21. South England

Tuesday, June 4

We left Cardiff driving through typical city outskirts and heavy traffic on our way to Bath, an old Roman city with healing hot springs. The legend is that a great Celtic King had a bad skin disease and exiled himself from his people as he was afraid they might catch it from him. Living alone under the Oaks in the woods he watched the wild pigs. They enjoyed rolling in the mud by the hot springs and they had the most beautiful skin. He decided to try it and in time was completely cured. He went back to his people to share and rule. Later when the Romans came, they developed the area.

We skirted the Cotswolds and drove on into the ancient city of Bath. We stopped in a square by a hotel and lovely gardens and walked into the center of town by the Abbey. We decided to go in and tour the bath and see all of the artifacts.

We wore a recorder around our necks and could punch in the number of things that interested us to gather information. It was very nice and individualized. We didn't stay long as we wanted to explore the rest of the town.

We went into the beautiful Abbey. The sweetest older lady, who reminded us of Carol's mom, Greta, showed us some highlights and then left us on our own. At one point you could see some stone pillars beneath the building through a vent that was left from the Norman Cathedral, that was 1000 years old. The rest of the church was 500 years old. This was a fascinating place.

We wandered the town and taking the advice of our friends back home, Bob and Laurie, we stopped into Sally Lunn's Tea Room and had a lovely pot of tea and a Bun. Bob had cinnamon and I had lemon curd with clotted cream. Delicious!

We left Bath and went on through more of the Cotswolds with those beautiful old stone houses, fences and lush farmland. My eyes can't get enough. We've calmed down a bit from being snap happy, but you still hear the cameras clicking. We all keep hoping for that perfect shot that will capture it.

Our next stop was the very quaint, medieval looking town of Glastonbury. It was a very metaphysical town full of shops with fairies, magic and fortune telling. The people watching was great with a lot of hippy, woo woo types. Fascinating and fun to explore. There are old Abbey ruins there where, supposedly, King Arthur is buried. 

On we went towards the coast and our night's destination of Plymouth. We entered the area of Dartmoor with very narrow winding roads with hedge rows that Henry said could be 500 years old. At times we are hitting branches at the side of the bus and when we approached other cars, one of us had to pull over.

We climbed higher and it got more barren and Henry said these were moors. A moor is really just an area of poor soil with Heather and scrub brush. Henry told us the weather was not always sunny like this and if you took off on a hike you would have to be prepared as the weather can change in an instant with a cold fog or rain moving in. You have to be careful on the peat bogs as you can get off track and fall in up to your waist in a thick soup like quick sand. He said it can be quite a dangerous area, but today it looked lovely and we saw many hikers up on the trail. We could have stayed and played here, but time to move. This is the area made famous by the Sherlock Holmes stories. Out on the moors there is nothing, no shops, pubs, or phone signals and only a few roads. Great place for a mystery.

We came down a very steep winding road into the tiny town of Widecombe.
People from the tea shop came out and waved as we passed. We stopped and sat outside at little round tables and had tea with scones, clotted cream (much like rich butter), and strawberry jam. It was all very civilized. 

As we drove on through the hills, there were no fences. We saw many horses and we had to stop for sheep in the road. There were two horse back riders with their two dogs and we had to stop and wait as they have the right of way till we could go around them. One of the dogs sat down and looked at us and cracked us all up. We have many dog lovers on board.

Finally we were back on the Dual Carriageway and drove on into Plymouth which is sometimes called the English Rivera. We'll get to see it tomorrow. For now, we were happy to relax, have dinner and go to bed. We actually were in bed at 8:30 and later talked to others who did the same. It's all catching up with us.

Meanwhile as we got ready for bed we turned on television and saw the Queen and Royal Family at an Evensong Service at Westminster Abbey with the Boys Choir singing. They showed an aerial shot and we could see right where we sat when we were there. What a cool experience!