England was: (surprise!) cold, damp, alternately great and annoying. (I caught a rather nasty cold) Overall it was very fun. We had amazing breaks in the weather just as we got to Stonehenge, Avebury, and all of the other outdoor sites we visited. It rained almost the rest of the time, solid. I only packed one long-sleeved shirt so I wore it most of the trip. PHEW! Thank heavens for deoderant. I sweated a lot. We walked a lot (BOY did my feet hurt). We ate a lot of pub food (Amber lived on Ploughman's Platters-- bread, cheese, salad and pickle) and had a lot of great beer! I highly recommend a stout called "Theakston's Old Peculiar" and a bitter called "Speckled Hen". Theakston's "Best Bitter" is also quite nice.

Let's see... first day in London we went to the Tower (of course) and managed to keep Amber from drooling on the jewels. She would have made the traditional attempt to get a smile out of one of the guards but it was cold, rainy and windy so she decided not to. Had dreadful fish and chips at a place across from the Tower. Spent all the next day at the British Museum and barely saw anything besides the Egyptian stuff (Amber's favorite). It was amazing to see the Rosetta Stone just lying out, not even glassed-in! The place is HUGE!! After that our feet were too sore to walk any more so we caught an open-topped double-decker tour bus and gawked at all the sights like real yokels. (Whaddaya want? We're Ammurikans!) We saw a lovely stone gargoyle head we wouldn't have ever noticed from street level.

In London we spent as little time as possible in our B&B which had tiny, ugly, shabby rooms reeking of cigarette smoke, and in general was a real hole. (WARNING: Do NOT stay at St. David's Hotel, Norfolk Square) It was situated *directly* above one of the Paddington Station lines so every few minutes, all day and all night, everything shook and rattled as a train arrived or left the station. It was "en suite" only by virtue of having a sink, toilet and shower in what had probably been the closet before they turned it into a "bathroom." Fortunately there was a very nice pub just around the corner with great food (Fountains Abbey on Praed Street across from Old St. Mary's Hospital) we loved their meat "pies" which were more like stews with a puff-pastry crust, and their blackberry-apple crumble served with hot custard. Amber and Mark suprised me by really getting into the World Cup, watching it every evening in our B&B's.

The next day we picked up our rental car (a cute little copper coloured Fiat) on the way out of town and drove to Stonehenge. Ate lunch at The New Inn in Amesbury (and that night Mark had the strange experience of reading a mention of that very pub in the second book of the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay!! Weird!) Amber loved Stonehenge, despite not being able to get very close, and took a zillion pictures of it. There was some artist guy in a geeky hat who got to go into the circle to sketch, which we thought was monumentally unfair since we couldn't. I was pleased to learn from one of the guides that the circle was going to be opened to a some selected Neopagan groups at Solstice (the day we were leaving England, unfortunately!) for the first time in many years.

Left Stonehenge and went to Bath. Got in, managed to find our B&B (a lovely place but kind of hard to find, and parking is as scarce there as it is in Boulder!) and walked into the city center to explore Bath, going to the Bath museum, the Costume museum, and just generally touristing. I really love the Bath museum site. It's a very hands-on experience, and the place is awesome. I can only imagine what it must have been like in its heyday, filled with bathers, its arched roof protecting patrons from Britannia's notoriously rainy weather. I wish the water wasn't contaminated so you could still 'take the waters' in the Pump Room like the Georgians did. It would have been fun. The architecture in Bath is wonderful, very Palladian with all those great townhouse Crescents everywhere. The Costume Museum was more interesting than it was the last time I saw it, with many more displays and a new section of more modern clothing. Amber seemed to enjoy it as well.

The next day we had planned to go to Glastonbury and Avebury, but due to time constraints we decided to skip Glastonbury and just did Avebury and the nearby West Kennet Long Barrow. Stopped at a Sainsbury's (a chain supermarket) to buy picnic stuff and went to Avebury first. On the way to Avebury we did see a chalk-cut White Horse on a hillside, but it was a Victorian-era one and not very interesting. Avebury, on the other hand, was wonderful. I can't stress this enough. If you have a choice between seeing Avebury or Stonehenge, then go to Avebury. It's so much more accessible and interesting, not to mention a lot less crowded. The site is probably 4 times the size of Stonehenge, and older to boot. The stones are not as 'worked' as those at Stonehenge, but no less impressive. The site is open, not roped off, and you can wander the entire site, touch the stones, scare the sheep, etc. There's a small village built partially inside the circles, and many of the original stones were broken up and used in its construction, but there are markers showing where the stones were. Amber adored Avebury. We spenta long time there, and had a picnic lunch in the shade of some trees.

From there we went to Silbury Hill and the West Kennet Long-Barrow, (both very close to Avebury) a chambered barrow that has been opened to the public so that you can go in and see the chambers. Amber opted to stay in the car for that (she did that a lot, which was part of what was annoying...) It's quite a steep hike but worth it. It's a very odd feeling to be inside what you know is a grave. They've put glass bricks into the ceiling to let a little light in, but it's still dim, damp, and evocative. When we finished there we pretty much had to hightail it back to Bath in time to meet Melanie Miller-Fletcher, an e-friend who lives in Sweden but was visiting England with her Brit hubby at the time.

Mel and I almost missed each other in Bath, too. We had arranged to meet in front of the Roman Baths in Bath at 7pm and waited for them until 7:30 and we gave up and went and had dinner at the Saracen's Head pub (loud and very singles-bar-ish). Then as we were heading back to the B&B we happened to be crossing the square in front of the Baths and I hear this scream "KELLIE!" and there they are! It turned out that they'd gotten delayed in traffic and been late arriving, and it was sheer luck we went back that way! We went to a different restaurant so Mel and Lyn could get dinner and we talked and had a wonderful time. Unfortunately they had to leave all too soon. :-( (Click here to see a pic of the three of us.)

Spent most of the next day driving along the Welsh border up toward Chester, stopping at a small castle along the way which made us get in rather late so we only had time to walk into the city center and find a place to eat dinner, then walk back to the B&B and crash. Mitchell's of Chester was probably our best B&B on the trip. Gorgeous place, en-suite with a shower that was actually big enough to turn around in, and very nice hosts. I was a little disappointed that we didn't have more time in Chester because I really wanted to see the Amphitheatre there, and maybe hunt up the Roman Military Museum I'd heard about, which had been closed on my last trip to England. Oh well. Next time!

The following day was our 'Wales' day. We went to Conway Castle on the Northern coast, then drove through Snowdonia (GORGEOUS! And there was this rather amusing 5-pence toll bridge we had to go over at one point.) to Portmerion, a strange little Italianate village on the coast of Wales where they used to film the 1960's TV series "The Prisoner". That was Mark's "pilgrimage". He bought a bunch of souvenirs at the "Prisoner" shop there, and took a ton of pix. Amber admired the cute guy with Siamese-cat eyes who sold us ice-cream. Drove back to Chester by way of Caernavon (just drove past, didn't stop) and did a bit of a detour onto Angelsey but it was so late in the evening that we couldn't see much.

Next day we stopped briefly in Liverpool so Mark could go to the Beatles Museum there, and then we drove on to Carlisle through the Lake Country, which is every bit as lovely as people always tell you it is. We stopped in Windermere to have lunch and listen to a bit of the soccer game. Amber really liked our waiter, a handsome young Scotsman with a lovely accent who teased her just a bit and put extra goodies on her chocolate ice-cream. :-) Mark had to take a picture of a place called "The Hobbit Coffee Shop". I took pix of the scenery. Next trip, I want to spend more time in the Lake District.

Because Amber was sick of museums, we truncated the Hadrian's Wall portion of the trip and we only saw a short section, and the small museum at Birdoswalda. for pix of Birdoswalda.) That was actually quite a nice site. I picked up a lovely pewter and copper Celtic/Saxon brooch there at the gift shop. They also sold "sheep dropping" mints, which we found quite hilarious after stepping over tons of the stuff at varous sites.

After we left Birdoswalda, we went out of our way to find Amber another stone circle because we knew she liked the neolithic sites we had found, It was called Castlerigg, and it's near Keswick. This was probably my favorite place on the entire trip. It's a small but beautifully preserved circle, with an incredible view, but I warn you, there's a Farmer's Joke. There's a sign that points off the road and says "public footpath to Castlerigg" which leads you for at least a mile through mucky pastures, replete with cows, sheep, and droppings of both varieties... and you end up crossing the main road and going to the Circle to find out that you can actually drive right up to within about 20 yards of the thing. Fortunately we only got a little way up that path before we encountered someone coming back who warned us so we went back to the car and drove over. :-) Amber, of course, refused to get out of the car, preferring to read. GRRRR! (Unfortunately she got ahold of the Tanya Huff vampire series which I had brought along for myself, but she read each one as soon as I finished, to the exclusion of all else. I should have remembered from my own youth that teenagers need more 'space'.).

We got to Carlisle and found that there's nothing much there, which was okay, since it was really just a place to spend the night before going on down to Yorkshire. The B&B (Howard House) owner had two friendly black cats, though, one of whom looked a lot like our cat, Charcoal (but with all 4 legs), so we got a good cat-fix there.

Next day we drove down to York via Fountains Abbey and the Studley Royal Water Gardens. Fountains was one of the largest abbeys in England when it was dissolved by Henry Tudor (Henry VIII). The architecture is absolutely wonderful, and the surviving ruins are spectacular. There's a ruined spiral staircase that lets you see exactly how it was built, and a small stream (they call it a river) that runs next to the abbey, and further on is diverted into the series of sculpted waterways that constitutes the Water Gardens, replete with swans and pheasant. It was very beautiful and restful, though we had to make the requisite American jokes about it being "studly." :-) Skipping the deer-park, we left there late in the afternoon and journeyed on to York, proper.

In York we stayed at The Heathers guest house, another *very* nice and non-smoking establishment. Blessings be upon our host who was a bit of a gourmet did not serve baked beans at breakfast, though Amber and Mark's request for 'hard scrambled' eggs was met with a certain amount of disdain -- "Road gradings" he called them. :-) Anyway, next day we did the walking tour of York (without Amber, again!) then went back and got her for lunch, and souvenir shopping in The Shambles (cute touristy Tudor mews) and an open-air market. By the time we finished I was exhausted (damned cold really messed with my stamina!) and we forgot to go in the Minster to see the stained glass from the INside! Argh! I'm still kicking myself over that one.

Next day it was mostly highway driving and countryside as we went back to London and unfortunately back to the St. David's where we had reservations. At least we got a different, slightly better room this time, though not en-suite. Oh well. At least it had a window, a shower and a sink, though the toilet was down the hall. I was dead tired and feeling crummy so I stayed in the room while Mark and Amber took the Tube to Shepherd's Bush (a London suburb) so Amber could make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of her favorite band (Bush), and then went shopping at the Virgin Superstore.

When they came back, Amber stayed in the room while Mark and I went to the London Dungeon, and the London Museum which had a wonderful chronological history of London. Our last day was spent seeing Westminster Abbey, but by then Mark had come down with the cold and his stamina was shot, too. Then it was up at 5:00 am to catch the plane, which was an adventure in itself. At Gatwick we had to go through security FOUR different times! Argh! And let me tell you, they do NOT have a clue about e-tickets. They must have asked us for our tickets at least 50 times.But, we did finally make it home.