Saturday, September 21, 2013 - A Fair Here, A Fair There

Saturday, September 21, 2013 - A Fair Here, A Fair There

We left about 10 again; that seems to be our standard time to be ready to get going on this trip.  We headed toward Bampton, the actual village where the fictional village of Downton from the television of Downton Abbey is filmed.  We drove into and then out of Bampton and then came back to drive around.  Sarah spotted the church and we got out to take a couple (!!!!!!) of photos. 

It looked like we were really in Downton when we were there.  Inside the church, St. Mary’s Church, we met a woman who was working on decorations and she had actually been in a wedding scene on the program.  I guess they use village people as extras sometimes.  Everyone we spoke to in the village was happy to have the filming taking place in their village.  We talked to a woman tour guide who showed us photos on her phone of Maggie Smith between takes.  We went to the gift shop attached to the library and those ladies were just like I would expect older ladies in the English countryside to be – hale, hearty, and laughing a lot.  Evidently the village has benefitted greatly being “Downton” as there were quite a few tourists there who would not have been there otherwise. 

We headed toward Blenheim Palace and passed through Witney, which is a much more modern town than the others we have seen.  We have noticed that dog leashes are called leads here and instead of Yield signs they have Give Way signs, but I don’t think I’ve seen a Stop sign yet.  There are many roundabouts and people stop if they need to, but generally everyone just cooperates and things go well.  I have seen very few people speeding and almost no police cars at all.  I guess everyone just behaves here in the Cotswolds.  Not too far before Woodstock where Blenheim Palace is located we all had a good laugh when we saw signs for the “Humped Toucan Crossing” and the “Humped Zebra Crossing”.  It took us a while to calm down after those signs!!!!

We arrived at Blenheim Palace and decided not to pay the 22 pounds each and walk for a few hours along with perhaps thousands of others visitors.  So, we took a photo of the front of the palace, the gate and the gate house and went on to other adventures. 

Even though Winston Churchill was born in this great home, we decided to skip it. 

We then traveled through Charlbury trying to find the Charlbury Street Fair that would be an all day event.  It would not be starting for a couple of hours and parking was very scarce and walking would be a long event, so we decided to skip this also.  By this time, one of us (and we are not telling who) really needed to find a restroom, but there were none to be found.  After lots of looking and driving, we turned onto a small dirt road and one of us explored the undergrowth (!) on the side of the road while we drove the car on ahead, turned around and came back to pick her up. Another car had passed her in the  meantime, but everything worked out just fine. 

Next we went to Burford which is a bustling main street full of shops.  We parked in a parking lot behind the church and found the toilets on the way back to the church.  We had to pay 10 p (pence) to get in.  Some of us had trouble paying and getting into the  little building, some of us had trouble flushing the toilet and had to get tutored in that, and some of us had trouble unlocking and opening the door to get out.  The six of us that used these facilities sure were glad to use them, but one of us didn’t need to – wonder why??  Onward we went to the church where we saw several ‘wool sack tombs’ for the rich wool barons who had contributed lots of money to the churches. 

We also found the Burford Bazaar which offered “ old, vintage, and new items” for sale.  Different people had small stalls with items for sale.  Wouldn’t you know that there were some with old tools (I even have a surprise tool for Frank that he probably doesn’t even know exists!!) and old everything.  We wandered on into the main street (Every village has a High Street.) where there were many people going in and out of the many businesses there.  We participated in that activity before finding The Mermaid, a wonderful restaurant. 

We had different kinds of sandwiches, steak and ale pie, and lots of hot tea.  We all felt lots better after having this late lunch and headed back to shopping.  We bought tools, postcards, lavender sachet, cheese, candy from the Sweet Shop, and a glass bowl.  This town, like all the others we’ve seen, had lots and lots of all types of dogs on leads.  All the owners seem very happy to talk about their dogs and let us take their photos.

We happily trouped back to the car loaded down with our purchases and headed home.  We took lots of little roads on the way back home and saw a small domed building way out in what may be an animal park with lots of deer.  All of this was surrounded by a very high stone wall and the fields must have been made up of many, many acres. We still don’t know what that domed building is, but we will try to find out.  We got home easily and just rested, ate leftovers of pizza and sandwiches and lots of snacks.  We also played with our phones, computers and iPads – actually we are a very ‘clickable’ group as we play with our tech toys! We even let the local cat into our sun room for a while and Sarah and the cat had a nice visit before we decided to behave and put the cat back outside.  Afterwards, the cat begged to be allowed back in but we did good and kept it outside.

It’s going to be a fairly early night since we have a long day ahead of us. We plan to do four hours of driving as we head to the very southernmost part of England and then spend two nights in Penzance.  Paula has bought our eye patches for our time in Penzance – we will be imitating the Pirates of Penzance while we are there.  Can’t wait.  I just hope they don’t throw us out of town for our rowdy pirate behavior!!!!