Today we spent pretty much all day in the car, driving around the Cotswolds. The sun had come back out, so the weather was perfect.
The plan was to drive around several of the more picturesque towns, then swing down to Stonehenge, and finally head back to London and return the car. I was really looking forward to not having to drive around anymore. Though I've gotten more used to driving on the "wrong" side of the road (plus the wrong side of the car), I was also anxious about driving through London traffic again to give it back.
Of course, no of us wanted to get up. We called down and asked for an extra hour before we checked out, and they graciously complied. Of course, we missed breakfast. When we did check out, we got a map and a few pointers on where to go.
Bibury had come alive with tourists. There were at least three tour buses parked across the street and every space nearby was taken. You could barely drive for the pedestrians. We thought there was going to be a major, slow collision between a giant bus trying to turn onto the little bridge and the cars that didn't want to give him room.
We drove the few yards to The Catherine Wheel, since we didn't want to take up the Swan Hotel's tiny parking lot. Fortunately, they did have parking available. About the only place around that did.
The staff was different from last night, so we told our waitress that we'd liked dinner so much, we came back for lunch. We each had a different sandwich, which were all amazing.
After lunch we hit the road and headed up to Broadway, about 45 minutes away.
After driving through town, we turned back south and made our way to Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe. As soon as we pulled into town, we saw some "road closed ahead" signs. We found our way to the castle, but we couldn't see it from the road (or even the parking lot) and we didn't want to take the time to go in, so we just kept going.
We were almost out of town when we finally found where the main road was closed, with no detour signs. We tried to find our way out and ended up on a one-lane road going through a farm. Judging by the traffic coming and going, it might have been the way out. But we had no idea where we were going, so we turned around. Had to pull off into the grass a couple of times to let other cars pass.
We found our way through a few more tiny towns and lots more rolling hills and sheep before we made it back to the highway.
By this point it was nearly four, so we had a question about making it to Stonehenge. We did the math and while it was technically possible, it was a lot of driving and we'd only have a short time there. Plus with traffic, there was no guarantee we'd get the car back on time.
Marsha was worried about Madison and I missing Stonehenge, but we assured her that we'd done so much already, we were fine with it. So, we opted to head back to London. Based on the amount of traffic we encountered, it was the right choice.
Again, my biggest worry was driving back through London again, but I was already pointed in the right direction and I now had four days of experience under my belt. Plus, I used precious data for turn-by-turn directions. I could not have been more relieved to return the car. Whew!
I took the Tube back to the hotel, then we hopped right back on and went to Covent Garden for dinner. Found a place called The Crusting Pipe, though everything else said Davey's. It was confusing, but the food was great and Madison and I both finally got our steak dishes.
Our last stop was Pucadilly Circus, where we bought more souvenirs and an extra duffle bag to get them home. We're still novices on the whole airline travel thing, after all.
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