ENGLAND (Oxford, Winchester, Salisbury, Isle of Wight)
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August 15 to September 30, 2012
England, France and Italy
Independent +GCT tour
Click photos to enlarge and see captions
Wow, what an epic this was! I must have been out of my mind to plan on being gone six weeks... What was I thinking????? Never again, is what we promised each other after the fourth week. The pace we kept and the level of fatigue I was sometimes experiencing greatly curtailed the amount of notes I took. Which results now in a less detailed travelogue as I have been known to produce after our trips. For those of you who will be disappointed in this dearth of historical/architectural/political and other data, I can only apologize… and refer you to Google!
However, we most definitely enjoyed all of this recent three-phase adventure. The variety of places and people kept it alive and exciting. And we had near perfect weather, with only three half-days of rain in six weeks. We started, of course, with:
PHASE ONE: ENGLAND (OXFORD, WINCHESTER, ISLE OF WIGHT)
FLAG OF UNITED KINGDOM
Instead of exploring one specific region as we have done on most previous voyages, we stayed put for ten days, thanks to the gracious hospitality of our good English friends Hilary and Brian. With them we took several day-trips to visit spots I or we had either only seen from the outside or never seen before. Such as the town of Oxford (viewed from the top of a sightseeing double-decker bus), after which we visited the church and cloister of Christ Church College. We even got to see the Great Hall, or students' refectory, where the Harry Potter movies were filmed. Then it was the turn of the town of Salisbury and its stunning 13th-century Anglican cathedral in all its gothic splendor, whose spire, at 404', is the highest in the United Kingdom. Summer was in full bloom, and crowds were at their peak, with temperatures very – and unseasonably -- high. Salisbury Cathedral also holds one of only four original copies of the Magna Carta.
Friends we had made on our first South-east Asian cruise last year, who live north of London, met with us for a couple of days as well. In their company, we took the ferry in Lymington, a charming town on the south coast of England in the English Channel (known to "my people" as la Manche) to reach the Isle of Wight. A most popular spot for summer tourists, it is also a haven for English retirees who go "south" (?) to warmer climes for the winter. Which is hard to fathom, when you see on the map that the Isle of Wight is farther north than Normandy… We delighted in the lovely Botanical Gardens, dipped our toes in the Channel on Ventnor beach (the women did, but the men declined), and had an altogether great time.
Winchester Cathedral, England
The second day took us to the town of Winchester whose celebrated cathedral goes back to 632 AD, when the Old Minster was first built, and then demolished, leaving traces of its original foundation to the north of the "new" present cathedral built in the 11th century. The architecture of the English cathedrals was to stand in great contrast to the baroque ornamentation of the Italian churches that were to lie ahead.
We were fortunate enough to visit the city on a Sunday, when a lovely outdoors market fills the width and length of the main street, for several hours devoted to pedestrian traffic only. A typical, fun, tourist day.
Robin's brother John, who lives in the same area of Southampton, was kind enough to take us to Windsor, site of the famous Royal Castle. Perfect weather, but the line to get in and visit the public part of the Castle was so long that we didn’t even attempt it. However, another sightseeing tour on a double-decker afforded us choice views of the town and the Castle of Windsor with a quick tour of Eton, the home of its famous eponymous college, thrown in for good measure.
Thatched roof collection, in Micheldever, Hampshire
Finally, Hilary and Brian indulged my obsession with thatched-roofed houses, by taking us to a village named Micheldever, which is chock-full of them. A real thatch-roof orgy for the photographer in me.
All in all, it was a very pleasurable visit to England, and we were graced with almost perfect weather, with only one half-day of rain. As I always say: if you want good weather when you travel, stick with me, kids!
And on to France for Phase 2 (click on the link at the bottom right of this page)
