Blogs from Berkshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 3

Michelin Star Count: Today 0; Trip 8 So today we left our humble abode in Bray and travelled to the Cotswolds for a quiet day of walking around. The Cotswolds are a bunch of little country towns with some of the coolest names. Stow on the Wold, Upper Slaughter, Bourton on the Water are the three we spent some time in today. Sweet little villages, leaning a bit to the touristy side but still worth the drive. Wonderful sites on the way. We had a reservation at a pub just outside of Stow that was supposed to do the best Sunday roast in the area. Sunday roast is a big thing here. Beef. Potatoes. Yorkshires. The whole 9 yards. Now the important word in that last sentence was had. Midday Saturday I got an email from ... read more

Well we did say it’d go quiet for a while, well it did for sure. The search for the right RV has been more difficult than we ever imagined it would be. But... finally we hit gold. An obscure sequence of events and conversations lead us to a vehicle that we unanimously and almost immediately said, Yes!! This is the one for us. We are in no rush so we left it with a workshop, cue’d the music (as they say on Top Gear) and left to start buying toys to help us on our travels. I’ll leave it there for now and do a more detailed post when we finally take delivery. That should be very soon so please do watch this space...... read more

The English summer is true to form. There’ll be some rain, cloud and sunshine today. At the moment there is light drizzle. After we get our chores done we prepare for our trip to Windsor. We have not visited Windsor before but have seen the castle tower from afar. We will call today’s trip an exploratory trip, we won’t be visiting the castle. We offer to drive our hosts on this outing. We leave Jane behind and use local knowledge to get through the highways and by-ways without going on the dreaded M25. We are equipped with jackets, raincoats, umbrellas, sun hats, and cameras. It is a picturesque approach to the town. Tree lined streets, nice houses, and the River Thames meandering by. We follow a sign to a convenient carpark close to the centre of ... read more

We slept in a little longer today, since we only had one item on the itinerary and that was a day trip to Windsor to tour the castle. We walked from our hotel to Waterloo Station. It was about a 20-minute walk across the Waterloo Bridge over the Thames. The train we would be taking is basically the commuter system for greater London, similar to LIRR or Metro North, just more comfortable and less crowded, well except for the two stops full of children on their way to a zoo or something. It was pretty easy to figure out which train and buy our tickets, it helps when it is all in English unlike when we are on the Continent. The trip was about 50 minutes passing through the outer part of London, suburbs then countryside. ... read more

Thursday and our last full day in London and its going to be another perfect warm late summers day. Today we have a plan to visit Windsor Castle and get it ticked off the bucket list. Our previous trips to London have seen us staying either out the east side or south of London Bridge and too far away to make Windsor a day trip without leaving really early in the morning. From Brentford though we are just a stone’s throw away, so to speak. Actually it became a bit of a logistical nightmare to select a transport route to get to Windsor mainly because there was a slightly closer over ground railway station called Kew Bridge which Google wanted us to use yet there were infrequent services from there to take us to the line ... read more