Isaac---misplaced on this page.