This morning Kath made a cooked breakfast for us all. We kept asking what we could do to help, but she insisted that she had it all under control. She did at least let Bernie juice the oranges. While we were waiting for breakfast we tried to share as many tips as we could think of about Lisbon, Sintra and Porto as Robin and Sandra are off to Portugal on Monday. They are doing a tour but are travelling to Sintra independently and may have some free time in Lisbon and Porto. Hopefully we have given them some information that may prove useful to them. After breakfast we packed out bags to head off to Northumberland for a few days. We are trying to wring the last little bit out of our holiday before we fly ... read more

Bernie washed some clothes this morning. It was safer for Bernie to do battle with Kath’s washing machine. It has been playing up a bit lately, refusing to finish its cycle, so I didn’t dare touch it with my history with household electrical items!! I did not want to be held responsible for finishing it off completely. As per usual, Bernie proved to have the magic touch and the machine completed its entire cycle without any problems. With the weather looking promising for drying clothes the clothes were hung out on the line. Albert collected Kath from the hairdresser and we packed the car to head over to Bakewell. Bernie was talking about Bakewell tarts a couple of days ago so we decided that seemed like a good enough excuse to driver over to Bakewell … ... read more

This morning we left the Cotswolds behind us to head north, but not before one final stop at Gloucester Cathedral. We were going to drive into Gloucester yesterday afternoon but Bernie checked their opening times before we left only to discover that much of the cathedral was going to be closed from 4.00pm. We decided that we could fit a quick visit in on our way this morning when we would be able to explore more of the the cathedral. A place of worship on or near this site dates as far back as Osric, King of the Hwicce, when he established a minster, Gloucester Abbey, in around 679. In approximately 1058 a new abbey was built and construction of the present building commenced in 1089 following a devastating fire the previous year. This marked a ... 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