Advertisement
Published: September 17th 2017
Geo: 51.688, -2.36041
While we were out walking on Tuesday, we kept track of exactly when my feet started to bother me. At 12 miles, the pain would just start....bearable but uncomfortable. Unfortunatley by 15.5 miles, the pain was enough to bring tears to my eyes AND make me a miserable walking partner. I had just managed to hobble into Painswick the night before after 17 miles and we were due to walk 20 miles to Dursley. Now the one thing I have really enjoyed about this country is its public transportation. There are buses that run up and down through all th villages.....so we decided to take the day off walking and see the countryside by bus.
The first bus took us into a the town of Stroud. We asked for directions to the Tourist Information Center and wound our way up through town. On the way, we decided to stop into a card shop to send a birthday card to my Great Uncle Bernie. Mom and I got so tickled while reading the cards that we were crying. the cards are so irreverent here and the sense of humor is just bawdy. They mix real sentimental ones right in with the
dirty ones. We finally had to stop reading the cards to go find the bathrooms!
We spent a nice day wandering the town.....they have charity stores (like Goodwill) where people donate to their favorite charities and then the charity sells the donated items. Each town proboably has 5+ stores of this type. They're just fun to browse through. Before we left Stroud.....we hit the bakery! We've got priorities!
We took our next bus to Dursley where we again perused the shops and the bakery......raspberry turnover with clotted cream inside with the raspberries! We have also developed into proper Englishwomen and require tea in the morning, afternoon and evening!
Now Dursley was the one place we were staying where there was very little in the way of accomodation. But the Sherpa Van website recommended a lady who takes in walkers. Well, Miss Ronnie Harding was our hostess for the evening. What a gem! She and her sister, Carol.....picture Calendar Girls, or the Bristish version of Golden Girls or (from the super early days of Food Network) Two Fat Ladies! They were the sweetest pair.....I'm sure its how Todd and I will end up someday.....two old ladies, with two cats and a dog, a garden
and the ability to entertain strangers!
Laugher of the day.....besides the cards, which I'll email out when I get home because I took pictures of most of them! Ok, so Mom decided she was going to wash out some of her clothes in the sink and hang them to dry. So, I too, thought I'd wash some underwear. (I brought enough for one week, thinking I'd wash it once and then after I wore it the second time, i'd throw it away. I have more than any two people can wear in 3 months so it was a way to get rid of some of my older pairs!) Well, I washed all of it, rung it all out.....and THEN realized that this wasn't panties you would want to hang outside for all the neighborhood to see! So I put a towel down in the room, laid it all out and prayed that it would dry quickly. As we were preparing for bed, hours later, it was still as wet as when I'd washed it!
Now most newer English homes have these little long rectangular wndows at the top of their big picture windows and the window in our bedroom had two. Two
locking handles push the wndow out so I thought it would be intelligent to hang my panties on the window handles. I figured if they were outside all night, maybe they'd dr and we've been awake early enough that we should be able to pull it back in before anyone noticed.
First, I'm too short to reach the handles while they have been pushed out so I made Mom hang all my underwear outside. Secondly, just as we get settled in bed.....the outside light pops on so Ronnie can let the dog out! I kept hinking, please don't look up! My panties are right above your head! Mom and I had to bury our faces for fear that our laughter would cause Ronnie to look toward our room!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.059s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 16; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0277s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ko
non-member comment
I love the underwear story. Reminds me of the time my mom left hers and my dads out on the clothesline all night. Only to discover the next morning that some bored teens in the neighborhoohd had fun removing them off of the line overnight
and tastefully placed them on their bushes, mailbox, lamppost , trees and front door. You can imagine my dad's face the next morning when he went out to get the paper!