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Published: April 9th 2008
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At the butt crack of dawn (9am for us) we dragged ourselves out of bed and packed up the car. I'm not sure anyone has ever smashed so many things into the trunk of a Nissan Micra before, but after several tries and a couple of good shoulder slams the hatch finally closed. We were off! Ziggy spent the first several hours sitting on the shelf above the back seat crying and occasionally farting. It made for a very pleasant drive. Wicket, reveling in his role as "the good child" slept most of the way, waking up only briefly to snarl at Ziggy for jumping off the shelf too near to his sleeping spot. It rained pretty steadily for the first 2 hours of the drive and we started to prepare ourselves for some very wet, cold walks with some very muddy dogs. We knew we were getting close when the motorway started telling us we were heading toward The SOUTH.
The first stop was for a short walk through the Chiltern Sculpture Trail in the Cowleaze woods. The Cowleaze woods are located near the bustling town of Christmas Commons in Oxfordshire, which I'm pretty sure has a population of
approximately 7. We weren't sure we were in the right place since the parking lot consisted of some muddy clearings in the trees with no signs and only one other car to be seen. But the rain had let off and so we thought "what the hell" and put on our walking shoes and set off. After a few minutes we came to a picnic area with a sign telling us we'd entered the Chiltern Sculpture Trail. We had found the right place after all. The trail was quite pretty even if it was a little muddy. The dogs seemed happy just to be out of the car. They were very cute adventuring off together into the woods and then running back as fast as they could once they realized that we had moved on up the trail. We walked for about 20 minutes before we realized that we hadn't seen any sculptures. This seemed a bit strange, but we weren't really sure what kind of sculptures to expect so we thought maybe we'd seen them and just not noticed them. There were a couple of lean-to looking things made out of sticks which we thought might have been sculptures,
but they could just as easily be hobo houses too. So we were a bit stumped. The dogs didn't seem to care though. In one clearing we found lots of good fetching sticks and the dogs proceeded to race for the sticks for about half an hour. We decided this was a brilliant idea since they were running their asses off and we could just stand there lobbing sticks. Genius. The game ended when I found Ziggy stuck neck deep in a very sticky mud puddle. It was definitely time to move on. We finished the walk without seeing a single sculpture. We did, however, see many plaques which claimed that there were sculptures all around us. It felt a bit like The Emperor's New Clothes, but in the end we decided that they had probably been removed. So it wasn't so much a sculpture trail as it was just a trail, but it was still fun. Well, it was fun most of the time. There was a dodgy 10 minutes or so when several very large hawks circled over our very small, rabbit like dogs. I was sure they were being hunted, but when we headed back into the
woods they got tired of waiting and flew off.
The dogs were not particularly happy being back in the car, but after smearing mud all over most of the car they settled back into their previous routine of farting and snarling. We worked our way back out of Christmas Commons and headed toward lovely Woodstock to see Blenheim Palace. We found the town with very little trouble, mostly due to Martin's expert map reading. However, upon arriving in the town of Woodstock we drove right past the very large, gold-plated gates and the sign saying "this way to Blenheim Palace" because Martin wasn't sure this was the entrance. We then had to turn around and Mary got her first taste of southern driving. Trying to turn right onto the main road was an interesting experience and after 5 minutes of waiting for a break in traffic we decided the only way out of here was to just pull out in front of someone and hope they stopped. It worked and we headed up the driveway to Blenheim Palace (not before paying our 20 quid, of course). The palace was somewhat disappointing. Maybe it was the grey weather, or maybe
it was the fact that the stone that the house was built out of was a poop orange color. Its not clear. Either way, we figured we should atleast get our money's worth. So we took the dogs on a walk around the outer grounds of the palace, because of course the dogs weren't allowed anywhere near the actual gardens. God forbid one of them poop on the gravel that they call a front lawn. I guess when you're the Duke of Marlborough, you're free to do as you like. In protest, we allowed the dogs to chase his geese. Toward the end of this walk we saw our first Pheasant. Mary had never seen a wild Pheasant before and was amazed by how tame it was. Martin explained that they're not so much tame as painfully stupid which leads to their eventual destruction. Mary thought they were pretty. Little did we know that the entire south of England is crawling with Pheasants, and in fact, they are painfully stupid and seem to take pleasure in running out in front of your car. No wonder they're dinner.
After walking the dogs around the outer grounds we stuffed them back
into the car and, much to their dismay, left them in the parking lot to explore the inner gardens of the palace. We were, not unexpectedly, unimpressed. But it was nice that since we'd only arrived at the palace about an hour before it was closing we had the entire grounds to ourselves. Begrudgingly, Mary conceded that the palace actually was quite pretty from the back and that some of the gardens were nice. She still maintains that the dogs could have come along. The most impressive of the gardens was The Secret Garden which Mary insisted on visiting, but was again disappointed to realize that it was not in fact the garden from the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel. Darn.
Once we'd had our fill of hoity-toity gardens and hedge mazes we headed back onto the open road. It was getting late now and we still had to find our first accommodation: an inn called Killingworth Castle. Amazingly we found the inn without making a single wrong turn (I suppose it helps when the town its in only has one street). It was beautiful. There was a slight mist on the ground which made it seem even more inviting
inside. We checked in and hauled all of our crap and dogs into our first room. Conveniently, the inn was also a pub and so dinner was just outside our room. Unlike Marlborough, the people of the tiny town of Wooten enjoy the company of dogs and so our boys were welcomed wholeheartedly into the pub. Wicket was, of course, a good boy and laid obediently under the table. Ziggy, on the other hand, took the opportunity to try out the full range of whining noises he could make. Some of them were so high pitched that we coudln't even hear them, but most of them were well within the annoying range. Despite everyone's insistence that he wasn't bothering them, we decided he might be better off in the room. So the dogs were banished from the pub.
We had a really nice dinner and met the very friendly French owner of the restaurant and her young daughters. We also met the slightly sinister character Derek, who must of been the town's resident drunken nut. Anyone who went anywhere near the bar was obliged to speak to him about one thing or another. Martin was asked on which horse he would be betting in the upcoming Grand National. It was one of those towns where everyone seemed to know everyone else and the pub was full of regulars. We enjoyed watching their interactions and were sad to leave, but by about 10:30pm we were exhausted. We put on Little Miss Sunshine in bed and fell fast asleep. A good first day to our trip
To view the full set of photos from this day of our trip see our site on Flickr
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