Well... driving is becoming less hair-raising for ME, though Jane is still hanging on for dear life out there on the left hand shoulder! So we ventured further afield today, going to "Lower Slaughter" and "Bourton on the Water" and "Stow on the Wold". Like those funky names? Sunny day today and we spent about seven hours exploring within a 20 mile radius of Kingham. Sheep (and a few cattle) on hills everywhere; thousands and thousands and thousands of sheep. Here's a photo or two...
We wandered into another interesting old church- this time St. Mary's Anglican church in "Lower Slaughter". It was so photogenic I took a few as we wandered in, and a couple more as we were walking back from lunch the other direction after the light had changed a bit. Don't know if you can see or not, but every pew has a handmade kneeling pad hanging on the pew in front. Each one is needlepointed and no two are alike and represents a different symbol of the Christian faith. This church's latest rebuilding was in 1867, though it's older than that of course. Presumably the previous iteration probably burned down. Anything that's less than 150 years old around here is considered "new".
These flowers were growing on the church property. Note the single dandelion right in the middle of the others!
Lots of wild trout in this river. Too bad I didn't have a fly rod with me!
Jane was looking at a bird in the tree and managed to get a good photo of it as seen below.
Every cottage here is unique- and every cottage door is even more unique- as evidenced by these two.
This is a grain mill on the lovely stream. There has been an operating mill in this spot since about 600AD!
As I said, I couldn't resist the church as the sun came out a bit more after lunch. VERY picturesque.
Here's an oddity. Every May (next weekend) and every October, virtually EVERY gypsy in England comes to Stow on the Wold for a 1-day horse show and sale/trade event for horses. All week we've been seeing gypsy caravans pulled by two horses just pulled over and setting up camp along the side of area roads. Unfortunately the roads are so BLASTED NARROW there's never any chance to stop and take a photo. But we saw this one today (no horses in sight) and you'll see the "Tarot Card" reading sign posted beside the road. They also offered psychic readings for a fee according to another sign. In a public park in Stow we saw at least 100+ caravans (both horse drawn and truck pulled wagons) already set up 5 days before the big event. This is about as FAR from shopping at Harrods as you can possibly get- and it's only about 90 miles away! LOL!
For what it's worth, here's a photo of the INSIDE of a Gypsy Caravan that we happened to see later in the afternoon at an antique British vehicle museum. (Old cars, motorcycles, children's pedal cars, etc.) Interesting!
Here's "Bourton on the Water", another beautiful hamlet nearby. The entire village is built along both sides of a gently flowing stream. Lots of tea rooms, fish and chips, wool sweater shops and ice cream. We tried a "rich Cotswold guernsey (in other words high fat content) locally made fresh rhubarb ice cream cone." Delicious!
And just to make sure you're paying attention, we went to a local bird sanctuary and they had (among 150 other displays) a HUGE display of perhaps 40 penguins! That's an ODD thing to find in rural England- but the birds were HILARIOUS! This guy was dozing facing the afternoon sun perfectly balanced on the heels of his feet; the arch and toes pointing up in the air. Weird!
So that's it for Tuesday; covered 50 miles or so by vehicle with no close calls (if you don't count Jane's blood pressure) and just went from one postcard-perfect photo-op to the next. There simply isn't ANY PLACE we've seen around here that's NOT breathtakingly beautiful! NONE!!
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