It's half term at school, so there's another week off. We decided, along with about 20 million other Britons, that the best place to spend it would be on the M5, near Bristol. I suppose it's not too difficult to believe that a lot of cars can make the traffic slow down, but I do find it very weird that there's so much traffic that it just stops. For up to 10 minutes at a time. And then again, a few minutes later. I remember (with some pleasure) some interesting applied maths lectures in second year studying partial differential equations modelling traffic flow and heat flow. But I don't think the models we used could have described this.
Anyway, after a slower but not particularly unpleasant or frustrating journey, we found ourselves at
Killerton House, a National Trust place near Exeter in Devon. It's got rather nice gardens, a nicely done up inside, with a costume museum, and importantly for Devonshire, tea rooms - two sets, even. I enjoyed stitching together these pictures of the girls in the garden. Maybe I should try to tune it up to make that join disappear.
After a quick cream tea (they don't seem to call them Devonshire Teas here), we were on our way to the farm. Depending who you ask, the best feature of this place is either the number of tractors, the lambs, the dogs, or the chickens/ducklings/goslings/egg-hunt.
We did a little exploring of the local area - to the Tarr Steps, and to Dunster/Minehead. We had driving rain, drizzle, low cloud, lots of combinations. The Exmoor Ponies were of great interest too. We had a couple of quite tasty dinners at Exebridge's "The Anchor", which was in a very nice setting.
I made an early departure from the farm, so that I could return to the pleasures of work, while the others stayed on holiday. There's absolutely no truth to the rumour that I can't survive 3 days without Internet connectivity. (We took the laptop to the supermarket because there would be coverage there!)
My train trip home was interesting. My first Taunton - Malvern Link ticket was offered at £51.50, but I explained that I'd seen it for £28 on the Internet. So, I was given a ticket for £28. The penalty for such a cheap ticket was that I wasn't permitted to go through Birmingham. Oddly enough, that didn't make any difference, given the trains I was planning to travel on. I suppose it might almost be reasonable to offer a flexible ticket first, but I don't really think so. Anyway, after the others drove back to the farm, I made it onto my train. Bristol Temple Meads was the first stop. And we waited a little while. There was an announcement explaining that the new Train Manager (conductor) would be a little late, as there were delays on trains coming from Birmingham, due to trees blown onto the tracks. A little while later, it was explained that the new train manager wouldn't be coming after all, and that this train was now terminated. "All change please, all change." We were advised to head over to a different platform, to get the next train in a generally northerly direction - this one was aiming for Manchester Piccadilly. It was only two stops to Cheltenham Spa, where I was to change for a Malvern train. But those two stops took some time, and of course the train was very crowded, having two train-loads of passengers at the end of a bank holiday weekend! When we arrived at Cheltenham, it turned out that we'd just missed the Malvern train, and the next one wouldn't be for two hours. I had hoped that perhaps I were allowed to catch a Birmingham train, I might have been able to connect somehow. But things turned out even better. There were four of us on that train who were now trying to get to Worcester, Malvern Link, Great Malvern, and Ledbury. After some animated (almost heated, from one quarter) discussion, and some consultation to the Fat Controller (by phone - I don't really know if he/she was fat, it's just a stereotype, and I'm not responsible!), the nice people at First Great Western agreed to send the four of us to Worcester and Great Malvern in a taxi. It cost them £72. As it turned out, I was only about 30 minutes later than I would have been by train, so that was quite good.
We'll have more photos and details of the holiday soon. Now that Joanna knows that Australia won the test by 95 runs, I may not hear from her again (the farm house isn't in range). Berenice is off on her Egyptian Escapade tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, which means that I've got to manage 3 nights on my own. This calls for some immediate prioritisation of culinary establishments!
It seems that I now have an excuse for three course dinners at nice French restaurants (like Cafe Rouge in Worcester, where Joanna, Steph, Helen and I went tonight), having chocolate cake at lunchtime, impossible pie for dinner (last night) and various other delicacies - even if I don't get to the gym as often as I plan, although I did go yesterday. For today I'm officially XL.
That reminds me: I was going to blog my visit to Canterbury on Sunday and Monday. After Steph and I spent some of Sunday morning constructing the first parts of the egg slinger (for a school science challenge), I drove to Canterbury. I didn't get there in time for a 3:15pm choral evensong at the Cathedral, but I did manage to catch compline, in (but without!) the choir, for the first time ever. I can't really describe it as a sermon, but the Dean managed to interweave through the whole service a story about John Keble, who is remembered on Bastille day - particularly for his sermon that started the Oxford Movement. I also attended a Eucharist on Monday morning, this time in the crypt. I came home on Monday afternoon, but as I write on Thursday, the place is crowded with over 800 bishops at the fourteenth once-a-decade Lambeth Conference.
