Great Britain

So...the first time I pick to travel out of country I decide to go to England and Scotland. And I tried my hand at driving. On the wrong side of the road...on the wrong side of the car...with my 75 year old mother yelling at me on a pretty consistent basis. She actually got a sore throat after we got lost getting from Manchester to Dilton Marsh. Only caused 1 traffic jam in a round about but had multiple people honk at me. 

But I get ahead of myself. This journey began after I did an Ancestry.com search and did my genealogy. Found out that I'm actually related to William the Conqueror and Charlemagne. Of course this is mainly due to the multiple bastard children that royals had at that time. So I got there on the "wrong side of the blanket." When I found this out I wanted to visit the land of my ancestors. Mom agreed to go with me.

The main problem was that we did not want to go to London or any other major city as that is not where the common folks lived. I needed to find my people in the country. So we decided to pick out of the way places where the rentals were much cheaper. 

 

Wiltshire

Our first stay was in an orchard barn that was converted to apartments...aptly named Old Orchard Cottage...in Dilton Marsh, Wiltshire. 

From here we explored several old castles, the famous White Horses, did some shopping and saw some wonderful churches, including the Salisbury Cathedral. One of the original Magna Carta's is actually housed at the Salisbury Cathedral. Pretty amazing stuff. 

Needless to say, mom got more and more hoarse from yelling at me to get on the other side of the road and to watch out for traffic in the roundabouts. Took me about a week to get the roundabouts down. Another rant I'm about to make is the fact that the roads are so tiny that the bulk of a diesel car that I was given to drive took up both lanes. Heaven forbid that I had to turn around in the middle of a road. Got the bumper bumped on one such occasion. 

We took so many pictures that I have no room for them. Some were truly amazing and I will cherish those pictures. The ones of the Cathedral and Stonehenge still give me goosebumps. 

Bath was also a highlight of this week. The Roman Baths were so crowded that we could not get in. We took a tour of the town on a double decker bus. I think the driver took great pleasure in purposely going under the low branches of trees just to make sure we were still awake. The Bath Church was also pretty amazing. It still had the names of the noble families on the pews where they sat while the rest of the populace had to stand.