A Weekend Away InThe Cotswolds

Contiki craziness had passed away but Melissa and I still had the travel bug. We'd been working some land loving jobs and had put our pirate cutlasses away. The two other Captains, aka Cam and Leon have also travelled back to a far away place and are probably still out plundering!

The first major place on the agenda was Oxford, which was a student town with some neat cafes and a great Garden, J.R.R Tolkien even had a willow noted down as his favourite there which I was very impressed with. I thought it might have been on of the willows Bilbo Baggins ran into in Mirkwood forest on his way to sort out the mighty dragon 'Smaug'.

So Melissa choose a really lovely place to go within Britain 'The Cotswolds'. The Cotswolds are made up of a range of hills in Central-West England (aka 'The Heart of England'), it is quite a large area (40km across and 145km long) consisting of many small villages. Our method of travel was Thirfty car hire and I organised it to pickup from Heathrow (£86/3days hire). It was great to get into the country and drive a car again it's been 9 months or so since I've driven a car, Melissa was on google maps navigating me around yet again. Who says girls can't read maps she's an absolute legend.

Burton-on-the-Water a lovely little village with ducklings, a quaint bridge and a bed n breakfast (the old new inn £200 / 2 nights), garden room 2 rooms, breakfast included and a three course dinner which was absolutely divine. I thought we were going to be ripped off but it turned out to be an absolute treat. If you'd like to stay book it through this website http://www.theoldnewinn.co.uk/

While there we took a little drive around the surrounding villages (Cirencester and Burford) and ended up in a wild life park, for around £10 each we had a look around the place, it was a huge park and there were quite a few families around. Melissa is an animal lover and had a great time, I must say I was a little taken by all the animals and had a great stroll around the place followed up by an ice cream.

The following day we stayed at a bed n breakfast in Bristol (£50/night - no dinner), not much to say about Bristol we had a quick walk through Castle park and had lunch at a cafe along the water which took an hour to get our food, not that impressive. So we decided to high tail it to Bath and found the local Bath Spas, entry was £25/each. The baths had two pools, one a rooftop with the view of the city and one on the ground floor. Then in the middle there were 4 special steam suna's each with different aromatherapy scents and a waterfall shower in the middle. Also there were no kids, and that was great because we all know what kids do in pools.

At our shared bed and breakfast we met a group of students from Trinity College in Dublin they were cool and we shared a couple of drinks at the local. The following day we headed home and took some detours through small villages and roads which were like forest corridors, where your car is nearly touching the shrub on the sides and above. Before getting back into London we visited Stonehenge, Melissa loved it as she has always wanted to see Stonehenge and discover how it was put together and what it was used for. The audio guide helped to answer some of these questions, however it all seemed a bit mythical rather than realistic. I was mildly impressed.

All and all it was a great weekend away and we're hoping to do a few more, a certain person is forever telling us to go to York, so I guess that will be coming soon.