Tues August 27th York

Lovely breakfast of eggs Benedict at our hotel. Then a self paced tour of the York Minster (church). Its a really old church and has some beautiful carvings. Part of the church had a roof fire in 1984. They were able to control the fire pretty quickly and had it rebuilt by 1988.

Then Dennis took the optional tour of the tower hiking up the 275 steps. Here are some views from the top.

Then it was back to wandering through ,"the Shambles." We stopped for a coffee, walked through the market, stopped at the Clifford Tower and then down to the river Ouse for a short ramble.

Clifford Tower was built as a castle in 1068 by Willams the First. King Henry VIII rebuilt the castle in the 13th century. At the end of the 13th century, during the Scottish wars it was used by the military. For the next 3 centuries it flipped back and forth between a prison and military use. It was used for a prison up to 1935.

We stopped and got soup (again from the same place as yesterday) Then we headed for the Yorkshire Museum. The museum was wonderfully laid out and we saw items from the Viking and Roman eras.

After a rest in our room (Walking around makes one tired!) we headed for some dinner just around the corner. We are now being "serenaded" by the 2 hour bell practice across the street at the minstry. Its quite a cacophony.

Some sights around town

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Pretrip practice

Hello my friends and family. This is just a practice "run" of posting on our Britain blog. I always have to relearn the steps. So.... we leave on Monday Aug 19th mid morning flying thru Seattle and then straight to London. We arrive Tues morning around 9:50 am London time (which is 8 hrs ahead -or about 1AM our time) A rough itinerary London Edinburgh Inverness Edinburgh York Keswick ( Lake district of England) Shrewsbury Swansea ( Wales) and on to Cardiff Bath Wareham ("Jurassic Coast - south west coast) Oxford Cotswold Oxford London If you only see this page, there should be links somewhere on the page to get you to the other postings

Sunday Sept 8th London

We decided to visit the Churchill War rooms today. We figured out the tube (the underground) and traveled to the Westminster area. Met some folks from Ohio while standing in line waiting for our entry time. One of the gentlemen served at Kodiak in the navy. He and Dennis had a great "military in Alaska" chat. The War rooms and museum were great. The war museum was almost overwhelming with the amount of information displayed Clementine Churchill's room underground Afterwards we walked around the Parliment square garden adding photos of Big Bend, Westminster Cathedral,Westminster Bridge, the Parliment building and ALL the tourists. The clouds had cleared and it was beautiful. (Last nights forecast for today had been up to 75% chance of rain!) We sat at the park and then strolled up Whitehall street up to Trafalgar square...

Friday September 6th. The Cotswolds

Today we booked a tour of the Cotswolds. Cot inferring small and wolds connected to the sheep trade. The area is full of rolling green hills with villages and small towns nestled among the hills. The entire area is home to only about 170,000 people. Thats about one person per 2 sheep in the region. The first village we visited, Snowshill, had a population of 184. It had a church, a pub and a telephone. (Joke from our driver Steve). In order not to bore you with little details here is an overview. Several of the other towns would have more like 3000 to 5000 population. We visited Chipping Campden, Bourton on the Water, Stow on the Wold, Bibury and started at Moreton in Marsh. We drove through Dover's hill, Broadway, Great Barrington, Ablington, Winson Village and Coln St. Dennis. Old original market in Chipping Campden A majority of villages hav...

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