Hello hello!

Today was a big day for me. I have both been really looking forward to it, and having nightmares about it.

Rewind a bit.

When we started planning an English garden trip, it quickly became apparent that trains would not get us to all of the countryside locations we were hoping for. Driving would be necessary.

Jimmy (aka my typical driver) had already elected not to come, and my friend was faster in shouting “not me” than I was, so I got the job of driving us around the countryside.

Which began today.

We started the day dropping into the grocery store Waitrose for some road trip snacks, then grabbed coffee and headed to the rental car agency to pick up our car.

Oh my gosh, rewind again. I forgot to mention the garden cat we saw at the Royal Crescent hotel. I love already.

Ok, back to the story.

I was excited today because we were going to visit the picturesque villages in the Cotswolds, a rural area that is fairly inaccessible by train, but full of cottages and gardens. We were also going to visit Blenheim palace, an ornate palace built by a Duke and Duchess who were ancestors of Winston Churchill, and was his birthplace.

When we got to the rental place, there was an American family also picking up a car for a drive through the Cotswolds. These people looked as terrified as I felt inside. But I was hiding it better because we are Britain and need to just get on with it.

I got my car, and pulled into the left side of the road. It was both easier and more terrifying than I was expecting. But my friend was very encouraging and did some great navigating. I stayed on the correct side of the road all day, and only his one traffic cone.

We had a great soundtrack as Chariots of Fire came on the radio.

Honestly, it didn’t take very long to get used it, and the whole driving on windy single lane country roads thing was way scarier than driving on the left side of the road. I love a good highway now.

We made it to Blenheim castle, which was ridiculously ornate.

I found a canon for Jimmy (if you’ve read our blogs before, you know Jimmy always finds a way to take a pic with a canon)

And we wandered inside the palace.

Again, the palace was ridiculously ornate, and they were having some special exhibits with costumes from shows and clothes worn by royals on coronation days gone by.

These are costumes from the Netflix show Bridgerton, which was partly filmed in Blenheim and also at Bath.

This, I think was Queen Victoria’s outfit from some movie or another?

And these ones are from The Crown.

There was also an organist in playing the beautiful organ.

After seeing the inside, we spent some time wandering the grounds. Which were HUGE.

They also had a variety of gardens. We decided to visit the secret garden as it was quieter and more peaceful than other parts of the grounds.

You could really spend all day, or even multiple days and not see all the landscapes and gardens, but we had places to be so we headed out to find a cute Cotswold village.

The first one we found is called Stow-on-the-Wold. There are so many cute villages in the Cotswolds, but we chose this one because it was close(ish) to Blenheim, and also because a lot of people recommended Lucy’s Teahouse there.

It would have been great if they had also mentioned there’s a parking area in the middle of town, to save some stress around parallel parking. Oh well.

Here’s Stow:

Gorgeous doors

Tea at Lucy’s was really good. Easily the best scones and clotted cream we’ve had all trip. We sat in the garden, which was beautiful. I wouldn’t recommend sitting inside the summer, as there were a lot of flies since they had the doors open. There were a lot of flies in all the shops with open doors as well. It was really strange.

After tea we wandered the town, which is cute but clearly caters to tourists. We were there midafternoon and it wasn’t too crowded, which was nice. Big bus tour groups go through the Cotswolds and can clog up the tiny villages during the day.

After wandering on foot, we got back in the car and headed towards Cotswold Lavender, which is fields that a local farmer turned into a lavender farm.

We were worried we wouldn’t have very much time there as the fields usually close to the public at 5pm, and we got there just after 4pm, however there was a sign alerting us that the fields were open until 8pm for the month of July. Hurray!

Here’s a blast of the pics we took in the lavender.

They were very pretty and well worth a visit if you’re driving through the Cotswolds.

By this point it was time for dinner, so we drove to another cute village (even smaller than Stow) called Stanton where we heard they had a very good pub.

We were able to get a nice pic of a field. There are sheep in the distance, but you can’t really see them in the pic.

And here is cute little Stanton

Get ready for a series of pics of cute village houses. Also, we saw some ladies riding horses here.

Unfortunately for us, the pub was full for the night (book ahead of you want to eat in this tiny village), so we headed back to Bath to fine food there. We didn’t get back to our place until almost 9, so we ended up getting burgers from a takeaway place nearby.

Then off to bed we headed.

Goodnight