My Trip to Europe

Greetings, everyone.  It has been so long since I have written a blog post that I am not sure if I still know how to do it.  I spent all but three days in October traveling, and then when I came home, Jordan told me that WordPress had switched things up a little.  I’m trying to figure out the sizing of the photos so please be patient with me.  Here’s what I’ve been up to…..

First up, I bicycled along with Jordan and Mr. Right from Pittsburgh to DC, but you have already read about that here.

 

Then we were home three days and took off for England where we spent a week and finished up the Cotswold walking tour that we started last year.  (You can read about that one here.)

 

 

Then Mr. Right and I boarded the Eurostar to Paris and took another train from there to Metz, France.  We then rode our bicycles from Metz through Luxembourg and Germany to Amsterdam.  Jordan and I teamed up on a marathon of blog writing and compiled all of the October posts before I left.  Whew!  That was a struggle to come up with twenty-plus topics, take photos, and write about them before I left.  So, if you thought we were a little bit off our game, that could be why.  A big thank you goes to Jordan who held down the blog fort while I was away.

 

 

Although I don’t want to bombard you with photos, I would like to share some of the highlights with you.  Today I thought you might enjoy seeing some shots from our Cotswold walk.  The Cotswold Way works like this:  It is an eight day walk from Chipping Camden to Bath in the Cotswold area of England.  Last year we walked four days to Chipping Camden.  This year we started on the other end and walked from King’s Stanley to Bath.  The entire eight day walk is 100 miles long, so we walked around 50 miles in four days.

 

 

We stayed in charming bed and breakfasts along the way.  This is the Grey Cottage in King’s Stanley, and it was one of the most charming and inviting British B & B’s we have stayed in.  The hostess made fires in her fireplaces for us and even prepared a scrumptious dinner for us.

 

 

 

The Cotswold Way cuts through privately owned farms, so we often had a chance to get up close and personal with the animals.  These guys ran right over to us when we stopped to check our map.  I think they were hoping we had treats for them.

 

We didn’t have the best weather, as you can see, but the foggy/rainy weather created a great moody atmosphere.  This year’s section of the Cotswold Way was a lot hillier than the section we did last year.  After all, wold means top of the hill.  The first day we walked 16 beautiful miles (36,000 plus steps on the Fitbit), and much of that day was straight up and straight down, but it was spectacular.  The steep slopes and wet socks teamed up to cause some uncomfortable blisters that I had to deal with the rest of the week.

 

I love old cemeteries, and we passed many of them on our walk.  They were usually in church yards, and the churches offered a place to rest and get out of the rain.  We ate our meals at pubs, and they were used to seeing wet and tired hikers come in for a break.  They were all so welcoming and kind to us “Yanks.”

 

 

Since we had to walk across farms, we also had to cross some freshly plowed fields.  They were kind of like walking in quick sand.

 

When we arrived in Bath, we had this wonderful courtyard view.  I took the taxi into Bath on the last day with our friend so that we could enjoy some of the sites there like the Jane Austen museum.  We like to go to Europe in the off-season to avoid the crowds, and October proved to be a perfect time to visit.  We made sure to pack the right clothes for hiking and biking in cool weather so we could have fun without being uncomfortably cold.

 

Jordan treated us with a visit when we returned home, and Yankee flew down for the week-end.  I just took them to the airport for their flight home.  She and I got a lot accomplished, and we are excited to share it with you.

 

Take care.