Sunday, May 20, 2012

The Full English

Breakfast at 2 The Crofts.  Kids were thrilled with the toast rack.
Our full English.
Greta after she lost her full English.  In the taxi.
Good thing my mom is quick with a raincoat.  If it hadn't been for the velcro on the raincoat sleeve it would have been an easy cleanup.  But the taxi was completely spared.  And the driver unfazed. 

Washing the raincoat with water from our bottles gave Clem time to feed the cute little horse.
I have never seen horses come out of the woodwork like this!
This is Aydon castle.  Not so much a castle as a manor house.  With catapults!





After looking around and consulting mom called a taxi.  She and Greta went on to the next hotel (where they got a very warm reception, even though they were checking in hours too early and Greta lost the last piece of toast from her full English at the front desk).  Fortunately mom was prepared with a plastic bag.

Dad, Ev, Clem and I went on to Halton Castle, below.
And its graveyard with baffling topiary pig.
After some time we finally found a Hadrian's Wall sign.  It would be several miles before we saw any wall, though.
A stone stile.  We crossed 21 stiles on this first day.
Going the right way, it seems.

At St. Oswalds Tea Room where we stopped for the opposite of tea, Clem sat in the mud with cats and chickens.
More stiles.

And what is that in the distance!  We ran to see.
The first bit of the wall.
Commemorating the XXth stile.
It was a fantastic day, but after walking from noon till six thirty we were happy to find our accommodations at the end of the village of Wall.
And even happier to see this.
And big surprise--after watching British reality TV all day Greta was ready for dinner!  

It was Greta's idea to make this postcard which we are sending to all of you who are reading this blog.  We saw these sheep, who'd been sitting in the mud just like Clem, near the end of our walk.
We miss you all!  Leave us a comment telling us what you're up to.

7 comments:

  1. Greta and your mom are a good team!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's awesome! I miss you guys too.
    I'm up to... (nothing very exciting,) we went to the Maker Faire today.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ashish, they are for sure. What are you up to?

    Sasha, the Maker Faire is exciting! That fire belching machine from the Crucible nearly gave me a heart attack.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This confirms my suspicions that your mom is descended from Mary Poppins.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I like how a single tomato balances out eight eggs, five sausages, and all that other mystery food. My kind of dining.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Loved the postcard with muddy sheep bottoms (sounds like a place in England). Castles look very cool (figuratively and literally)! Glad the ancestors moved to warmer climes. -love JAKE

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jennifer, it is something we all suspect!

    Ashish, well, it was breakfast for everyone on one big plate. I was the only one who wanted a tomato. But it does look funny, doesn't it?

    Kel, I think we visited Muddy Sheepbottoms, actually. :) Yes, it was still cool and drizzly on this day. Soon the blazing sun would come out and raincoats would be a thing of the past.

    ReplyDelete