Leaving the Cotswolds

We really enjoyed the small villages of the Cotswalls.  They represented to us the British countryside with the old churches, the manors of early England, the quaint shops and pubs.  It is a quiet life that has passed us by but is preserved here in England.  There are not many new houses most are from the 1700/1800 or early 1900s, refurbished and modern on the inside but on the outside have the look of a bygone era.  We will be leaving this part of Great Britain to discover the flatlands of East Anglia and the east coast of England.  We will stay on RAF Lakenheath but will travel the countryside searching for another slice of England and the how the culture differs from the Cotswolds.  update:  We made it to Cromer on the North Sea.  The seashore is always calming and we picked a perfect day to enjoy it. The skies were blue, the food was great and the scenery was spectacular.  We also drove down to Great Yarmouth....not so good as it was an Atlantic City look alike i.e., a beautiful sandy beach ruined by the glitzy arcade/gambling fake store fronts that had the look of a rundown amusement park.

The good news is that we have pictures to share....we solved the problem or I should say Alastair Gill,  a good friend of Tom and Maryann's solved the problem for us.  A big thank you to him and I will pass on to you his advice if you want to post pictures from your IPAD to a blog.  But for now here are some recent pictures.  OBTW....any typos/grammar mistakes are from George, Pat has not proofed this blog.  Please read this for content and not mistakes, enjoy the pictures and I promise to do better the next time.

The small village streets are enchanting 

We loved to just walk around the town and window shop and visit the pubs

Anne Hatwaways cottage (Shakespheare's wife)  Stratford-upon-Avon

Tewksbury Abbey, early Church of England

On the North Sea coastal city of Cromer in East Angalia, England with our friends Tom and Maryann!  No it is not cold, you will always see Maryann dressed like Nanuck of the North (that is why she lives in Tucson)!

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Crab sandwiches, crab salad, fresh cod....we are enjoying a meal overlooking the North Sea at Cromer.

One more day in East Angalia and it is off to Ashton Hall in Lancashire, near Lancaster on the west coast of England.  We hope to stop in Hope, England to explore the Peak District National Forest but will overnight near Pat's earliest relatives, Sir Robert Lawrence (@1100AD) at Ashton Hall.  We will crisscross England and enter Scotland to see Edinburgh Castle,visit St Andrews and overnight around Dundee, Scotland.   We cross back over Scotland to make our way up to Loch Ness where we will stay at the abbey on Loch Ness for 3 days.  Our unofficial time schedule has us taking the car ferry across the waters to Northern Ireland and Ireland.  When we make it back to England we will tour Wales, drive across Southern England to Dover where we will drop our car off and take the ferry across the Channel to Calsis.  Picking up another car we will begin our trip across Europe.  After revisiting two of the bases we used to be stationed, we will drive to Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest and Prague before heading back up to Normandy for the June 6th celebrations.  

We hope to see all of that but.....as we have stated over and over, plans are made in sand.  We may find something more interesting and our whole trip might be turned on its head but the one goal is to be in Normandy, after all that was the original reason for this adventure.  The original plan was for couple of weeks in June at Normandy and it ballooned into 3 months driving around Great Britain and Europe.  It is great to be retired and to have crazy friends who are flexible and like to have fun.