Gunga-If it's Friday it must be York

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Many of you who have followed my blogs for years may be surprised to learn that I am on a tour traveling with 41 other 'seniors' through a lot of England, a bit of Wales, and ending up in Edinburgh, Scotland. As I previously told you I had never been to any of those countries. I guess this is what one might call a 'survey' trip as there is barely enough time for a lunch at some of the stops. What I am liking is that at even the short ' look around the town and grab a bit of lunch' stops I have the freedom to do a bit of independent roaming.

I am going to outline the trip so you'll get a sense of where I 've been. Since so many of you have been to these very same places I don't want to be redundant. I also don't feel the need to give a lot of background or history since most of us have already suffered through multiple history classes with all the Kings and Queens of England. A bloody savage lot some of them were too.

I will outline the trip and fill in more details as time and Internet service allow. By the way, I was not able to download pictures from my camera even using the neat adapter cable that connected it to my iPad. All that showed up were some pics from my I phone ( which wasn't even plugged in to the ipad ) too weird. Kudos to all of you who googled the Sargent picture.

Ok - started in London (the day you fly out of the US is counted as Day 1 of your trip)and had about a day and a half ( days 2 & 3) there, certainly not enough to do or see much. I already wrote about what I did there at the Tate Museum. I may go back to London someday but I am not really sure that a huge city is really ' my cup of tea'.

Day 4- started out as a beautiful sunny day as we drove to Oxford. We've all heard of Oxford and probably seen many glimpses of it in movies including scenes from some of the Harry Potter films. Unlike many 'famous' places that disappoint in person ( the Alamo and Plymouth Rock come to mind), Oxford more than lives up to its reputation. Every bit of it was fabulous. I wanted to stay there at least a week and wander in and out of the fantastic buildings. As luck would have it there seemed to be some sort of Morris dancers celebration going on. You can google 'Morris dancers' to see some raccous performances. Most people in our group had never seen or heard of them before but being formerly from Shelburne Falls, MA, I knew all about them as several times a year they would perform in front of McCusker's store. More on Oxford in a future blog.

After lunch we headed to Stratford -on- Avon. No explanations needed here. Another big celebration was going on as it was the anniversary of the Bard's death. Unlike 'dead week' in Memphis where Elvis gets a whole weeks of events, Shakepeare only gets one day. Priorities, priorities.

We spent 2 nights ( days 4 & 5) in Cheltenham. Day 5 was amazing with visits to not one but two World Heritage Sites- the Roman baths at Bath and Stonehenge.

Days 6 & 7 were in Wales. I will write more later but suffice it to say that Wales is a delight and would make a wonderful vacation spot all on its own.

Days 8,9, & 10 were in York with a visit on the way to the sweet town of Chester where I had a wonderful lunch experience with Gerald Tilston - more on that in a later blog.

Day 11is what is called ' a travel day'- read that as a day on the bus. We've had several of these days and our dear guide, Wendy, tries to keep them interesting. She tells us gobs of information about what we've seen or will soon be seeing. She plays CD's of choirs and singing groups and makes sure that we have a WC stop just about every two hours. We will be heading to the Lake District so dear to all those poets we endured in Freshman English class - Wordsworth and Keats to name a few.

Days 12 - 14 will be heading to Edinburgh with a lunch stop ( yep, another 'travel day') in Gretna Green, a place I' d never heard of but apparently it was once 'THE' spot for couples to go to who wanted to elope.

Day 15- back to the US.

I will be staying with my brother for a few days so will try to catch up on blogs from there. While in Massachusetts I am going to go to Shelburne Falls to visit with many friends. I may end up blogging after I return to Memphis towards the end of May.

That pretty much sums up where I've been and where I'm headed. Traveling with a group is fine with me as I could not even begin to see how I could have put a trip of this magnitude together. I know many have done it and think nothing of renting a car and touring but driving in Eng. or Ireland is not for me. I do like to travel independently and I've had many opportunities on this trip to go off on my own yet still have had the convenience of nice hotels, someone else schlepping the suitcase, and door to door transportation. What's not to like?

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