england #16- we jaunt off towards wiltshire

Tuesday we didn’t get off to a very early start, partially due to a broken modem crisis. We didn’t have internet access at our London lodgings, but I’d taken the netbook with me and just carried it in my messenger bag during the days….and I should really get a picture of my messenger bag, which I got specifically for the trip, being me, and being so obsessed with The Perfect Bag as I always am. I don’t think I ever wrote about my pre-trip agonizing over the Perfect Bag and how I maybe wanted a new Timbuk2 bag since I’ve had one for years and really like it, but it was getting old and worn – and is an extremely not-pretty shade of orange and brown – and I searched and searched in all the Mast Stores and Footsloggers and online and everywhere I could think of, and also being me nothing was PERFECT. I had to have something I could carry the netbook and my SLR camera in, along with whatever odds and ends I needed during our days of adventure. And would be a good plane bag. Several years ago I bought a little shoulder bag by Pacsafe at a luggage store, justifying the cost because it would be perfect for England. (At the time we had not actually set the date.) And it is a really great bag, with all sorts of nice features and lots of pockets and zippers, and it’s made of slash-proof fabric, straps included, so nobody can slash your strap and steal your bag. Which honestly was not a possibility that had even occurred to me before then. And it would be perfect!! Except it’s way too small for the netbook. So after all that rationalization I didn’t even take it to England. Although it’s earned its keep these past years because I use it as a camera bag.

ANYHOW, I’ll spare you the details of agonizing over bags and ordering a large Timbuk2 bag from Amazon and deciding it was just TOO big and sending it back and not liking ANYTHING in the stores and finally… ordering one of the custom made ones. Which I’d kept wanting to do but kept thinking TOO MUCH MONEY!!! But it wasn’t THAT much more but it kind of was but it was WORTH it, I could get EXACTLY what I wanted…. oh, I just went on and on and on! And I kept going to the Timbuk2 shop and designing one and then deleting it because TOO MUCH MONEY!!!! Finally I just ordered the damn thing. And I love love LOVE it. It makes me happy every time I carry it, which is daily. So, worth it. It’s unique and pretty and even when I spilled wine on it, it wiped right off. So I have go to take a picture of it, as it was my constant faithful trip companion.

But back to the actual STORY. Which has, oh, nothing to do with my Timbuk2 bag. It has to do with wireless, which we didn’t have in London but I carried the Netbook and it was no problem- there are Starbucks everywhere and if you have a Starbucks card you get free wireless. Our Wetherspoons had free wireless too. It was pretty common. But when we left London and rented the car, Kim saw an ad to rent a little USB modem thing through Hertz. It was actually pretty cheap, and since we didn’t know what the wireless situation would be after we left London, it did seem like a good idea. That’s  how we kept in touch with everyone at home- calls on our phone were very pricey so we tried not to use it much. (And I know, an iPhone or Android or something like that would have saved us a lot of trouble. But neither of us has one.) She just insisted on paying for it and not letting me split it with her. So for several days we had it, and it was great – just a little stick like a memory stick, and bingo! There’s your wireless. You can buy them too of course and I kept looking into them before I left, but didn’t want an actual monthly plan and didn’t know if something I got here would work in England, and oddly could not find out.

SO that morning we were getting ready to go, and I’d sat the netbook on the little table in the room where I was sleeping  – being on a narrow boat, the room had one teeny table and the huge bed and that was it. I thought it was well out of the way, but Kim tossed her suitcase on the bed, it fell over, and hit the modem which was still sticking out of the netbook’s USB port. Didn’t knock the computer off, fortunately, but cracked the modem. We thought it just broke the case, but no, the whole thing was ruined. Poor Kim was SO upset- she’d already been worrying about money, and she’d just found out they took out a $100 deposit from her bank on it and didn’t tell her, and then it got broken. And she would not HEAR of letting me help pay for it.  I felt terrible – I’d left the modem in it because I was going to use it again before we left — and she felt terrible, and it was just draaaama! But what can you do? Accidents happen, and at least it didn’t break the netbook, which really WOULD have been upsetting. But that whole thing delayed us getting gone.

And it was cold and rainy, so we didn’t make great time once we set off at last. Although it was no big hurry — we were just going to drive down south and planned to go to Stonehenge, Avebury, Glastonbury, Bath, and see some Mysterious White Horses the next day — and maybe Salisbury Cathedral, which is quite close to Stonehenge. Hey, that isn’t much for one day! …… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

The drive was so gorgeous… we just kept going OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!! everywhere we looked. It was more rolling farmland when we started, then got very hilly during part of the drive. Unfortunately it also got very foggy and we couldn’t see much of the hills. We were going southwest from the Nottingham area, past Birmingham and Gloucester. To my great delight, driving was no problem at all. Even the roundabouts were suddenly a breeze — I think I missed the exit on one of them, and it was one you DID go all the way around so I just went around again. Kim was a wonderful navigator — she’d keep an eye on our BFF the GPS, and give me even more detailed directions. Like, for some reason in England the GPS would tell you to take an exit when it was still a fourth mile or so away, acting as if you were already there. Here it tells you when you’re AT the exit. Which was a little confusing. So Kim would keep an eye on the exits, and had gotten the hang of roundabout signs too, and it was a MUCH easier drive and not harrowing at all. Driving was FUN! Even when we got off in Clevedon, and were driving on the narrow little streets with people parked all over the place, somehow  I’d magically learned how to judge distances and it was perfectly fine.

I’d gotten reservations in Clevedon the night before through Priceline, by searching for places fairly near Bath, since that’s where we wanted to start. Then we’d move on to Avebury and Stonehenge etc etc. Bath of course is quite expensive, so we got a place in Clevedon, about 45 minutes away. But MUCH cheaper. Looking at the map, Clevedon appeared to be in a very pretty place, too – right on the bay, directly across the water from Cardiff. So we figured it would be a nice spot. And the hotel looked close to the water.

The town was beautiful — cute little houses, tons of old stone buildings… then we started going up the quite steep hill on the little narrow road. And up. And up. And up. And over to the left was this GORGEOUS bay– and we kept going up, right along the bay…

And finally got to our hotel….. and this is what we saw:

 

Yes, that IS THE BAY!!!! there on the right!!! The above picture is the front of the hotel (and it is actually much longer than this- I just wanted to get the water in there too). The  hotel which is on a cliff overlooking the bay.

This was the side we were on —

Seriously, we were practically SCREECHING with glee!

(Yes, this was obviously taken on a different day. Which will be explained in a later entry)

That huge bottom window was OURS.

Our room! Which was very large, although it doesn’t look it here. There are two twin beds- I’m standing on the far side of mine.

This was the view out our window — we weren’t technically overlooking the water, but we could certainly see it –

It was the Best. Hotel. EVER. And CHEAP, for England, close to Bath. $40 each a night, tax and all. It’s a Best Western, oddly — the Walton Park — and they were doing a lot of renovations so I think it was just being fixed up. And something alerted Kim to it being a time-share hotel, although I forget why she realized that now. But it was HUGE and looked like it had at one time been something very elegant. It sparkled with cleanliness, and the staff was tremendously friendly and helpful. And it was really quiet. I was in LOVE.

And when we walked down to the village, I was even more in love.

 

We dined at The Moon and Sixpence. I LOVE pubs!!!

 

 

 

The beach is very pebbly. And the pier was built in  1869. Clevedon was a very popular Victorian tourist destination.

Do you know what those lights are over there, across the water?

It’s Cardiff, Wales!! And do you know what is really really odd? (Noko will appreciate this, having recently become a fan of Torchwood) While I was here, IN Clevedon, looking across at Cardiff, Baker B, in a totally unrelated storyline, was researching Torchwood. He had many mysterious and complex reasons to be researching Torchwood, but my point is that he had run across something about the rift, which is a central theme in Torchwood– it’s a British show about a team of alien hunters, based in Cardiff, who spend a lot of time tracking aliens that come through this time-rift in Cardiff. Which is located in the bay. Like, exactly where I was gazing happily the entire day and evening.

Weird!  When I got home, we watched all the Torchwoods. And are completely hooked, and I highly recommend them. It’s a spin off from Doctor Who, which I’ve yet to watch, so even if you aren’t a Doctor Who fan they are still fantastic.

And I think I have gone on and on and on enough for this entry. Next stop- Bath!