It was a fairly normal looking neighborhood with smallish brick houses. I'll have to watch the movie again to see what movie tricks they did to it. Jacob said they used a green screen somewhere. We took a few photos and headed out towards Windsor castle. That is where the Queen actually spends most of her time. It is in a beautiful area with rolling hills. We drove by the castle, took some pictures and headed towards Stonehenge.
I went to Stonehenge on a trip for Intel probably 15 years ago. It was the time that the UK was having trouble with the foot and mouth disease with cattle, so I only got to drive by. They wouldn't let us get out of the car. The whole site has totally changed for the better. It is actually a big complex of burial mounds and archeological sites. There is a really nice visitor's center with artifacts, examples of homes and history of the area. After a short shuttle ride we arrived on the site. They've blocked it off, but you can walk around the whole thing. There is actually an earthen barrier created by the builders of Stonehenge that surrounds the site. They found a lot of animal bones in the trench.
We were all impressed with Stonehenge. While we were there, we met a guy that was a kernel developer at Microsoft. He had retired early, lived a year in Nice, France and was traveling the world now that his kids are grown. He was a super nice guy and probably super smart if we worked on the kernel for all those years.
After a quick lunch at the visitor's center, we headed out towards Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford is the birthplace and burial place for Shakespeare. We visited his school, church and the house he was born in. While we were at his school we took pictures of school boys walking right past his school. We asked them if they had to read Shakespeare and they laughed! It is pretty amazing that the school and church are still in use today. On the walk out we got some good English fudge and found a really cool clock! Ashton started getting a fever and for the next couples hours he was burning up. We were really worried that it was going to go through everyone so far we're all good!
 |
| Shakespeare's House |
 |
| Shakespeare's School |
 |
| Happy Fourth of July from England! |
We hopped in the car again and headed out for Nottingham and then Sherwood Forest. As you can imagine this had already been a long day and it was about to get longer. We hit hours and hours worth of traffic. It got us between 2-3 hours of stop and go on the freeway. We finally got in late to Nottingham. We parked, ran up to the castle, took some pictures near the Robin Hood statue and walked down to Ye Olde Jerusalem, which claims to be the oldest tavern in England. I had eaten there a few years ago on a business trip, so we stopped in, took some pictures and headed back to the parking structure. After a quick stop at Subway for some sandwiches we headed towards Sherwood Forest. For those of you wondering why we're here and eating at Subway, it was literally one of the only things open at that time of night!
Sherwood Forest is about 30 minutes from Nottingham castle. It is a beautiful forest with these big oaks interspersed amongst the rest of the trees. We got there at 9:15 and we knew the sun would be going down soon. So we walked briskly through the forest path to get to the Major Oak. It is a huge beautiful tree that is over 1000 years old. It is supposedly the location where Robin and the merry men would meet up after their adventures. There were some Robin Hood wannabees camping near the Major Oak.
We've really been trying to save money on this trip by staying in cheap hotels or using airbnb to stay at people's rooms they rent out. We needed to get about 1/2 way from Sherwood Forest to Luss to make it to the Highland games in the morning, so Kim got us a room at a hostel. It was a little out of the way, but not bad. It felt like it took forever to get there because it was way up in the mountains along a windy road. It was raining and we thought it was 50/50 that we were even in the right place. The hostel usually closes as 10:30 for checkin, but we had called ahead and they stayed up until we got there. We drove in at 12:30 am after some tense moments when we couldn't find it. We ended up driving down a tiny road/path, over a rock bridge and voila the hostel appeared. It was like a YMCA camp in the mountains run by young people. Luckily they waited up for us and we had 6 bunk beds with clean sheets on them. Just as we were getting ready for bed Ashton said he was going to throw-up and we got the trashcan just in time. Luckily he woke up fine in the morning! Phew!
To make it to the Highland Games by 10:00, we left about 6:30 am. After a good, but short night's sleep we just left the money under the pillow and left them a note. Hopefully that all turned out OK!
Click here for pictures
No comments:
Post a Comment