| American in London |
Adventures in the Cotswalds (Sunday 21 August, 2005)Sunday morning my friends Matt, Ryan and myself met up at the Willesden Green tube station (about 3 blocks from my house) to go on our day trip. It was such a beautiful day, about 75 and Sunny with a light breeze. The consensus was to choose a country village to visit and go out on a country walk. (Apparently they don't do hikes here, they do country walks.) So we took the train out to Morten in Marsh in the Cotswalds (which is for those of you unfamiliar with the geography of England, west of London and consists mostly of little rural villages nestled between hills, tress and fields). Turns out country walks consist mostly of walking through fields, which seems a bit strange to this girl who is used to hiking through the woods. And these fields are not at all like mid-west fields, they are all just tiny, more like a bunch of pastures, and most of them are dedicated to grazing animals. Thus, much of our walk also consisted of a game of dodge-the-cow-pie. Upon our arrival in Morten-in-Marsh we purchased for £2.95 a guide book to the area walks. Choosing one about four hours long, we thought to fill up our afternoon with a good country walk. The book said we were going to walk through a kissing gate to begin with. We being young and American (except for Ryan who is Canadian, but close enough) were quite excited about the kissing gates, but as it turned out, they are nothing to get too excited about. Just another type of gate, nothing to do with kissing. Our path took us up to a little tiny country village called Batsford. Along the way we met the sweetest couple from Bristol (people in the country are so much friendlier than people in the city!) picking blackberries along the way. We stopped and had a chat and a snack with them of freshly picked blackberries. Yum! Pretty sure the Church in Batsford is the most adorable thing, play for my future wedding to be held there. Groom TBD. Approximately 5-7 years time. Maybe more. I'll keep you posted. After Batsford the next little village was Bourton-on-the-Hill. It really was right on a hill, too. The street into the village was filled with sweet little English cottages all with their own cute little names. It was after Batsford that our walk inevitably went awry (don't worry, not too awry, but of course nothing can go absolutely smoothly, right?). Our guide book failed us, or the arrows leading the way failed us or both and we were quite at a loss. Luckily, being up on the hill as we were, we could see to the north east, the church steeple for Morton-in-Marsh (at least we hoped/assumed it was Morton-in-Marsh!) So we set off in the general direction, befriending some sheep along the way. Luckily about 45 mins later, we trucked our way into the village. As it turned out, we probably cut about an hour off of our walk (Matt maintained it was no more than 1/4 of the walk, but I had the trail book and am a girl and thus probably correct that it was more like 1/3, but he can believe whatever he wants). After not having much physical activity for the past couple of months, my legs were not used to all that walking and I think Ryan and Matt were feeling much the same way, so we just hopped on the train back to London after a particularly gratifying day. 5:42 AM - 8/27/2005 - post comment
Share and enjoy
|
Description A journal of my experiences as an expatriot. Home User Profile Archives Friends My Wall Recent Entries - Home again! - Tuesday 18 October 2005 - Wednesday 12 October 2005 - The Scheme 5 October 2005 - Sunday 2 October 2005 - Royalty Friends - linzykinz83 - dvoshell |
