Use Your Accent

First Bri’ish road trip! Wowie did we pack our car full to the brim! We took a week to travel through southern England and hit up a few must-do’s along the way!

First stop: Legoland, of course. Never disappoints!

Next, Windsor! We saw a Changing of the Guard at Windsor Castle, but my favorite part was when the kids came running out of King George Chapel yelling “We saw the buried queen! Come look, come look!” I traded baby-duty with Joe and the kids lead me on a tour of the chapel, showing me all the interesting parts…including the Queen!

We took a boat cruise on the Thames, which had more swans than I had ever seen before. We learned a lot about the swans and about the river during the cruise, but now I honestly can’t remember the parts I wanted to share. I’m going to blame my foggy memory on the sleep deprivation.

We enjoyed an amble down The Long Walk and even got a few smiles for an impromptu fall photo shoot!

We also took advantage of a beautiful fall evening and walked to the portion of the Thames right near our lodging.

Moving right along: Hellfire Caves was an impromptu stop based on a recommendation to us by some friendly restaurant patrons at the fabulous Horse & Groom, outside Windsor Castle. It was a lot of fun trekking around and following the spooky scavenger hunt. The caves were small enough that T1 could have another go while the littles waited outside.

Finally, we took a look-see at the quaint village of Turville on the way home and had the most frightening driving experience in this country to date. I feel like we had many a fright on European roads during our Olmsted years, but something about being a decade older and having three small humans in tow made this one seem worse than it probably was.

We lost cell signal somewhere in the back country between Turville and Henley on Thames, which also meant we had no GPS signal. Not the biggest deal because we were basically on a single-lane dirt road with nowhere to turn, but the rogue cows sharing the path with us made it seem very remote. We also had only a few gallons of gas left. So with no GPS, waning gas, and no other humans in sight, we let ourselves do some unnecessary catastrophic thinking during that 30 minutes of “terror”. But we made it to a gas station, and civilization, just in the nick of time. Phew! Kids were no worse for wear.

All in all, I would call this journey a success! Joe and I felt like newbie travelers several times, but we’re celebrating the small victories!