Portsmouth

Saturday Morning we picked Lowell up at Heathrow.  He had a full welcoming committe.

After his flight from New York, instead of getting a nap, we headed straight to Portsmouth on the South coast of England to see the historic docyards and the HMS Victory.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant directly across from the dockyard.  I had my doubts about the place, but was overruled.  Mom picked a starter dish of Whitebait that “sounded good”.  When it arrived it was looking back at her – little fried fish – eyes and all.  She made a good effort, but her face told the real story.  Lowell gallantly gave him some of his cod and traded for the Whitebait.  She decided she will not order any more unfamiliar fish on this trip.

Next we headed over to the HMS Victory – the most important ship in Britain.  The ship is very well presented – you do a self guided tour through the decks of the ship.  The 3 men over 6′ in our family really had to watch their heads – and so did the short women. 

After about an hour on the ship we spent a couple hours in the excellent museum.  Lowell is at shipbuilding school so he could have spent all day geeking out over the boats and naval history.  We stayed until almost closing time, then drove back home.  We have a full house now, so Steve and I moved out down the road to our local public house.

Pictures at Flickr.

 

Del and Beckie in London

Guest author Beckie Dickerson

Our first trip to Englad began yesterday.  After getting into Heathrow, where we were expertly collected by our son-in-law Steve, we spent the day at Steve and Sarah’s.  We took a nap and then got up and took a walk around the neighborhood.  We made it all the way up to the next village.  After Sarah got home from work we went up to their regualr pub for dinner.

We enjoyed touring London today.  We took the train from Reading into the city.  We met for lunch cousin Laurie, who we hadn’t seen in 25 years.  The main touring event was taking the double decker bus tour to see all the major sites and a short boat tour on the River Thames.  It was a cold, wet, damp day, but not too wet or cold to spoil the day. 

More pictures are up at flickr.

Lowell arrives tomorrow morning then we are all off to Portsmouth.

Why go bald?

Saw this sign in Dublin.  I think those neon rods entending from the top of his head light up at night.  Very clever.

Pub spin.

A couple weeks back on a beautiful Saturday afternoon we went out on a pub spin (a pub crawl by bike) in our neighbornood. 

First stop was the Black Horse in Checkendon.  This is a hole-in-the-wall sort of pub back in the woods near a riding stable.  No food, no till – just a few pulls and a pad of paper where they write out your tab.  Great atmosphere.  We’ll probably bring our friend Wendy here when she comes on a walking crawl next month.

The next stop was a mere mile or so down the road at the 4 Horseshoes in Checkendon.  We had hoped to eat lunch here, but alas were too late.  So we settled for a half pint of ale each.  A local school fundraiser was just finishing up and the back garden was full of families.  There was a plant sale – and I would have bought a couple had I a way to carry them back (or a garden I cared to tend).

The last stop was at the Highwayman – and this place is really out in the country.  It is between Checkendon and Cane End.  It has just recently reopened after being closed for quite a while.  Here we each had a half of Oxford Gold, one of our old standbys, and some peanuts (we were pretty hungry by now).  At this last pub we calculated that our ride was about 12 miles, but had we stopped at every pub we passed we would have made 9 stops! 

Coming out of this stop and heading home it was much easier to get up the hills – I guess a pint or two will do that to you.  4.5 pints over the 12 miles would have been way too much:-)

Coming from America

My parents are arriving tomorrow for a visit.  I’m sure I’ll post about our adventures together.

One good thing about having them come is that they are bringing a lot of the things I’ve been needing from the States.  These include:

• My favorite American magazines (Real Simple, Cottage Living, Martha Stewart Living, Blueprint (OK, I’m a magazine junkie))
• Chocolate chips (proper Nestle Tollhouse Morsels)
• Crisco (for making chocolate chip cookies)
• Vitamins ($6 for a year’s supply at Wal-Mart vs roughly £20 here)
• An old waterproof jacket from my university days
• A J. Crew catalog (Lowell snared this for me)
• Life Savers wint-o-green mints

I’m already starting my list for Margie’s trip here next month.

Noisy neighborhood.

I was feeling under the weather today, so I stayed home and worked from the comfort of my living room sofa.  Around noon I noticed that there sure was a lot of noice coming from outside – ends up that the cows at the farm sure were agitated about something.  They were making noise all afternoon.  I told Steve this on the phone, and he said “are they mooing?”  Um, yeah, what other noise do cows make?

Then the roosters and chickens joined in because they didn’t like the BT guys fixing the phone line in their grazing area west of the house.  Can’t anyone get any peace out here?

Sheepy-lambies

After visiting Trim castle we walked the nicely maintained trail along the river to a ruined church and further to a ruined abbey. It took us through a large, open sheep field. The sheep have been a family joke between Steve and I recently.

Steve’s mom will be visiting in the fall – and every time we talk about the visit she reminds us that we have to visit a sheep field. She was in England several years ago, and the lack of a stop in a sheep field on that tour was a major disappointment. She loves the  sheepy-lambies”, as she and her sister call them.

Don’t worry mom, we’ll budget plenty of time for visiting with the sheepy-lambies.

Castles, pirates and rats.

To get back to our Ireland trip…we left Dublin on Easter Sunday, picking our rental car up at the airport and then heading north about 90 minutes to Trim, County Meath.  Our destination was Trim Castle.  It is a neat castle ruins that has been restored in a neat way so that you can visit the roof and enjoy the view and access some of the higher bits – while allowing it to remain as it is – a ruins.

We had a great tour guide (a theme on our Ireland trip) who explained a lot of the history of the castle, including some anecdotes from the filming of Braveheart that occured at the castle in the 1990’s.  (Yes, Braveheart was set in Scotland, the Irish are proud that so much was filmed in Ireland)

Anyway, there were several children on the tour and the tour guide did a great job including them and talking with them.  About half way through the tour the guide asked if there were any questions.  A boy about 5 years old raised his hand very slowly.  After being called on he asked.  “Sir, when the pirates lived here, and they were dying, did they eat rats?”  You could just see from his serious and worried look that the wheels were turning in his little head and he was trying to figure out how all his conceptions of “old stuff” were trying to fit together.  The tour guide sturggled for a response, until the little boy’s dad said they could talk about it in the car…

First Snow

We had our first snow of the winter yesterday here in South Oxfordshire. (hey, isn’t winter supposed to be over?!) This is the view that greeted us out the front window.

There was about 2 inches – it didn’t stick to the roads except for a layer as slush as the ground is just too warm already. We took a walk out down the lane and up to and arround the next village. Our walk took us across a field that serves as the sledding hill for our village and the next. After we got home we stayed in the rest of the day and had a fire. All morning we saw families walking down our lane with sleds – heading towards the hill. They had to be quick – the snow was almost all gone by noon.

A new place to live.

We are moving yet again! (5th time in less than a year for those keeping count) We’ll be moving to a house in Shiplake, Oxfordshire, right on the river Thames. The house is much bigger than where we are currently and it is really beautiful, stone and wood floors, built in cabinets, a beautiful bathroom and views of the river. The garden extends all the way to the river and the garden is taken care of so no yard work for us!

The house is right near the Thames River path – and thus connected to a huge network of other walking and cycling paths. In August the Wargrave and Shiplake regatta will take place just a few metres downstream.

We found out 3 weeks ago that we will need to leave our current house in the country as the landlords are selling. I was so sad – I really love this little place. But, an amazing house was placed right into our laps. God has provided for us every step of the way in our move to England and our time in the new country. I was really upset with the uncertainty of needing to find a new place, and the hassle of moving again so soon, but He was giving us a gift of something even better.

(click on the picture of the house to go to Flickr to see a few more pictures)