In the beginning was the flight. Travelling with small children is awesome in a lot of respects; special lines for check-in and security at the airport, pre-boarding, special treatment, and these neat bassinets that fit into the wall if you're sitting in the front row. Isaiah did quite well sleeping in it throughout the flight. If only they made those for big people. Sleeping in coach airplane seats is not so easy. Especially when you can see the first classers in their seats that look like something straight out of Star Trek. They were seriously cool. Despite this, Keith still managed to get a few hours of sleep. I managed about 20 minutes. When we landed, we determined to do the first day on adrenaline J. Praise the Lord that all of our bags made it to the UK and our rental car pick up was problem-free.
The first roundabout experience was a bit funny in a frustrating and unfortunate kind of way. We had just cleared the guard in the rental car pick-up place and merged with traffic when the roundabout jumped into the road. Keith took the first exit. We ended up right back into the rental car parking lot and had to through the guard again - except this time there was a huge line and it took ten minutes to get back through the guard. By the end of the first day - we must have gone through two dozen roundabouts and barely think twice about them now.
Amazingly, we didn't even get lost until we got into Bletchley. It's interesting that neither of the two people we stopped to ask for directions really had any idea where they were themselves. When we arrived, Brian met us at the door and we were soon greeted by Aunt Shirley, Uncle Sam and Uncle Andrew as well. They have a sweet little brick home on a very tidy street. They have a lovely garden in the back that Uncle Sam landscaped himself. Andrew and Aunt Shirley briefly re-capped their trips to America. We ate biscuits and drank tea and coffee. Socks, the dog, meandered through the living room as we conversed. It was a brilliant time.
The spire of the Olney Chapel was our next beacon. Olney is where John Newton and William Cowper lived next door to one another and wrote hymns. Newton, an ex-slave trader, wrote Amazing Grace. We visited the Newton and Cowper museum. It was pretty interesting, especially the rooms devoted to Newton. Olney was also fun because it was market day.
Our next stop was Cambridge. I started to feel the tiredness on this leg of our journey, but fortunately it was a relatively short one. We almost found our first B&B on the first try. In our defence, the house number was nearly impossible to see. Our hostess was a bit frazzeled when we arrived but she was pleasant enough and showed us around. We got settled and headed out for a walk to the city centre and university. Isaiah retreated to sleep - the poor guy wasn't sure what was going on. We've decided the Cambridge is the land of bicycles. Old and new with huge, let me repeat, HUGE baskets on the front. And not just on the girl bikes either. And not just on student or old people bikes. Everyone rides bikes and nearly everyone has a huge basket. It was a beautiful city. Nearly everything was closed, other than the food shops, but we made some mental notes of what we wanted to see the following day. We were sad to discover that all of the colleges were closed to the public because it was examination time for the students. We did get to see a fair amount of the grounds and outer buildings. We also got to enjoy the market and the Cambridge University Press Bookshop. I found a lovely tea shop and another artsy store where I did a bit of shopping.
We decided to skip York and drive straight to Thirsk. Isaiah had a melt down along the way so we decided to take a detour into Ripon to see the chapel. We weren't entirely sure at first if the church was still in use. We picked up some pamphlets on the way out, but we were both left with the feeling that the church was just a shell the town was trying to keep up, but that it really had no life in it. We were disappointed. We picked up some food for dinner at the grocery store where we had parked. Well, at least I thought we parked there. I took Isaiah out to the car to start his dinner while Keith found a washroom. Keith appeared just as Izer and I finished our third lap of the parking lot and panic was setting in that our car had been stolen. It wasn't. We hadn't parked at the grocery store, but in a parking lot just below. Oh Darcie.
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