Day 8: Blenheim Palace & the Cotswolds

Here's another house, this one's for the Duke of Marlborough. Sir Winston Churchill was born here and is buried in the town. His grandfather and uncle were dukes here. One of the dukes married a Vanderbilt by arranged marriage. This is only one view of the house, you can't see it all in this picture. The library in this house was the size of a narrow gymnasium with books floor to ceiling, a grand piano and a tracker organ almost as big as Southern's at one end. Sounds like the perfect room for my house!

Next we drove thru the Cotswolds, the country section in the middle of England. It would be just like this picture, you'd see a town in the distance surrounded by fields of deep green and yellow (the yellow was rape seed, your canola oil) and then you'd drive up windy roads to get to these little villages with cute names like Chipping Norton and Stow on the Wold.

I even found my own cottage!

See, I told you they are even in the country. . .

The infamous sheep pasture we walked thru between Upper and Lower Slaughter. When we went thru customs into the US, they had to check our shoes because one of the questions was "Have you walked thru a pasture?"

Day 7: Chatsworth and Warwick Castle, my favorite day!

Chatsworth is the home of the Duke of Derbyshire. This is Mr. Darcy's house, Pemberley, from the new Pride and Predjudice with Keira Knightley. Big houses like this for dukes and earls are all over the countryside and they let people come on the grounds most days just to enjoy their acreage, have a picnic, take a walk. You have to pay to get inside the house though. This arrangement would never work in America but the British are very respectful of other people's property.

This landlord has sheep, some have deer roaming about the parks.

The gardens were gorgeous here. This is part of the manmade rock garden. You could explore for days.

The side view of the house where Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy sit on the porch of Pemberley at the very end of the movie. The room where she walks through all the sculptures is in this house too. There are some amazing pieces of sculpture in that room! Here are some views of the inside of the house. Remember, this is just the house of one duke in one county, this isn't even a royal residence. It's no wonder our forefathers wanted to get away from all this hereditary hoity toity business.

The art in this house was amazing. The violin on this door is painted, but it looks so real!

Town beside Chatsworth

Warwick Castle

You can play "Where's Jaclyn and Stephanie?" with the pictures from this place. I think Stephanie counted 93 steps to get up in one of these towers, the circular kind. This is better than Disney! Where else in the world can you go explore a real medieval castle?

A birdseye view, the part you see in the middle is the place where the big muckey muck for the castle would live. It really is this green!

The town beside Warwick

Day 6: York

York is in the northern part of England and it's the same county (Yorkshire) James Herriot is from. People are a little more countryfied up there. To get there we drove through Nottinghamshire and Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood country.

This is Clifford Tower in the center of York.

Here's us on top of the tower. You can see the towers of York Minster behind us.


Here's inside York Minster. Most of the churches we went to didn't allow pictures inside so I've included these to show what the inside of a gothic church looks like since most look similar. They are layed out with a central circular area and then 4 branches off of that, 2 shorter than the others. This view is down the long side where people would sit. The heart shape at the top of the window is the "Heart of York." If you look up on the right side you'll see a dragon head coming out of one of the windows. They think this is a lever to open the baptismal font that was below it.


Here's the opposite side of the circular area, the other long end. The opening under the organ would lead you to the view above. This is the choir area and behind the photographer would be the altar. In some of the minsters, there were seats up around the edges behind the choir seats where knights sit. For example, Windsor is the home of the Order of the Knights of the Garter and a standard and helmet for each of them are at their seat. Famous people like Churchill, Norman Schwarzkopf, and the elder George Bush are members of this order, knighted by the queen.

The Shambles, one of the narrowest and oldests streets.

While in York we also saw the house of a Fairfax related to the Fairfax for which Fairfax, VA and county are named. This relative Fairfax was friends with George Washington. So many times during this trip we felt ties to these people. So many of our town and street names come from England. We asked a tour guide in this house what British people call the Revolutionary War and she said, "Well, it's really just our Civil War isn't it? Just like yours between the North and the South. And you're still fighting it a bit aren't you?" Hmmm . . .

Day 5: Sabbath at Newbold

The Newbold SDA church. Yes, that is grass growing on the roof.

Standing in front of Moor Close, one of the buildings, Tara lived here for awhile I think.

Walking in the woods around the school. So beautiful! Mom and I went off the beaten trail and had our first experience with stinging nettle. I just touched the leaves of a plant and felt like I had 20 bee stings on my legs complete with whelts! My fingertip was numb for a whole day afterwards.

Getting around in England

This part, getting around on the Underground, we had pretty well figured out but once you got out on the street... things got confusing...

Just in case you're from another country and forget, directions are at every intersection.

Here's a sign for a roundabout, a very simple one, sometimes they have 4 exits with streets "signposted". In case you can't read the sign on the left, it says diverted traffic, in other words, detoured traffic.


The navigator with her trusty AA (like our AAA) directions.

Coming up to a roundabout, about to the hit the rumble stips, meaning slow down. I've decided I like roundabouts actually. They keep traffic moving and seem much more efficient than stop lights.

These crooked lines mean no parking, but you rarely see them, people usually just park along the roads where they please.

Random strange sign. My question is: How do you not allow this? When a dog's got to go...

Day 4: The War Rooms & Windsor Castle & we learn how to drive

The room in the underground compound where Churchill planned with his war council during the bombings of WWII.


My tour guide and me. Not the statue, the thing I'm holding up to my ear.

The room Churchill used to phone President Roosevelt.

Windsor Castle: the weekend residence of the queen and the flag flying from that flag pole means that she was there while we were! This was the main residence of the monarchy in the 1600's.

The courtyard that leads to the queen's private residences on the right side. The arch on the left is the entrance into the state rooms where foreign dignitaries are taken to see the queen on visits.

Check out the transportation section to see how fun driving was...