Day 4 Tuesday
Although we could spend many more days in London, our time is very limited and we wanted to see as much of England as we could. We booked a tour that would take us to the city of Bath. To get there we would be stopping at Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and lunch at a very old Pub called The George.
We arrived early in the morning to our pick up point at the Thistle Victoria Hotel near Victoria Station. We boarded our tour bus at 8:30 in the morning and headed out of town. Soon we were traveling along the highways and about an hour and a half later we arrived at Windsor Castle. Our tour guide Neil, is a very serious chap who is also very intelligent and witty. He graduated from the University as a history major and started his own tour business. If you are ever in London and want to take this type of tour, you can find his brochures in the tourist spots, or call him at +01737 772699. Click on the link to see his brochure.
From the bus you have to walk through tourist shops area before you get to the Castle. On the way they have a replica of an original steam engine that would bring Queen Victoria out from Buckingham Castle to Windsor Castle in the borough of Windsor. Because the Royal family spends a lot of time here, the grounds are really well kept. The Keep of the castle is right out of the story books. The town of Windsor is quaint. They have made it a point to keep buildings that are interesting up to date and in good repair. There are modern improvements around town also. The royal mail system uses red mail boxes around the country. At one time when they first started Air Mail, they put in Blue boxes to identify to the customers how to sort their mail. The last blue Air Mail box is still in Windsor.
The castle influence is everywhere. Some of the official buildings look like castles. Others just look like it is still 400 years ago.
The official entrance to the Castle and Castle grounds is almost 1000 feet from the building. Looking the other way, it is 3 miles to the main road. This is called the "long walk".
From here, we walked back through town past the castle and headed towards the school of Eaton. The shoppes are quaint and if you look closely you will see Burger King and McDonalds. The back side of the castle shows how much of a fortress the structure is. You can see how difficult it would be for people to try and enter without permission.
Soon we arrived at the river Thames. We spent a few minutes on the bridge going over to Eaton just looking at the buildings on both sides of the river, looking at the boats and birds that are everywhere. From here we are in the little town of Eaton. The street is very narrow and only allows one car at a time to pass. The shops are very quaint but are geared for the tourist. Walking a little further and you come to the entrance of the school "Eaton". Here is where the elite send their children to college. Our equivalent to High School. The students are required to dress in school uniform. The uniform consists of Morning coat with tails, white bow tie and shirt and black trousers.
All too soon it was time to leave the town of Windsor. We were warned that the bus would leave at 1115 if we were there or not. We started back to the parking lot before others did and arrived at about 1148. Thankfully, the bus had not left as yet and we were not the last to arrive. Neil and the driver started to discuss what they should do. 20 minutes went by and there were still two people who had not returned. The bus pulled away. As we were leaving the parking lot entrance, I guess Neil started to feel guilty. You could tell he was really upset that there were still two people behind us. He told the bus driver to turn around. We got back to the stop about 10 minutes later and he got off the bus to look for the two missing passengers. They showed up about 5 minutes later. After many hoops and hollers we finally left. Next stop, Stonehenge.
We left the major highways and travelled on two lane roads to our next stop, Stonehenge. What an amazing place. I took too many pictures to link all of them from this page. Click here to link to another page that has most of them. If you are not on broadband, you might not want to go here as there are a lot of pictures.
After leaving Stonehenge, we were on two lane roads again heading for out lunch stop. It is now about 1:30pm and we have a way to go to our next stop, "The George" coaching inn, a 600 year old establishment. We passed several small hamlets along the way. Click here to see a small video of the travel down the back roads.
We arrive around 2pm and are ushered in to the dining room where we all sat down for our repast. We had a choice of several different foods. Beef, Lamb, Pork, Trout, or Salmon. And vegetarian on request. It was unfortunate that the bus parked directly in front of the entrance and I could not get a picture of the front of the Inn, but walking in to the building was interesting. This is the view from the rear looking out over the valley. The building is over 600 years old and built of stone. The roof is also stone. The drive into the small hamlet is very narrow. The surrounding shops are all from the same era. The passage ways between building are interesting. After lunch, we were on our way through the countryside and heading to Bath.
We did a quick bus tour of the city of Bath and were let off by the Abbey with instructions that we were on our own for about an hour and a half. We were to meet in front of the Roman Baths later in the evening. We walked around the tourist district and saw many interesting shoppes. The Abbey is the central point of the city. The rear courtyard behind the church is a place where poeple can sit and look at the interesting buildings. This is the building that houses the original Roman baths. The baths were excavated early in the 1800's and were restored to this condition you see here. They left as much of the original construction as they could. The original baths were roofed but that has not been restored. The hot springs that still feed the bath come from the original roman structure. Here you can see another video of the interior of the baths.
It was a long day and we did not get back to our hotel until around 11pm. Tomorrow we travel by train to Scotland. Go back to the previous links page to follow our train travel.