We spent the next day, out in the "West Country". Interestingly, the only photo we took of our visit to Bristol is this one.
It's a poster, displaying the work of the Methodist Philatelic Society in the New Room
which is an interesting tribute to the work of the Wesley brothers. Some of my favourite hymns are from here.
What the lack of other photos says about my impressions of Bristol, I'll leave to you to work out.
Here we are at some amazing standing stones near Wells. They are literally just sitting, largely ignored in
a sheep paddock. This was our first real feel of the cheapness of history in UK. There's so much of it about,
that people don't really seem to care too much.
Our theories about cheapness were dispelled in Wells, itself, though. This amazing church, St Mary's
was quite expensive to visit, so we chose not to go in. Fair enough, it's expensive to maintain a building
like this, but the irony of the contrast to the standing stones left me cold.
Token photo at Glastonbury Abbey. Exercise for the reader: Why do people feel the need to attack
each other over religious issues?
My camera only came with an 8Mb card, and I ran out of the ability to take high resolution images
about here, in Oxford. There were many things I wanted to take photos of. This is of inside the parish
church. Fantastic pipe organ. We spent a good time in Oxford, including lunch at the "Eagle and Child"
pub, where the Inklings (Tolkien, Lewis, Williams et al) used to meet.
by the way, this link is to a *very* cool - Quicktime VR tour of Oxford
Then it was on to Warwick. There's a fantastic 12th century castle at Warwick.
Sue and I gave it a miss as it seemed extremely commercialised. Sue climbed the tower of St Mary's
church in Warwick and took some low res panorama shots. I stayed on the ground, as the stairs
up the tower gave me vertigo.
We went on to Birmingham that evening, and stayed with Dan Ucko, who we'd met via AFU and also his recent visit to WA. He took us out for a fantastic curry at Diwan Curry House and then on to a good "real ale" pub, the Old Moseley Arms.
The next day, we drove up to the lake district, and stopped for a walk at Keswick around
the Derwent Water. These lo-res photos don't do it justice.
On the way north, we stopped at the standing stones at Catlerigg. Fantastic view.