Epic England Post

Despite being right next to each other, Wales and England are very different. Wales is all magical and mythical, and England is more refined and a little bit more boring. But one of the funniest differences is in the place names. Welsh towns had crazy names like Pwllheli and Llanysumdwy (seriously. I'm not making those up.) Whereas English towns have hilarious names like Chipping Sodbury, Crudwell, Great Coxwell and Limpley Stoke. They've become inspiration for new insults between us, ie:

"You're such a chipping sodbury"
"Oh yeah? Well you're a crudwell. You and all your friends"

But the first place we stayed in was pretty normal - it was the ancient walled city of Chester. What Chester did have was a serious lack of accommodation, a closed down visitor's centre, a full hostel, and a lot of rain. After a few hours we found somewhere to stay, and the next morning we went for a walk on the ancient wall. Here's Em on the wall:

From Chester we went down to Ludlow where they had a little Sunday market in the square outside the castle. The castle was incredible. This is what it looked like on the outside:

We stayed there for a few hours then went to Stratford-upon-Avon for the night. This is where Shakespeare was born, and where he eventually died. We found a great B&B there that was run by a little French guy called Pascal. He told us that if we got drunk and came back and there was someone in our bed, we were probably in the wrong room - or maybe he'd gotten drunk and double booked the room, and we'd have to share the bed. Then he laughed and told us it wasn't really that sort of establishment. Funny little man. We went for a walk along the river that night:

And the next morning we visited Shakespeare's grave. Here's the church where he is buried:

Later that day, we went to Bath, home of some ancient Roman baths:

Fuzlet took his place next to the Roman statues:

Japh wanted to go for a swim:

Here is the great bath, looking up towards an ancient cathedral:

From there we went on a massive accommodation hunt near Stonehenge and finally found a great 14th century coaching inn called The Three Cups. We stayed there for the night then the next morning visited Stonehenge:

Which looked pretty amazing close up:

Then we went on a bit of a random drive past Woodhenge (a total anti-climax, just a lot of concrete poles), through Avebury with its stone circles, and through some cool little villages called the wallops. We eventually stumbled across an amazing butterfly farm. Fuzlet loved this butterfly:

Some of them were really beautiful:

Here's a massive one on a rotten banana:

And here's us inside:

We drove through Oxford after this, which was pretty boring, then stayed the night last night in an amazing 17th Century hotel in a little town called Deddington. We were really lucky and got a deluxe loft room for half price because its quiet here at the moment. Japh got a picture of a car in the town, just for dad (he likes cars):

And Fuzlet had a great time using the bidet:

We're heading off in the direction of London today so our next post should be from there. Lots of love!