The honeymoon was fantastic. Ten full days in England with a couple travel days tacked on either end. We started in London for two days where we saw the bunkers that Churchill was in during the bombing in WWII, took one of those open-top tours of London where we saw Big Ben, Buckingham Palace (we left the tickets we had to go inside the Palace at home, unfortunately), the London Eye, etc. We hit up 221B Baker Street - the home of Sherlock Holmes and spent a mostly rainy day in London Tower catching all the awesome stuff there. We ran out of time before we got to see everything we wanted, though. Got to see one of our vintage pubs in London. They have old-style kegs that don't have any CO2 or anything in them, so you have to pull on the tap a few times like a well to get the beer flowing. Pretty cool. They don't serve it warm like I feared, but they don't really chill it either. Since it was Fall, I guess it was just naturally a little cold. Not like in USA where they serve a frosty glass of beer.
From there, we got the car (which Laura drove all week) and made our way to Plymouth. On the way we stopped at Stonehenge. That was a pretty cool place. It was smaller than I expected, but I think that's because I ended up having to be so far away from it. We walked all around it and I got a ton of pictures. It looks pretty awesome.
At Plymouth, we had to find a B&B, and it was here that we learned that Garman was only going to be helpful in getting us CLOSE to our destinations. We ended up in a residential neighborhood, called the B&B, asked if they had an address that we could put into Garman and they said, "No, we don't have an address." So they gave us directions instead. We followed them until they led us to a one-lane road. This road was SUPPOSED to have two cars pass by, but there was clearly only one lane. And the sides were hedges taller than our car, so we couldn't pull off in the grass if someone was coming the other way. We did end up finding small points every 50-100 yards or so where you could pull to the side and let someone pass you. Laura, on her first day of driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car, was freaking out. We called them back and they said, "Yeah, you're on the right road. Just keep going." We did, and eventually we found the B&B. It was an awesome six-room affair. We didn't end up going out to see the pub in Plymouth because Laura did not want to get back in the car, but we did end up drinking a few beers at the B&B bar and chatting with the bartender about the differences between England and America (he was planning a trip to USA next year).
The next day, we went by Tintagel which, I think, was one of the top two places we visited all week. It's an old ruined castle by the ocean. It's where Uther Pendragon was born, evidently. There was a copse just down from the cliffs the castle was on where trading ships used to come through and leave off their goods. There were massive caves underneath called Merlin's Caves. We did a lot of climbing and hiking to see the whole thing - words cannot describe how awesome this place looked. Just do a google image search for Tintagel Castle and you'll see how cool it was.
After that stop, we headed on to Bath, our next B&B. We took a taxi in to the city to go to another of our vintage pubs. This one was like an old house - it had four or five different small rooms where people could go, and each one had two or three large tables. If you couldn't find an empty table, you'd just saddle up to a partly-full one and take some of that for your own. We ended up sitting next to a couple that lived in the area - the guy was always in Bath and the girl was from Whales. They told us some slang and all about the area (Laura particularly liked Knob-Head). From there we went to another restaurant, clearly intended for college age kids, and ate and drank there before catching a cab back home.
We woke up and tried to find the Roman Baths in Bath, but the city was poorly laid out and the route to Bath was not well marked. So I just typed "Roman Baths" into Garman and we drove 30 miles that way. It took us, evidently, into Wales. We saw the city where the Ryder Cup took place a few days before it got really busy, and then found a set of Roman Baths in Wales. We walked all around those, then headed on to find a bathroom. They were 300 yards that way, the woman at the desk said, so evidently we had to leave the building to find some. We headed out and walked through town until we found them by a soccer/rugby field. On the way back, we saw a sign that said, "Roman Barracks" and so we walked that way. It turns out that just on the side of a bike path is this massive set of ruins of roman barracks. There's no fence around it, no production for it. It's just sitting there with a small wooden sign explaining some of the history. So we headed in and wandered around them for a while before getting back on the road and going to our next stop: Stratford-Upon-Avon (where Shakespeare was born).
That night we went into SUA for dinner and found a long walk of shops and restaurants. We went in one with Shakespeare stuff. We had decided earlier that we were going to try to find matted prints of different things we saw on our trip. Laura saw a print of Shakespeare's home, but I said, "We didn't actually see Shakespeare's home, so we can't get the print". Laura agreed, so we walked out of the store, turned right and walked down the road. Literally the next building from the shop, Laura stopped and said, "I think this is Shakespeare's home." I looked at the building. Sure enough, it was. I said, "Huh. Now we've seen it. You want to go get the picture?" So we got the picture and headed out to dinner.
After SUA, we headed to Rowton Castle. We would have stayed there, but they were having a wedding that day, so the whole thing was booked. I was disappointed by the place - on the inside it was a hotel, not a castle. I just looked like one from the outside. We went on through the Lake District which, if I lived in England, would be an annual vacation spot for me. Absolutely beautiful countryside and perfect quaint little towns. Hills and sheep as far as the eye can see. Of all the places we stopped for the night, this was our favorite (though our all time favorite place of the trip is still to come). We ended up walking all through the town, then down by the lake, etc. Found a bar, had a beer outside and watched people walk by. Overall, fantastic place.
The next day we continued our trek north. Northumberland is to England like the midwest is to us. Empty. Lots of farm. Only they have a lot of mountains and sheep, one-lane roads (by now Laura got the hang of them so they weren't that bad), etc. It was foggy and rainy throughout the drive, which made it interesting, but there were so few people it didn't matter.
Our final destination was Chillingham Castle. It is, evidently, the most haunted castle in England. Also, we were able to set things up so we could sleep at the castle. How awesome is that?!
On the way there, we passed through a village called Wall. If you've read/seen Stardust, that's the English village the main character is from before he crosses into the strange world. It was the movie Laura and I saw together on our first date, so we hopped out and took some pictures.
Garman took us to a different castle than the one we wanted to go to. So I pulled out the paperwork and found no phone number. But it did say we needed to bring our own food and flashlights. So we went to a store to pick those up and ask people if they knew where Chillingham was. One person said he thought it was north and not too far from here. So we got on the highway heading north and found a sign that said Chillingham, 8 miles west. So we took the road it told us to and passed through a small village, perhaps 10 buildings or so.
Here, things got weird.
The road turned into a gravel road, one lane, and had fences on either side holding back all the sheep. Odd. No signs.
Then we found a gate that was closed. I got out of the car and went to the gate. It said, "Public Bridleway. Close Gate Behind You." So I opened the gate, we drove through, and I closed it behind us. Now there were no fences between us and the sheep. Stranger.
We drove on until we reached a crossroads. The sign (I had to hop out of the car again to read it) didn't tell us much. It said, "Public Bridleway" and pointed one direction but said nothing about going straight. So we turned. On the way through, we saw dozens of sheep just crossing the road in front of us. We found another gate, but this one said "No trespassing" so we U-turned and went back to the fork and took the other route.
We passed a farm with no one there.
We reached another gate, and opened and passed through this one, closing it behind us, leaving the sheep farm at our back. We drove on. Still no signs.
I spotted a car through the trees and told Laura to take whatever the next left was. It went into a small car park (not paved - just dirt) that looked like the beginning of a nature trail. There was a large wooden sign with a map of the trails on it. I ran to the map and found the first sign we had that Chillingham Castle actually existed. I took a picture of the map so we could reference it if we needed to.
We drove on another few minutes, hit another highway, turned right and immediately saw a sign for Chillingham Castle! Laura lost it and couldn't stop laughing. We parked and walked through a very spooky set of woods to get to the castle. They told us to go back and get the car, then drive around to the back where we could unload our stuff. We did and the woman showed us our room.
She unlocked a door and walked down a small hallway. On the right was the bathroom and another room with two twin beds. On the left was our room - a queen sized bed. Looks like we have to share the bathroom with whoever has the other room. No issue. Also, there were a set of stairs in the hallway that went up to a loft with a kitchen and living room, fireplace, etc. Really nice stuff. A common room for the rooms below.
Then I realized - the key she gave us was for the door that got to the hallway. We were actually staying in that ENTIRE SUITE! You could fit a whole family in there and have plenty of room to sprawl around.
So we hit up the tour at that point and this is what I was hoping for from a castle. It was all old - had a cool courtyard with all the stone walls all around it. The Great Hall reminded me of 13th Warrior. We went to a small throne room that Edward Longshanks occupied when he came north to defeat Willam Wallace. They had a massive gardens that we explored, and tons of old things. Old weapons, tapestries, documents, etc. The guy who owns the place just goes to auctions and buys whatever strikes his fancy and adds it to his castle. He lives there too, most of the year. He happened to be in London when we were there.
That night, everyone left who wasn't staying the night. Which, by our count, meant we were the only ones in our part of the castle (they had two caretakers who just kept an eye on things to make sure nothing happened in the night). All the lights shut out and there was no heat, save for the small space heaters in our room. We bundled up, got our flashlights, and went out exploring the castle in the dark. We took a couple of videos of us wandering around in the dark talking about the things we saw. All in all, great fun. Our number one best place we were all vacation.
So the next day we headed to York. It was raining, so we didn't do much outside, though walking around downtown York was pretty awesome. We went to the Jorvik Viking Centre - a museum about the Vikings that once occupied this region of England. It was pretty interesting, and out of the rain, both of which were good things. That night we went to another vintage pub and enjoyed more English beer.
After York we went to Sherwood Forest and wandered around. I didn't realize that in its prime, Sherwood occupied the entire region from York to London - about 200 miles. We took a walk through the forest and went to a museum about Robin Hood. We headed on to Nottingham for our B&B and that night found an 80s bar, complete with a guy with a mullet. It was a bit of a shock to us, being in England, seeing West Virginia, but that's okay. The next day we drove back to London for our last stop and visited the British Museum. They had a bunch of mummies from Egypt there, so we saw that exhibit. We went back to the B&B exhausted, then woke up at 4 AM to catch our flight home.
