Saturday morning we checked out of the hotel early. We ate breakfast at the hotel each morning because it was included. Breakfast was good, because breakfast wasn’t an English breakfast. I ate scrambled eggs on smoked salmon on an English muffin. This was the last morning hear so I suggested Claudine try a traditional English breakfast. You can see she was thrilled with it but she tried it, all of it including the baked beans and blood pudding.
Then we were off, out of London and into the countryside.
Which is amazingly beautify, and again questions why in the world so many people in London need to cram into such a small place. Spread out for crying out loud.
Our first stop (of many) was at Burton on the water.
Where we had probably the worst meal of the trip, and the worst Fish-n-Chips ever. Extremely fishy, and just not good overall. When the best part of your Fish-n-Chips meal is the peas, something’s wrong, seriously wrong. So beware, the restaurant to the left of ‘The Croft” is no good, at least their Fish-n-Chips are no good.
From there we hit Chipping Campden. Which was cool, but people like live there.
And it’s crowded and I’m talking about right on the main drag are homes. And if you live in a tourist trap, and you are going to sit on the couch in your undies and watch the tele, you should probably close your blinds. Just sayin.
The little market hall in the center of town was built in 1662, so older than America which is amazing.
From there more driving, we didn’t really stop for long in any of the other little towns but we did roll through quite a few as we circled back around to Bath.
Bath, words cannot describe Bath.
We got into town about 7:30pm and headed straight for the Roman Bath.
We paid our money and took the tour of the bath.
Sadly you cannot bath, in the bath and looking at the water you can see why you wouldn’t want too. The spring still flows but I’m not sure where that water’s coming from cause it’s pretty nasty looking. There was a late night torch lit tour of the bath that we had planned to stay for, but we got a little museum’d out on the self guided tour and hadn’t eaten since 2pm and needed to eat.
We ended up eating down the street from the bath at Bill’s I had the fish pie and it was delicious.
That evening we stayed at the Bristol Royal Marriott. I would highly recommend this old hotel, if you want an old hotel but don’t want all the old hotel things. This has been very tastefully renovated. We got in late and didn’t take any photos of the hotel, at least I didn’t.
We slept well, got up and headed back to Bath.
We toured more of the town, stopped at all the highlights, the Circus, the Royal Crescent, and the beautiful park in front of the Crescent. There was a 1700’s garden recreated behind one of the homes that was on the Circus.
After spending a good part of the morning in Bath, watching street performers and doing a bit of shopping we headed south, to the Ocean/English Channel to get Claudine some beach time.
Our travels took us through the New Forest, which is an amazing area where cattle, goats, and horses run free, in an open range habited area. We saw a lot of cattle including bulls, literally on the roads. I don’t think Claudine believed me about horses running free until we encountered a heard grazing by the road on the way out, some of them, on the road.
We finally found beach at Milford on the Sea.
Rocky beach, but beach none-the-less.
We stayed there for about an hour.
Then we beat feet back to the Marriott at Heathrow for an early flight to Munich the next day. Returning the rental car was a real treat, the rental car company’s drop off is at the airport or along side of it. They give you a free shuttle back to the airport, not to a hotel. From the airport we took a normal bus using our Oyster card left over from the trains to ride back to the bus stop in front of the Marriott. Thanks for nothing Eurocar/Alamo.
The Heathrow Marriott has been renovated/cleaned up since the last time I was there. The restaurant food was good, expensive but good.