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Published: October 10th 2008
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We chose to sleep in this morning for the first time on the trip, which of course meant forgoing breakfast since we would have missed our 15-minute seating window. Today we decided to do more of an American style trip. We would take the dogs on a short run on the beach so they could stretch their legs, and then we'd venture back into civilization to see the city of Bath. As usual, the dogs loved their run on the beach. They made friends, well Wicket made friends and Ziggy tried to scare Wicket's friends away, and played in the sand. The boys decided it was too cold to venture back into the ocean though, which was better since they didn't end up dragging half the beach back into the car with them.
Bath was a short drive away, or so we thought. After being out of the bustle for a few days and seeing only other walkers we had forgotten that there were still things like traffic jams out there in the world. Everyone is always saying how horrible traffic can be in England, but I'd never really appreciated it. Traffic was sometimes slow on the way to or
from Manchester, but that was nothing compared to Bath. Welcome to the South. We sat for over an hour at the entrance to a roundabout on the way into the city. There was no accident, no car blocking a lane, just a bottleneck from the sheer number of cars trying to get into or out of Bath. Lovely. To make things worse, just as we finally reached our turn at the round about and were starting to think of where to park to go into the city, the heavens opened up. It hadn't really rained on us the entire trip, but it sure seemed to be trying to make up for it today. We parked up in the first parking lot we could find and sat in the car, waiting for the rain to slow. After about 10 minutes of waiting with no change, we decided that we'd have to do some speed sight seeing. We left the boys in the car, thinking it would be easier to run through the busy city streets alone and took off.
We sped past the famous Bath bathhouses, and past the Bath Abbey. I snapped a couple of pictures just to prove
that we were there. We ducked into Subway for some lunch and a chance to get out of the rain. Clutching our sandwiches to our chests we ran back to the car and arrived soaking wet. We shed our outer layers and settled in with the heater on. The boys seemed jealous of our meatball feast, but didn't seem particularly bothered about being left in the car.
After lunch we braved the dreaded roundabout again and headed for our next B&B in the Cotswolds. We were again, heading away from the sea and back into the forests and fields of middle England. We pulled off the side of the road about half an hour from our new B&B for a quick walk. It was a nice short walk through some farm land. Nothing spectacular, but the dogs were happy to get out of the car, and I was happy not to strain myself.
After our short walk we arrived at the next B&B. Well, I should say we passed it, turned around, missed it again, turned around and finally arrived. This was the most personal of the B&B's we'd stayed in so far. We did not have our
own wing or even our own house key. We were staying in the back bedroom of a very nice older couple's home. Ordinarily I wouldn't be comfortable with this kind of arrangement, but the couple was very friendly and one of them was even American. We chatted with them for a couple of hours over tea and learned many things about the area. One of the most helpful bits of information was about a very nice restaurant in an old lodge about 5 minutes away on the old "commons". The commons were large expanses of green space which belonged to the community and were available for grazing their sheep. What made these spaces so interesting was the strict preservation laws around them. Because the land belongs to the community and has done for hundreds of years, it is nearly impossible to get permission to build anything on them. This includes roads, street signs and lamps. So what you end up with is a very large piece of flat land with one road that goes around it, no signs and absolutely no lights. I've never seen anything so dark. It was eery, and it certainly didn't make it easy to find
the restaurant. Well, that wasn't exactly true. The restaurant was easy to find. It was the one light source in the middle of the darkness. It was the road that lead to the restaurant that was hard to find. After a couple tries we found it and parked in front of the old lodge.
The food was AMAZING. And the building was absolutely beautiful. There were several dining areas throughout the restaurant and a very nice cozy bar area with big leather arm chairs. There were 5 or 6 fireplaces too, so the restaurant felt toasty and comfortable. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, which was evident by our bill. But it was worth it.
We returned to the B&B by 9PM so as not to disturb anyone with our arrival. We let the dogs out into the back yard for their nightly pee and poo and then headed to bed.
To view the full set of photos from this day of our trip see our site on Flickr
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