Saturday 8th October 2022.
Went down for our normal breakfast. Being the weekend, the hotel was quite full and there were people all over the place in the dining area. We found a table, put our stuff on it and went to grab some food. All OK and excellent as nearly all HIEs breakfasts were. Always gives us a good start to the day.
Today we were heading up to the Cotswolds for a look around and to see what we could find. We set off about 10:30am and headed north and about a half-mile out of Lechlade, we hit a traffic back-up. We sat in the queue for about 30 minutes then decided to follow the locals who were turning around and heading back to take another route. Unfortunately, we didn’t know where these other routes were, so we headed back the way we came and went in another direction but still heading north – kinda sorta. We came to a small town called Hightown which alerted us to their Saturday Market. We swung by a small car park which was jam-packed full but we did see someone backing out so we waited and grabbed their space and walked into town, which wasn’t very far. There was a bunch of market stalls in the town square but there wasn’t that many really. There wasn’t much variety either, so we headed back to the car and moved on. We went through several quaint villages with the traditional Cotswold stone cottages. But there wasn’t too much to see and not much going on in most of them. So we wandered around the area going village to village just for the experience. As it was lunchtime, we started looking for a nice country pub for lunch. We just couldn’t find anything suitable at all. However, we did see one place that was a small hotel style place that had a car park that you got to through a very tight archway. We had passed it so turned around and turned into the archway. Boy, it was a bit tight but we made it and parked up. There was only three of four other cars there but didn’t take too much notice. We found our way in and header for the bar which was deserted, What had we come to? Then a gentleman heard us and came to the bar asking what we wanted – meaning in the place, not to order. We asked if they had any food. He said, no, sorry, no food. We really felt as though we were trespassing or something, so we bade him goodbye and went back to the car. We didn’t notice on the way in that the entrance was on a blind bend, so getting out was a challenge. The road was not particularly busy but it did have steady traffic. When we got to the road, I couldn’t see a darned thing: about 20 yards in each direction, so I couldn’t tell if anything was coming or not, and there wasn’t a traffic mirror there either. So we wound both windows down and listened careful for sounds of traffic. I just decided to boot it out of there quickly and hope nothing came around the corner. We made it OK but it was close.
We had seen plenty of local signposts for country pubs so we decided we would follow some of those. We turned down narrow roads to villages that supposedly had these country pubs but we never found any of them, so we gave up and headed back to Swindon to find some other places. We found a nice place outside of town and had a lovely meal there and returned to the hotel around 6pm. We had a couple of drinks in the lounge bar area and turned in about 9pm.
This has been part 19 of a series of posts highlighting the trip of a British ex-pat in the US when he returns to the UK for a vacation. He shares the experiences with us here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the next few weeks. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I have, and seeing the areas he (and his lovely wife) visit, through my friend David’s eyes. ~ Sherry
David invites you to visit his eBay store while you’re in the neighborhood!
Need to catch up on David’s story? Day 1 ~ Day 2 ~ Day 3 ~ Day 4 ~ Day 5 ~ Day 6 ~ Day 7 ~ Day 8 ~ Day 9 ~ Day 10 ~ Day 11 ~ Day 12 ~ Day 14 ~ Day 15 ~ Day 16 ~ Day 17 ~ Day 18
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