This is my first trip traveling as an adult with my Auntie Carol. That, in itself, has been an adventure and it’s only day two! My cousin said one must be prepared when vacaying with Carol. She wasn’t kidding! Auntie is like a cross between a drill sergeant and Jiminy Cricket… Keeping everyone on schedule, prepared and making sure we’re doing everything correctly. In retrospect, I swear, my uncle has to be a saint… he keeps traveling with her and she’s still breathing. It’s definitely been entertaining!

As I said yesterday, Unc’s driving for the first time with an English car and on the “wrong” side of the road, which has added to the adventure richter scale. We went to the rental place after we landed, got the key and went to the spot where the car was. Opened the truck, added our luggage, got seated… Auntie made me sit in front…should have been a clue for me and then Uncle Don couldn’t figure out how to turn the car on. We couldn’t get anything to work at all. Never dawned on us that it was giving us a “gas” reading using percentages. Finally, a lady came to see what the problem was. We explained that nothing was working and it quickly became apparent that we were in the wrong car! Not our fault though, we were in the right spot. She said it was their fault, someone had parked the wrong car … a totally electric one, there. She went and grabbed the right vehicle and then we were off. He did a great job chauffeuring us around and making sure we arrived at our destinations safely, and although we didn’t take any cars or pedestrians out, I feel for the front left tire. I think we may have skinned it on all the round-a-bouts we went through.

My first full day in England was spent sight-seeing with the Cathedral at Salisbury as our first stop. The Cathedral is quite the popular attraction, with many languages from around the world heard within its walls. The Salisbury Cathedral is the tallest in England with its spire raising 404 feet and truly beautiful, built between 1220-1258.

The church is also the home of one of the last four remaining original copies of the Magna Carta!  The Chapter House, the Cathedral’s administration room for centuries, houses the Magna Carta. Its medieval carved stone frieze depicts scenes from the first two books of the Bible and taught me a thing or two… I had no idea that Noah had gotten drunk! To be able to see the amazing document that established the foundation for the rule of law in person was humbling.

We spent a couple of hours walking around the town of Salisbury, and although it’s a tourist attraction, it’s a quaint little town… and the public toilets are only 50 pence … and you can use Apple Pay!

Next, we made our way to Stonehenge. There was quite a bit of traffic to work through, and the parking/entrance to the historic landmark had change since the last time I saw it 20 years ago. This trip we had to drive quite a bit past it and around the corner to come in behind it. They’ve built a large entrance way with a grift shop, bathrooms, children’s playground and bus service to the henge. You can of course, still walk to it if you like, but I’m getting old so I took the comfortable form of transportation. You can no longer go right up to touch the stones, but have to follow a circle pathway a safe distance from the stones. We met a Scottish security guard walking around Stonehenge and he answered a few questions we posed to him. I walked away to allow him to continue on his rounds, but Auntie had made a new friend and continued to talk to him. When Uncle and I caught up to them again, the Scottish security guard said to Uncle, “I hear we’ve had a wee bit of trouble in the round-a-bouts, ‘eh?” I busted out laughing and said I couldn’t believe Auntie told the security guard about Uncle’s driving skills. 

After Stonehenge, we drove to Bath which was about an hour away. Parking was a little walk from town and we headed to see the Roman baths, but we missed the last tour by five minutes. So, we found a pub instead and sat down for a refreshing beverage.

The barmaid gave us a recommendation to try The Raven for dinner and we headed there ready to try some local cuisine. She was not wrong! The place was adorable and the food fantastic! I had a wonderful stew with vegetables I had never tried before… turned out to be parsnips and something else we never figured out what it was but it was a bit spicy for me. My family will roll their eyes at that. The parsnips though were quite tasty… tasted somewhat like a carrot.

After dinner we decided to start heading back towards London and the airport as we were dropping off the car the next afternoon. Don had no desire to drive in London and I wasn’t thinking the front seat of that excursion would be much fun either. It was getting late so we decided to spend the night around Newbury, about an hour away, as I wanted to visit Newtown Road Cemetery the next morning. It’s the location one of my great-great uncles was buried. So, I found us a nice hotel for the night… in an English Pub… bring on Ye Olde Red Lion!

The room was nice, the bathroom/shower combo was European style, the bed was hard and I was too scared to touch the gas heater, so at 3:30am I was freezing… I added the pants back on and my coat and slept wonderfully the rest of the morning. Breakfast was a typically English – Sausage, ham, baked beans, eggs, cooked tomato and mushroom. It was so good but so much food!

It was raining when we awoke, and still drizzling as we finished eating, but we still headed to Newtown Road Cemetery. But what a disappointment. The grass hadn’t been cut in quite a bit and you could barely see the headstones. I couldn’t get ahold of the local David Gwinn – the person who supposedly knows where everyone is buried – so I just walked around for a bit, trying to find it on my own while the rain drizzled down and dampened my enthusiasm. After searching for about 30 minutes, I gave up and we headed to another spot. I noticed a castle in the area, so we headed towards it to get a view. It was called Highclere and Carol kept saying that sounded familiar but couldn’t place why. We found out when we got there. It’s the castle of Downton Abbey… which meant we weren’t getting close. Tickets sales were sold out and we weren’t allowed to even drive up to see it from the outside.

So, back down the long driveway we went and continued our journey to the airport to turn in the rental car. Confusing lanes, lots of traffic and after driving around the rental car entrance twice, we drove through the wrong entrance, rather it was the exit, Don pulled up alongside the sidewalk, not a parking space and said I’m done with this car and hopped out. I’m laughing, a car rental employee came out to tell us we came in through the exit, I said but we’re here and the car’s intact and he said no worries. We grabbed our bags and began our journey to the hotel….