After two days of mostly driving on freeways, we are back in southern England. Tonight and tomorrow night we are sleeping in Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire, near the Welsh border (and only an hour and a half from Oxford). We really enjoyed the natural beauty and lack of people in the Scottish Highlands and islands, but England feels like home and there's really nothing like stone fences and meadows. We've had amazingly sunny and warm weather to welcome us back today, too.
View from the motorway yesterday
View from a smaller road today
Yesterday we drove from Oban down to the Lake District in Cumbria, northern England. We didn't stop much, but we did get to see the famously lovely Loch Lomond and the equally nice Loch Awe along the way. On the shores of the latter was an interesting church we stopped to check out called St. Conan's Kirk. It was built around 1900 by the guy who owned the property and wanted a church closer to home. It's an interesting mishmash of whatever styles took his fancy, so it's rather unique.
We spent the night at the Westmorland Hotel right off the M6 motorway. It was an odd mix of cozy country hotel and standard old-smelling motel. Mostly it was good.
We had a nice dinner in the hotel, then spent hours working on travel plans. We've made some significant changes to the itinerary that we're both quite happy about. First, David is staying with me through Switzerland! Weee! That means not only more time with my favorite travel partner, but also not having to ride nearly as many trains - we'll have a rental car there, too.
Also, instead of taking a ferry from Portsmouth (south coast) to Le Havre (France) as planned, it looks like we will take a night ferry from Harwich (on the east coast) to the Netherlands, then rent a car from Germany and drive into eastern France. The best rental cars are in Germany, so that works out pretty great on a lot of levels. The night ferry takes about six hours and departs at midnight - that will be a new adventure!
The France route will be generally the same as before, but instead of parting in Paris, David is going to drive me all the way to Zurich! Yay! He decided he didn't like me on any French trains and didn't want to miss out on Switzerland anyway. Then he'll drive back up to northern Germany to return the car. He's quite excited about that part.
But back to the present. Today we drove about four hours south through England, which went quite smoothly. The weather was gorgeous and the motorways weren't nearly as full as we'd expected, even as we passed between Manchester and Liverpool. We made a few stops along the way this time, too.
The Sandbach Crosses, which were carved by the Saxons somewhere nearby in the 9th century. They were destroyed by Puritans and later reassembled and displayed in the market square. Very cool.
Our current hotel in Ross-on-Wye is quite lovely and appropriately creaky and charming for its age. A river runs by right outside. The wild wallpaper might keep us up at night, but we both actually like it.
It includes a nice restaurant, but looked a little too fancy for us weary travelers tonight, so we headed next door to The White Lion for a pub meal instead.
My chicken with spinach and mushrooms and side of potatoes. David had lamb pie with mashed potatoes on top. Both were very yummy.
David's chocolate puddle pudding. Whoa, was it ever good. I told him he was a saint for even letting me have a bite. He's been looking for a chocolate pudding for a couple weeks and it has been remarkably hard to find. Check that one off the list! I may have had another sticky toffee pudding. If I did, it was good but a little too rich and sweet. Nothing beats that first one we had on Skye.
The pub dog, Bailey, seems to have had the sticky toffee pudding also.
Tomorrow we'll see some sights nearby. We love this area and are looking forward to seeing some new things and enjoying being in the English countryside.