Saturday, November 06, 2004

England Trip Notes - 10/21/2004

I was rudely knocked out of bed at 4:00 this morning by my miserable tooth. I bathed it in Chloroseptic and popped two more Tylenol, and managed a couple more hours of sleep. As we prepared for our drive south, I listened to the weather report, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that we could expect rain, gale force winds, and maybe as much as two or three minutes of sunshine today. Sigh... We did want to see the real England, so I guess we should accept the real England's weather as well. However, that turned out to be a false alarm, for the weather today was beautiful and sunny all day. There was quite a wind, and at one point during out visit to Stonehenge, it pelted us with sleet, but barring that exception, it was a beautiful day.

We headed south on the A1 toward London, and swung around on the M25 to visit Windsor Castle. Beth did not want to spend the money to go inside, so we walked around it a bit, and took some pictures. We also shopped for a few souveniers in the town of Windsor. From there we drove approximately an hour further to Stonehenge. We had debated whether or not to make the long drive to this site, but upon seeing it were convinced it was worth it. Because it was sleeting while we were there, and the sun was shining brilliantly as well, a stunning rainbow appeared, and many of my pictures of the site were framed in that rainbow. I am anxious to see how they turn out.

Leaving Stonehenge, we drove back north toward Althorp, the site where Dianna is buried. This site is not open this time of year, but Beth hoped to be able to catch a glimpse from the road. However, after driving quite a while, we discovered that we were going the wrong way, and did not want to spend the time needed to backtrack. So, we did not see Althorp.

In a little village called Newbury, we stopped for lunch at the Yew Tree Inn. The food was good, and we were pleased to learn that the bartender was an American who happened to be studying abroad in England for a while. We had a pleasant conversation with him.

After lunch, we headed on home. The only other thing of significance to report about this day is that I was in intense pain from my tooth all day. When we got back into Oakham we stopped at the Tesco (supermarket) to try and find something that would give relief. We settled on baby teething gel, but that did nothing for me, and Tesco had nothing else. Tomorrow, I need to either go to the Chemist (pharmacist), or even better, a dentist.

No comments: