Mommy was really tired this morning so we all slept until around 9AM. I woke up at 7:30AM and made good use of my time. Since I hadn’t had much time to myself for the past few days, I took advantage of a quiet house to eat breakfast, read, and drink my tea in peace. I finished my latest book – The Turn of the Screw – and then prepared the lunches for the day.
After everything and everyone was ready we piled into the car to take a driving tour of the Cotswolds. It seems we overlooked telling Kenny, Celeste, and Elizabeth what exactly we were doing that day and they figured that we were going somewhere. For this reason Kenny spend most of the time driving up to the Cotswolds on the Gameboy, and the girls slept. At least Mommy and I enjoyed the scenery!
The Cotswolds, at you probably know, are formed by rolling limestone hills. Since early times the owners of farms there could get nothing to grow in the limestone and so started grazing sheep in the fields. Thus the wool business grew very famous there. The scenery, of course, is world-famous as well.
For the most part, the houses look the same: small stone houses in the same local limestone brick, with small windows and window boxes filled with a profusion of colorful flowers. Nearly as charming are the hundreds of feet of stone walls built throughout both villages and countryside, in the ancient style which made mortar of any kind unnecessary. The towns also look the same, but one could never tire of the simply beauty of the little towns.
Unfortunately, however, modern development scars the scenery in many places. Though builders have tried to imitate the color of the limestone and size of the original houses, the newer additions stand out like ugly monuments to the encroachment of a swelling immigrant population in England. At this point the only places that remain safe are far away from the cities – the Yorkshire Dales and wild Northumbria.
Our driving tour took us through Bibury (a huge tourist town), Uley, Tetbury, Painswick (nice looking young men), Stow-on-the-Wold (famous but quite ugly), Chipping Norton, and Bourton-on-the-Water. We attempted to visit Owlpen, but when the road was reduced to a two-way, barely one-lane road, we found a way to turn around and decided to skip that stop.
Our last stop was Bourton-on-the-Water, and on the way we stopped at several scenic overlooks of the Cotswolds. From one, at an elevation of ______ feet, we could see Wales across the river. It is at these incredible moments that you realize how small this country really is. Standing on the edge of that cliff, the cold wind whipping around me (and drying out my contact lenses, meanwhile), I felt invincible. The only thing taking away from this feeling was this nasty broken leg. Ah well.
Bourton-on-the-Water was a very nice little town. Mommy really wanted to visit the Miniature Village, a little stone replica of Bourton-on-the-Water modeled from the same limestone as the town itself. Apparently, when Mommy and Daddy visited England many years ago, they wanted to see it but it was closed. So we saw it this time.
After doing a little shopping in the general store, we settled down on the banks of the river running through the town and enjoyed the peace of the surroundings. Celeste and Elizabeth pulled off their shoes and went wading in the cool water, following the example (nearly) of two little children skinny-dipping nearby. Everything was very peaceful and pleasant.
Once the girls were absolutely freezing, they got out of the water and dried off. We all walked down the street and got dinner at a sidewalk Fish n’ Chips place. Dinner took about an hour, and then we started back to the car. On the way we fed the ducks in the stream – there were about twenty of them fighting for bits of chips – and laughed at their antics. Noting that it was quickly becoming dark, we hurried on to the car park and drove home.
Sitting in the dark on the way home, I couldn’t help thinking about how lucky I am to have such a wonderful family. I am the first to admit that I often take them for granted. Tears sprang to my eyes as I thought about school, which is fast approaching. While I am at school, though I may be living at home, I am not really there. My mind is occupied wholly with homework, study, and the people at school. Hopefully, this year I will be able to make time for family in my schedule. I must.
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