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Back in London where Brooke and Ric spoke English, as did many other people, we hired a car and set out on Ric’s scenic tour of the English country side. Funnily enough this started out in Slough, where we laughed about “The Office” and passed the signs for Staines where we laughed about the Ali G movie - by this point we are starting to wonder if there is a media or literary reference to everywhere in England?
Now the English countryside is quite beautiful, but as I had only had 3 hours sleep in Brussels the night before I have to admit I slept through most of it. But I was awake for the crucial moments - these being a fox on the road, a pheasant on the road and Stonehenge just off the road.
Stonehenge has been built up through Microsoft screen savers as this beyond all comprehension, massive monument to prehistoric engineering - cue 2001 A Space Odyssey music. We however were under whelmed by it. Don’t get me wrong, it is incredible that these rocks were transported hundreds of miles to this location, where stacked on top of each other, survived the elements for aeons
Like a Kid in a Candy Store
Tan finds the Sweet Shop overwhelming and nobody knows how the hell they got there - but it just isn’t as big as we had been lead to believe. Thanks a lot photographers with your dawn lighting trickery. Plus nobody is allowed to touch it - so there is a walking circle where tourists go around and around like a pagan zombie dance trying to find the best snapshot angle. We however being cheap back packing hobos chose to not pay the £5 entry fee to go into the tunnel under the road and onto the other side of the fence, instead we crossed the road, looked through the fence, (which was only 3 metres away from the tourists inside the fence) took our snapshots through the holes in the fence and were scowled at by the people who paid to be on the other side of the fence. Brilliant. We then got back in the car and carried on.
On the road I caught up on more sleep and awoke to explore an old ruined cathedral, then Wells Cathedral (which wasn’t ruined) where we were just in time to hear the choristers sing and see a lady drop of a cat she had in
her basket. Dotted around the Cathedral were prayers that people had written for loved ones that had passed and there was an overwhelmingly creepy sense of death in the air. I have been to more religious sites in the last couple of weeks than I have in my whole life.
I managed to stay awake for the remainder of the car ride to the pub we were staying at and regaled my fellow travellers with story after story about Belgium which they probably weren’t that interested in. When we arrived in Talybont on Esk ate a pub meal and rang Tan at his grandmothers from a payphone to have an argument about whether Talybont on Esk actually existed - a local man came along and flashed his torch at us and preceeded to tell us a story about a cat or something.
Getting lost in a Welsh town means asking locals where to go - I think Ric got us lost on purpose for this very reason. Whilst looking for the street that Tan's grandmother lived on we came across a burly looking chap with Love and Hate tatooed on his fingers and a Mickey Mouse polo shirt.
He tried to tell us where it was off the top of his head and then remembered that he had a GPS system in his car - which he didnt know how to use. No problem, we moved onto a woman who had lived in the town a mere 18 years and had no idea what we were talking about. After the terror of nearly dropping off a cliff we found it and it resembled my parents driveway - again, assuming that this is only my friends reading this - we were greeted by Tan, Olive and Keith and a wonderful homemade / store bought lunch followed by a trip to the pub near the top of a slag heap - so many many puns. The pub had a small church with a graveyard and Olive was very pleased to inform us that buried there was Guto Nyth Bran who ran a race against a race horse and won, but met his maker when someone slapped him on the back to congratulate him.
Now I am staying in the comfort of Ric's sister Rachel's beautiful house in Yorkshire somewhere. Today we had the pleasure of visiting the worlds oldest
I've given up on Titles...
Abbie, Brooke, Rachel and Ric sweet shop - which is debatable as Barrie says there is a chain of them - and a National Trust Abbey (there were many jokes about Abbie and the Abbey, none of which were funny but it was Tan telling them so we dont exactly expect much) which included some beautiful ruins, lakes, swans, an alien sounding baby in the cafeteria and a squashed frog. All this was too good so we joined the National trust as soon as possible. Now we are allowed in for free. Awesome.
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Preston
Preston White
Image of Tan
Tan looks on the verge of tears at being in the candy store. He really is an odd boy.