Laughing at yourself is one of the humbling and fun things in life, isn’t it? This picture doesn’t show you the laughing part. First, the coffee tray. What’s there not to love about staying in a charming B&B and having the owner deliver a fresh pot of coffee at 8:00 in the morning? Indeed Nicky brought this cute little tray for us and it just barely lodged on the edge of the bedside table. We savored every drop.

Now the other part – we had just one electrical outlet in this room above (in Wales). If you’ve never traveled in England before . . . well, for us with U.S. 110 volt plugs, we must first use a British plug. On the back are the holes for both European and American plugs. But first you have to insert a power converter so you don’t  blow up the electrical device. It converts their 220 volts to 110. But, the plugs don’t hold very well. They’re loose. They fall out. Either the converter falls out, or the American plug/cord falls out. So I’ve had to resort to all kinds of makeshift things to prop it up.

As I write this (it’s Sunday here in Cheltenham), up in the room I’m charging my ipod. But in order to do that I had to unplug the television, which meant my DH couldn’t watch morning TV while he waited for me to finish showering and dressing. So he went down to the “lounge,” (the living room type place where small hotels offer drinks or lounging) to read. When I first got up this morning I began charging my iphone. It was completely dead. Because, you see, when we drove yesterday we needed to leave the GPS plugged into the cigarette lighter. Dave thinks that the GPS must be plugged in when it’s in use (I think it has some reserve juice to run awhile; he thinks it doesn’t). So I couldn’t charge my iphone in the car yesterday.

So, I should have charged it last night, but Dave was watching TV when I decided to go to sleep. My ipod, that I listen to almost every night before I drift off to sleep, was nearly dead too. It had just enough juice for me to listen for about 15 minutes. So therefore, nothing got charged. Ah, the dilemma of a techie. Of course, I have to have my ipod, and my iphone, and my mini-laptop. Then, you throw in the fact that Dave’s razor (his only battery type device with him) must be charged too. He told me this morning that his razor is just about dead. So we need to leave it charging while we’re out and about today. With the British plug, the converter and then the curlicue cord for charging. But it falls out too, so we have to find something in the room that’s not flammable (like plastic or something similar) to prop up under the contraptions – to keep them supplying juice.

So here I am, sitting in the lounge myself, running the laptop on battery power because the British plug and converter are upstairs in the room. I hope I have enough juice left to upload this post. You readers are just lucky I even have a post with all this electronics mess!

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We’re staying at a B&B in Hay-on-Wye, a charming Welsh town nearer the English border that we were a few nights ago, And the owners are limited in how much they can (internet) upload and download through their wi-fi-system. So I’m just including this picture above – the tea tray in our room. If you’ve never traveled in England, you may not know that nearly every hotel, inn or B&B has a tea tray. Some are nicer than others. Some include cookies (biscuits they’re called here). Some include all sorts of teas, hot chocolate packets and instant coffee. At the B&Bs they will also send you off to bed with a little pitcher of milk so you can have milk in your tea when you awake in the morning. Or, some have little thin plastic packets of milk that don’t have to be refrigerated – here they’re in little bags that are about 3/8 inches wide and 3 inches long.

On the tea tray above there is a corded hot water maker (top left). There’s sugar cubes, a teapot, a dish for your spent teabags (top right) and the other little pots contain tea bags, instant coffee, etc, The owners actually brought up a tall cafetierre (a coffee press-pot) for us this morning, so my empty coffee mug is resting there at the bottom right.

This tea tray thing in the room is a nice cultural thing. Of course, in the US our hotels often have a coffeepot and teabags are usually there too. But here you can make an actual pot of tea, a proper pot of tea if you want it. Whenever we visit England I vow I’m going to start making a proper tea tray more often. I do make one when I prepare tea for myself during the daytime.

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We’ve been staying the last couple of nights at a B&B in a little village called Upper Tumble. I’ll write up a separate post about that, with pictures. The owners sent us off to a local pub, a very unassuming little place, but they have marvelous food. Our first night here we went there and both enjoyed lamb for dinner. Mine was especially good (lamb shank in a delish sauce) with mashed potatoes and vegetables. Anyway, the chef said he would cook us a traditional Welsh dinner if we’d come back the next night. We did, and what an interesting meal it was.

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Several years ago I started reading another blogger – that’s listed down at the bottom of my webpage – one of my favorites – A Year From Oak Cottage. Marie writes two blogs now – that one  that’s a little bit of everything about Marie’s life and some recipes – and the other one called The English Kitchen – where Marie shares recipes mostly about the good old-fashioned kind of home cooking she does. Marie used to work as a chef/cook at a big manor house and had interesting stories to tell about some of the food she cooked for the family, and about the cottage they lived in (obviously, called Oak Cottage) with their collie dog Jess. Marie and I emailed a bit and when we knew we were coming to visit England we happened to be driving right through Chester, where they live now.

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Yesterday (Monday) we checked out of our B&B in the outskirts of Windermere and drove down to the yacht basin and took a lovely cruise around Lake Windermere on a touristy kind of double decker boat. It was a glorious day. Perfectly sunny and warm. My DH so loves the water – not quite like the ocean which is his favorite – but a big lake is certainly a good substitute.

Another view from a different area of the lake. After our cruise we drove on south to Chester, and I’ll write up something about that part in another post.

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Distant view of Lake Windermere from atop the pass just east of it. A bit of haze in the air, but a lovely, sunny day.

A view from one of the narrow windy roads near Ullswater.

A lake near Ullswater. I risked life and limb to get across the busy road to take this picture.

A lovely, paved walkway near Rydall Water.

In California we don’t see much moss, so I’m always enchanted to find it alive and well all over England, tucked into the edges or rock walls.

The lovely garden at our B&B in Windermere. We’re off tomorrow to Chester.

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As I write this it’s Saturday morning and we’re in the Lake District, where we’ll be for three days. Yesterday we drove from Harrogate across the Yorkshire moors. What ruggedly gorgeous, green land. The pastures, the crooked rock wall fences, the grazing sheep and cattle. And the narrow, narrow roads. Our GPS routes us the most direct, not necessarily the highways, so often the voice will tell us to turn right onto a tiny little lane barely wide enough for one car, let along two cars passing. And we bumble along for 5 curvy miles hoping we don’t encounter a car. Most often we do. But the locals are kind and climb their own outside wheels up an embankment to allow us to pass. And they wave. And smile.

Yesterday (Friday) it rained nearly all day as we drove. Fortunately it was a light, but steady rain, otherwise I’d have been white-knuckling the steering wheel. When we drive back roads in England I’m a relatively slow driver (so we can ogle the scenery); on the more main highways the cars and trucks whiz along at high speed. The locals know every turning and bend so they line up behind me. I try to pull over to let them pass, but it’s difficult to find places to pull over. Once I turned left into a small farm lane, only to find that the big honking BMW that had been dogging my back bumper for miles turned down the same lane. Then I had to find another place to pull over. Finally did, while the BMW driver glared at me. I took only the one photo of the moors as it was steady rain nearly all day. That’ll be it for the Yorkshire Dales. I love the town and village names. Pately Bridge at Nidderdale. Shipton. Middle Hareham, That first one  was a charming town full of tourists walking the narrow road, but it was raining so we decided not to stop. Rain doesn’t discourage the locals.

We did stop at Fountains Abbey along the way yesterday. It’s an ancient set of large ruins. Brilliant green with fresh grass and moss. Steeped in history. Here’s a collage of photos I took there. It was raining most of the time so the photos are a bit dark. It was a beautiful place, though.

The Lake District is a very popular tourist destination. Dave and I have been here before, nearly 20 years ago, but we stayed in a very lackluster B&B in an out-of-the-way village; too far from everything. That’s why it was cheaper, you know! This time I booked us into a place in Windermere. No lake view, but it’s a lovely place with a pleasant back garden. Today the weather is bright and shiny. But cold. I’m layering clothing because I didn’t bring a long-sleeved shirt. I have a light weight polyester jacket and a raincoat. Maybe I’ll have to go shopping for a warmer sweatshirt type jacket.Likely I’ll just make do.

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Some of you may recognize this – from Brideshead Revisited, the BBC program (and a 2008 movie). What a gorgeous place. One of England’s stately homes, this one not owned by the National Trust, but still owned and used by the Howard family. Half the home is open to the public for a fee (as seniors our tab was about 10 pounds each – $15). We visited some of the public rooms (reception rooms), saw plenty of beautiful historic art, sculpture, exquisite furniture. See photos below. The gardens are stunning.

My favorite room in the house was the library. Or maybe it was the room above with the little writing desk. Wish I could be invited to tea there one day.

Castle Howard is about 10-15 miles NE of the city of York. We had a beautiful day to drive, all back roads, some so narrow we had to climb the left wheels up the side in order to let cars pass. We love those kinds of English country lanes. The North Yorkshire moors are stunning.

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If this isn’t a typical looking country inn of England, then I don’t know what is! Our flight was very nice – oh that first class stuff is something else. We both slept about 4-5 hours on the way over, arriving several hours late (took off 2 1/2 hrs late from LA too). I won’t tell you about the ticket snafu. Let’s just say we arrived fine, rented our car, and started driving. It always takes me an hour or so to adjust to driving on the other side of the road, but no mishaps so far. We arrived at this inn above, at Waddesdon, called the Five Arrows. We arrived late, but kindly they still were willing to feed us dinner. Delicious it was, too. We both had pork belly and I ordered the oh-so-lovely summer pud (layered bread in a small bowl with oodles of fresh berries and clotted cream. Off we went to bed.

The next morning we tried to tour the actual Weddesdon Manor, a National Trust home, but found it was closed on Mondays. Too bad! So we drove a ways and visited Claydon House (another National Trust house) instead. Lovely.

Then we zipped up the motorway and arrived near Nottingham about 4:30 pm. Our dear friend Dinny was expecting us. We went out to dinner that night to a lovely country inn called Langer Hall. Yesterday we spent hours and hours visiting, going into downtown Nottingham to buy a new battery for my camera (can’t believe I went off from home with it charging away in the kitchen near our all-packed bags). We visited Marks & Spencers too (Dave always buys his knickers at Marks & Sparks – he’s owned nothing but M&Ss knickers for about 28 years.) Bet you didn’t know that the Queen wears Marks & Spencer’s knickers. They are extremely well made – Dave still has the ones he bought 30 years ago and they’re holding up, albeit a little thin.

As I’m writing this we’ve driven north into Yorkshire. Maybe tomorrow I’ll share more photos of the Dales. We’re having fun. As I type, my DH is watching Robin Hood on television (how appropriate since we just left Nottingham). We’re about to go to dinner.

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No, I didn’t take that photo. Found it on the internet somewhere. But hopefully that’s about the same view I had today as my DH and I winged ourselves across the pond, as the saying goes, to Britain. On Sunday morning when this will appear, we’ll be  there. We will have left Los Angeles yesterday if all went well. We’re going specifically to visit two friends of ours: one who lives in Nottingham (north central); the other in Cheltenham (west, near the Cotswolds).

Most of the B&Bs will have wi-fi, so once I figure out how to hook up my mini-laptop, using the proper cables, voltage converter (110 to 220) and wall plug, and log onto the wi-fi, I’ll be able to post while we’re away. How often, I don’t know. We’re going to be gone about 2 1/2 weeks, so I hope to give you some photos here and there. Our touring destinations include the Yorkshire Dales (James Harriott country), the Lake District (Beatrix Potter country) and Wales (where we’re going to one town called Hay-on-Wye which has no less than 32 used and antiquarian book stores). With the two visits to friends along the way. And hopefully one other visit to a blogging friend, which I’ll share about when I get there. We have reservations for dinner in London on our last night, at one of Jamie Oliver’s restaurants. We’re not staying in London at all this trip – we’ll stay our last night at a hotel at Heathrow and will take the train into the city for dinner. We have an early-morning departure, so we wanted to be close by and not have to fret about returning the car or having a foul-up with getting to the airport in a timely manner for our early morning flight. Anyway, our dinner in London hopefully will be good food – and fun. We’re looking forward to the entire trip, but also to the weather. The forecast is for highs about 70°, lows about 51°. Oh yes, and there will be rain.

If you’re a techie, in this high-tech day and age, it’s a feat to pack all the right cables, wires, plugs, adapters or converters for international destinations. In addition to my mini-laptop (with mouse and bulky power cable), I take my iPod too with earphones. My iPod puts me to sleep every night as I listen to podcasts that last about 15-30 minutes; I’d hate to be without it. It needs charging with its apple charging cable every 3-5 days. My Kindle will go with me too. I have about 30+ books loaded on it, so obviously I won’t be running out of reading material. But it needs a different kind of charging cable, required about once a week. And I’ll take the little light that attaches to the Kindle case so I can read at night when I’m wide awake with jet lag. I’m also taking my iphone (it’s a 3G with GSM, so it does work in Europe). I don’t plan to use my phone much at all, so it seems kind of senseless to take it, yet it would be very helpful if we need to make last-minute phone calls, or for family to reach us in an emergency. My AT&T calling plan doesn’t include England, of course, and the phone charges will be costly. I’ve been doing some reading online about international travel with an iphone, so I know as soon as we leave Los Angeles I need to turn off “data roaming,” otherwise my iphone will continue to ping for mail continuously (with fees). But if I’m connected to free wi-fi at our hotels, there won’t be any fees. Hopefully I’ll only use the phone once or twice. I have a regular plug charging cable, and I have one that will charge in the cigarette lighter in the car. I don’t want to take both. What a pain! And most of that won’t work unless you plug it into a British wall adapter (they use a bulky 3-prong plug) and the converter. Last trip I finally figured out I needed to use a stack of books to prop up the connecting pieces, otherwise they seem to fall off/out of the plug or out of the wall. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes in older hotels or B&Bs I’m crawling all over the floor trying to FIND the wall plugs. Usually they’re hiding behind furniture, behind desks, dressers, bedside tables. That happens here in the U.S. too, but it’s worse in most other foreign countries. All of that stuff will go with me in my rolling carry-on.

Then I’ll be taking my DSLR camera. It has a different connecting USB cable to plug into the mini-laptop so I can download pictures to it. And then the battery charger for the camera too. I may take my small point-and-shoot camera too. I can use the same download cable, but I must take a different battery charger. If I want to take photos in restaurants I’m embarrassed to whip out my big DSLR, but I can take pictures somewhat unobtrusively with the small one. We’re renting a car with a GPS. Even though I’m very good at directions, and have always adapted well to driving on the other side of the road (I’ll likely do most of the driving), a GPS is such an easier way to get places.  Oh my.

So, here’s what’s going in my carry-on. I’m packed and ready to go, so thought you’d get a kick  out of seeing what’s going with me – or you’re shaking your head now, knowing I’ve gone off the deep end.

The only things NOT in this picture are my iphone and my DSLR camera which I used, of course, to take the picture! Am I crazy, or what?

About six years ago we bought a new BMW (for me) and we picked it up at the factory in Munich. What a fun experience that was. And the guy who gave us the lecture about all the car’s features, programmed into the GPS our first night’s hotel in Austria and our last night’s lodging in Amsterdam, AND, the location where we had to leave the car for shipping across the sea. Anyway, we had such fun with the GPS. After a couple of nights in Austria, we went over the snow-covered pass to Italy for a couple of weeks. I cannot begin to tell you how great that GPS was for getting around on small country roads or big cities in Italy. We did have to buy the European GPS DVD, though. Because we bought the car in Germany we named the GPS woman’s voice, Trudi. And oh, did Trudi ever save us many times. Every time we’ve traveled since, we either drive my car, or we rent a GPS to go with the rental car.

I feel like half my bag will be filled with tech stuff. When we travel, we travel light. Our idea of good, efficient packing is one roll-aboard each (27 inches), although ours are too wide to fit under the seats. But they’re much smaller than most people use. And I also take a carry-on that happens to be a rolling/pulling type. That’s where all that gear up above will go.

My DH, meanwhile, isn’t taking his phone. Or a computer. Or an iPod. Or a camera. He doesn’t use any other electronic devices. He rarely even looks at his email when we’re home and he has his own computer. Maybe I’ll be able to con him into storing all of the cables and chargers. Do you think? Probably not. Dave’s suitcase is always much lighter than mine. I’m the one who does all the travel planning, gathering all the documents we need. Sometimes I can get him to pack the maps. But I carry on my package of data with all the supporting documents for our flights, our hotel reservations, directions where I thought we might need them. I am taking one book, a tour book – a new one I bought – even though we’ve been to England about 10 times. I also carry more toiletries than he does, including cuticle scissors, regular small fold-up scissors, my hair dryer, curling iron and one pair of extra shoes. Maybe two this time.

Dave, for those of you who are new readers, has two artificial legs (amputation below the knee on both legs from diabetes/poor circulation). Unless he must change shoes to dress up, or work on the boat, he wears the same shoes for weeks. The socks don’t smell since there’s a plastic/foam foot shape in the shoe. Obviously, his feet don’t sweat. He hates changing shoes because it takes a minimum of 20 minutes to do so. (I know, I can hear you say what? Yes, it’s true, it’s very time consuming to change shoes on an artificial leg, and he has two of them. Just trust me on this one.) Consequently he wears just one pair of shoes when we travel – a pair that can be both casual and a little bit dressier. Mostly it’s his boat loafers (Sperry’s) since my DH has been a life-long sailor. He doesn’t take a sport coat or suit, and may only take one jacket plus a rain jacket. He likes traveling in shorts because it’s far easier to fly – and perhaps take off his legs – if he wears shorts. We’re using up all of our old frequent flyer miles for this trip. We managed to book first class going over, but we didn’t have enough miles to do it both ways. We wanted coach both ways, but there were none to be had several months ago when we booked this trip. So that’s why we’re going over first class (with the seats that flatten out to sleep on). And we’ll be sardines on the return. I almost think it’s a mistake to ever fly first class, because then you want to fly that way every time. It spoils you, big time. So watch for scenes from merry olde England.

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