The rest of our England Trip Pictures

So, it is my favorite and least favorite time of the year.
The kids are back in school! (Win!)
But a cold, Utah winter is creeping up on me again.
They say it is going to be one of the coldest winters we have had in years!
I am slowly dying inside.
Not looking forward to another round of Seasonal Depression.
On the other hand, I *am* looking forward to another round of elastic waisted track suits and hoodies.

I have been pretty busy this summer, and I want to tell you all about it!
But I feel bad cutting my England trip off in Baaaath.
And I wanted to share my favorite part with you-- Lavenham.

Mike and Heidi wanted to make sure we saw this place, and I am so glad they did!
It was just like stepping into the pages of a Hans Christian Andersen storybook.

When the town was settled, they used whatever timber and materials they had on hand to build the houses. As a result, the houses are very crooked.
It was hard to really show the crookedness with a camera--but I got a few pretty good shots.

My dad was a contractor, and it made the apprentice-contractor in me cringe.
I remember going with my dad to the lumber store and he taught me how to eyeball straight 2x4's.
No one in Lavenham did that.

Do you remember the nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

It originated in Lavenham.
Here is the Official Crooked House:

It is now an Art Musuem.
Here are my crooked kids in front of the Crooked House.

It was such a pretty little town. I half-expected Snow White to come waltzing down the street. We loved it there.

I kinda wish we would have been able to go inside one of the houses. I wonder if the floors sloped on the inside as bad as they did on the outside?  If they literally had to roll out of bed?  Could they never eat soup? These are the questions that keep me awake at night.

You all know what a freak I am about old cemeteries.

Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Paris.

Well, England did not disappoint.

We found this gem.

 

Crumbling headstones? Check. Moss covered vaults? Check! Creepy old Mausoleum in the background? Yep. Dates back to the 1600's? Check and check.

Isn't it fantastic? And also, aren't we glad it was broad daylight?

My favorite epitaph I have seen so far was from this cemetery. Most of the names and dates were worn away, but this one was still clear. I totally love it.
You might have to click on it to read.
Or put on your reading glasses.
(I turned 40 this year, which deserves its own post...later.)

"Say what a Wife should be and She was that."

Guy covered all his bases there, didn't he? He says so much, without really saying anything at all.

We drove into Wales. Why not?

We walked around for a bit.
Apparently there was a big game that day, or maybe the people of Wales are just very patriotic.

We had a Cornish Pastie. This is pronounced Pah-stee.
Not Pay-stee- which conjures up in my American mind something completely different.

Don't google it.
Just don't.
Cornish pasties were quite good.

Sort-of like a little hand-held meat pie.
I had pictures of us tasting them, but we had our ugly food faces on, and they matched the American pastie photo more than the Cornish ones.

We walked around a bit, and saw the Cardiff castle.

The moat had some stagnant water in it, but sadly, no killer alligators.
I am telling you, tourists are disappointed at the lack of moat alligators in England and Wales.

Why no alligators? Piranha? Laser-tipped sharks? Menacing looking Koi? Nothing?!

The grounds around the castle were pretty cool. I was digging the trees.

More Wales pictures:

Aaaaand back to England!

Some of our other highlights:
This is Englands smallest pub. And possibly the smallest pub in the world.
The Nutshell.
It seats four people.

 There is no back room. This is all of it.

You can see that my kids are clearly thrilled to be posing for me. Again.
You can imagine my surprise when they came running up to me all excited "Mom! Come take a picture of THIS!!."
"This" happened to be a head in a plastic pot.

I am not sure who hefted that 500 pound stone head into the pot, but my kids solidly approve.
They were literally cackling, like escaped mental patients.
Might I remind you, internets:
My kids at Stonehenge:

Meh.
My kids looking at a head in a plastic pot:

Awesome.I am raising up some weird ones.
But I guess I know where they got it from.
This gave Sam and I some serious mileage:

And if a whole pub weren't enough, there were also rolling fields!

Sadly, it was not harvest season for the Cockfields.
And on that classy note, thus ends our trip to England.