After three days of visiting with family and touring the town where Gramma grew up, we went with Élissa to Winchester yesterday morning to tour the cathedral (very cool) and Arthur’s round table (interestingly enough, it’s a wall decoration) before parting ways and heading south to the coast. We spent yesterday afternoon lounging on the beach and last night watching Pride and Prejudice. Both were lovely.

Today we head to London via the New Forest (maybe we’ll see some wild ponies). I can’t believe we’re down to our final three days here. It all went so fast!

We’re in Andover today, the town my grandmother grew up in. It’s a nice town and we’ll report more when we’re not hogging Elissa’s computer and phone line.

My exposure to British tv has mostly been through PBS. I wish we were exposed to more.

1. As Time Goes By
2. The Vicar of Dibley
3. Ab-Fab
4. Fawlty Towers
5. Born and Bred

So we arrived Wednesday morning to a drizzle and at an airport that requires you to walk across the tarmac. It seemed so very … English. My cousin Angela met us at the airport and escorted us on a whirlwind tour of unclassified roads between the Bristol airport and her home. I feared several times we’d end up in the hedgerow lining the road, but I should have had more faith in Rudi’s driving abilities.

From Bristol, we headed to Bath, where we wandered the city, doing some window shopping before we checked into our guest house for the night where I promptly fell asleep for three hours. Oops. We ate dinner at a cute French bistro, which had delicious, but semi-pricey food. It was the first night — and we just couldn’t contemplate thinking more in depth about dinner. We then went to a local pub and sat in the beer garden under the stars for an hour or so before wandering home to sleep.

The next day we shopped at Marks and Spencer for a little bit and then lunched at Sally Lunn’s (I had the Jane Austen cream tea — tea plus a Sally Lunn bun with raspberry jam and clotted cream. Yum!)

Then off to Wales! We arrived in Abergavenny at 4:30 to find the city center bustling with people shopping. We thought it charming until 5:30 when everything closed. Everything. We did manage to find a chip shop open and ate cod and chips in the car before driving through Brecon Beacons National Park to Brecon where we immediately fell asleep after checking into a hotel attached to the ruins of the city’s old castle.

This morning we got a bit of a late start (self-tanning takes a bit of time, I was surprised to realize), but left Brecon before 11 after hitting a couple of town bakeries. (Back in the room we have Welsh cakes and custard tarts awaiting us.) We arrived in Hay-on-Wye (“Town of Books”) just before noon and spent two blissful hours wandering from one shop to another. Just as we’d given up on finding an affordable lunch spot (I had to give up on having Welsh rarebit in Wales), we turned down a sunlit alley to find a tiny sandwich spot. Two sandwiches, two mugs of tea, and a dessert bar (I think it might have been called tilley?) cost me under £7. Quite reasonable!

This evening finds us in Oxford. Unfortunately, we have discovered that major English towns are not like major American towns — things close between 5:30 and 7 just like they do in small towns. This all seems very civilized in theory, but is remarkably frustrating in practice when you’re looking for something to do and someplace to check your email.

Tomorrow we turn southwards for some family time — Caroline’s wedding tomorrow afternoon and then on Sunday and Monday some time in the town my grandmother grew up. I’m hoping she’ll show me some of the places where her stories take place. The old flour mill where her father worked, the private school she got into on a scholarship, the church where she and my American G.I. grandfather wed over the objections of most of her family…

As predicted, I am not getting enough rest, but thanks to Marks and Spencer, I do have more of a tan than I did when I began the trip. And I’m having a fantastic time. I’m so glad I came.

More updates when I have time and internet access…

Oxford is home to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Lewis Carroll. At one point or another I have had trouble finishing their works, but I eventually did and am so glad I did.

1. White Teeth, by Zadie Smith (I read about half of it before putting it down at the start of a semester in grad school. I still haven’t gotten back to it yet.)
2. Ulysses, by James Joyce (I only made it through a few pages of it before I had to return it to the library.)
3. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (I got further into this one than Ulysses, but not much further. But at least I own my copy of this one.)
4. How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby (I hated it from the beginning. Really couldn’t get into it.)
5. How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn (I read a surprising amount of this before reaching one of those moments in the text where the main character, whom you’ve come to love, is about to screw up his life. I couldn’t prevent him, so I just stopped reading. I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.)

We’re visiting Hay-on-Wye today, so I thought I’d share some favorite authors.

1. Jane Austen
2. J.R.R. Tolkein
3. J.K. Rowling
4. Jasper Fforde
5. James Herriot