After a wonderful breakfast we had
ourselves a small problem. We owed the B&B money but they
didn't take credit cards. We knew this ahead of time but hadn't
actually pulled together enough Great British Pounds to pay them!
So we drove down in the morning to nearby Bradford-on-Avon and found
actual ATM machines. Our brief walk around Bradford gave us the
impression that it was a nice city or town or whatever it was.
The one thing we found was that everyone referred to any inhabited
place
as either a village, town, or city AND it was important that you use
the proper term. Now this may just be me, but I tend to call big
places "cities" and the small places "towns." That's it, I'm a
simple person I guess. And sometimes I use them
interchangeably. Do not be so careless if you are in Britain!
After paying our innkeepers we drove to nearby Bath. Bath is a
common destination for tourists but we really hadn't planned on
visiting so we just wandered around the river and saw the larger
buildings around the downtown area. No, we didn't see any of the
ancient Roman structures but we were aware that they were nearby.
Quite honestly I wasn't all that thrilled about driving around downtown
Bath after hitting a few one way streets so we just found a car park
(I'm going to tend to use British terms here and there and you'll just
have to live with that. On the other hand, I have already avoided
using the British spelling of the word "honor" on the first page so I
think you can expect American versions in how the words are actually
spelled*.) and walked around. We did find a public library where
we sent a note to my parents and to Rachel and Andy.
* Yes, I had the word "medieval" spelled incorrectly on the previous
page for about five days. You can't blame the Americans or the
British for that spelling. I'd like to plead my case, though, and
say that it's not a very easy word to spell if you look at it.
After lunch we found ourselves in Gloucester and toured the wonderful
cathedral.
Some guests from our B&B had mentioned it during breakfast and when
we saw the sign on the motorway we decided to take a look. We're
very glad we did. The actual city of Gloucester was fun to walk
around since they had a pedestrian shopping area which was quite full
of stores. We saw more of that area than we meant to, due to us
actually losing track of where we parked the car. We probably
spent twenty or thirty minutes wandering around, trying to recreate our
original steps into the city.
The cathedral is famous for its very large stained glass window and,
more recently, as some of the settings in the "Harry Potter"
movies. We were also fortunate in that we were able to take
photos inside which we were unable to do later on in several other
spots. Inside the cathedral there were several smaller chapels
and wonderful Cloisters around the courtyard along with many people
buried all around. Somewhere around the time when I was looking
at the tomb of
King
Edward II I decided that I needed an alabaster effigy placed
above my final resting spot. Ronda, however, feels this is
creepy. Quite frankly, I feel sorry for her since people will
look at my marvelous effigy and her bare spot of ground and wonder why
she didn't get a cool carved effigy like I did.


Assorted views of the Gloucester
Cathedral.

The
Cloisters in Gloucester Cathedral.


The tomb of Edward
II. This is what I'm looking for when my estate is settled in
2066 or so.
Whew, that was a lot of pictures to download! Sorry about
that! After visiting Gloucester we drove to Broadway and found
our Bed & Breakfast,
The Olive Branch.
Our room looked over their backyard garden and it was a great
place. We wandered around High Street that evening and ate
another terrific meal at one of the restaurants nearby. We
enjoyed talking with some of the other diners around us and Ronda was
warned by an older lady to make sure that I didn't start watching
cricket as her husband was consumed by it. They even went to a
game during their honeymoon, apparently. We had a great time and
slept well that night.