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Published: September 3rd 2008
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Day 2 - Tuesday 26th August
It was up and at them early for our trip to Hampton Court. First point of order was handing out the fines. I feel sorry for the Orange Emus, their guys get fined for anything - I predict they’ll have no money by the end of the trip. Of course Buddy was fined for being late, a massive 5 pound - fines are only 50 pence - as well as a fine for leaving his bag at the pre tour dinner. A break from tradition inspired by the Emus was daily changing of the sheriff, this was a first for Bob Lollback who’s always Sheriff and has never been fined. With that the day got underway with our new Sheriffs Lynne and Amanda who promptly set things in motion to guarantee fines.
Name tags were handed out with Scottish sayings on them - the tasks, find the owner of the tag you were given and translate the saying on your tag once you got it. You had to find the owner by the time we finished at Hampton Court and translate the message by the end of day meeting or face a fine.
With that it was off to Hampton Court.
There’s only one way to describe Hampton Court - HUGE!!! This place is massive and super gardens that include a maze. No one took the chance of going into the maze, afterall you might get lost and be back late for the bus costing you a fine. Most spent time checking out the buildings and grounds. The rooms are just amazing and the kitchens massive. There’s an original Kings Tennis Court (think a mix of tennis and squash) that was still in use. Actually, people still live at Hampton Court something to do with Royal favour etc….. After about an hour exploring something that you could spend all day at we sped off to Oxford.
At Oxford I decided to post a letter and spent the next hour in there - I think it was pension cheque day - you can read all about it in my supplemental blog “Great Post Offices of the World”. Needless to say this cut down my viewing time in Oxford.
How would I describe Oxford - well the general consensus of opinion seemed to be quaint with seriously HOT University chicks. The fact
they ride around on pushbikes wearing short skirts may have influenced the jury on the revisit rating of Oxford. The proof came when I wandered back up the road to find a few of the boys with front row seats for the parade as they sat eating exotic English food - KFC.
From Oxford it was on to Chipping Camden in the Cotswolds. Our guide Richard informed us that they keep the town having an original appearance by not allowing any other building materials except the traditional stone and in fact recycle the old buildings to ensure authenticity. There’s also no power lines. This illusion of oldness is only shattered by the presence of wheelie bins and satellite dishes - I suppose it’s hard to keep all of the modern world out.
On the way there we noticed the stone walls along the side of the road. We worked out this was how they kept the kids busy before television. “Go collect rocks out of paddock and build wall kids”. The first walls we saw were very neat with orderly tops then, a controversial style seemed to creep in as the kids rebelled and started putting the top
stones on end like a stegosaurus, we can only imagine the furore this breakout group caused back in the day.
As we approached the upcoming town it became apparent why all this practice went into building stone walls obviously the best, those showing true talent, went on to build stone houses. I’ve never seen so much stone in my life, no wonder they built everything out of it though, they had to find a reason to get it off the ground in the paddocks so they could grow food and raise cattle. I credit the growth of the English population with the discovery of the ability to stack stones into fences and houses.
So finally we arrive at Chipping Camden with its distinctive quarry stone houses. Get ready for it, ITS BIEGE!!!! I mean everything is beige - there’s not one house that looks different to the other, everything is made out of beige stone. The window frames are even painted beige or white. The only bit of individuality I saw was the occasional navy blue door. Imagine being a kid growing up there, you’d have to become a punk and dye your hair purple, either that or
become a serial killer. It was too much for me, I had to get out of there.
We left Chipping Norton to drive to a town near Stratford-Upon-Avon where we checked into a hotel/country retreat that was very much Faulty Towers with our own Manuela behind the bar. This was seriously funny as the barmaid, a Polish girl with limited English, would run off to reception after serving each person to pay for the drink and bring back the change. Needless to say, this set the tone for whole stay here.
After checking in it was time to try to translate our Scottish sayings - It’s a good thing no Scottish were present as they’d have been mighty offend at the treatment of their language. So how did we go with translating - out of 38 people I think only 2 got it right and just as many got something that sounded like a Scottish accent - the fine bucket will be full tomorrow.
We had a great night with most invading the local pub - I think our party at the pub was bigger than the towns population and by all reports the local publican and
staff were great. Some of us stayed at the hotel to continue enjoying the Fawlty Towers experience and were not disappointed especially when it came to settling the bill. I thought there was only one way of dividing by 11, apparently not ......
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