Blogs from Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Gloucestershire. The Cotswolds. The area is very much on the tourist trail. Bus loads descend in the summer months on relatively tiny populations. Bourton on the Water. The Slaughters. Stow on the Wold. Similar column inches and visitor numbers are devoted to the Regency splendour of Cheltenham - home of grand Georgian buildings and of course, the famous racecourse. The county town of Gloucester is somehow overlooked by the hordes. Skirted by the M5 motorway by those on their way somewhere else and missed off the coach tour itineraries. It did not seem that way on this bright, sunny autumn morning. Traffic was busy. It showed congestion on the route towards the Quays. I cut off to head through the city centre. The major sporting stadium venue in these parts loomed. Kingsholm - home of Gloucester ... read more

Excursion to Robinswood Hill Country Park We got up at 8 o’clock on 19th September. The hotel didn’t provide breakfast, so we went to Poppins to have breakfast every day between 19th and 22nd September. We had English breakfast with a tea on 4 mornings. Mark had planned visiting Robinswood Hill Country Park on Tuesday 19th September. We took the bus from Clarence Street; it brought us to the bus stop near to destination in 20 minutes. He took me to the destination using his smart phone. It started drizzling when we started the ‘Geology Trail’. The trail contained a number of steep paths through bushes and woodlands – it increased my heart beat on the way to the summit. Drizzling continued and it was misty at the summit, but it offered fantastic views of Gloucester ... read more

Visit to Westbury Court Garden Unlike previous two days, a beautiful blue sky appeared in the morning on 21st September. Mark had planned visiting Westbury Court Garden on the west outskirts of Gloucester. The garden was due to open at 11 o’clock. We did a bit of shopping in the morning and caught the bus from the transport hub at 10.30. As soon as the bus left the town centre, the bus was running on the high speed road and went through the countryside. Mark was checking through the routes with his mobile. The bus brought us to the destination just before 11 o’clock. We found two striking buildings – St Mary & St Peter & St Paul Church and Lyon Inn Pub near the garden. As well as ourselves, several visitors turned up when garden ... read more

Well, I crashed into bed at about 8.30pm last night and slept just about straight through until the alarm went off at 7.25am this morning. Ah, sleep, it is a truly wondrous thing that enables the body to rest and repair itself. I felt so much better after a good night’s sleep. Apart from suffering something of a moral crisis that is. Bernie has been quite prepared to ignore the fact that he has had respiratory symptoms and just carry on regardless. This morning I am in a moral dilemma, should I go downstairs and confess to Kathleen that I have respiratory symptoms and ask her if she would prefer to put our breakfast on a tray for us to eat in our room??? I checked the UK’s COVID website. Hmn, it seems that under the ... read more

Today we headed south from Cirencester on the A429. As we passed the airfield at Kemble we caught a glimpse of some seriously large aircraft. In the glimpses that we had through the hedgerows we also saw some bunkers? Large Nissan-hut shaped lumps with turfed roofs. That had us thinking that the airfield is probably a former air-force base so it probably has some long runways for BA’s larger aircraft to land on for maintenance? We arrived in Castle Combe around 10.00am so it wasn’t too busy. We parked in the public parking area above the village and walked down through a tree-shaded valley into Castle Combe. The castle that it was named for, built by Sir Walter de Dunstaville in the 13th-century, is long gone and all that remains is a pretty little village beside ... read more