Time Warp

Entering Long Whatton from Kegworth Lane that Friday morning was like stepping back 30 years. Little seemed to have changed in the centre of the village apart from a few more houses going up between the garage was and Mill Lane where we used to live. We had a quick drive through and noticed a lot of additional housing at the Loughborough end of the village. After a drive down Mill Lane we parked at the end outside what used to be Jane and Mike's thatched cottage (still thatched) and had a stroll for a short way down. 'Our' house (number 3) seemed pretty unchanged as did the adjoing house.

Pat outside "Mike and Jane's" with 'our'
house and No 5 in the background

In the photo above that's the grey Vauxhall Zafira we were driving.

While remeniscing about old times we wondered if, perchance, our old neighbours still lived there. While knocking on the door I saw a man sitting there who was undoubtedly the same Aubrey. On untroducing myself as he opened the door he pointed to Garth standing behind me - "You're the one who used to try to strangle your sister out the back" which caused much laughter.

Aubrey and Jackie

We sat and had a cup of tea with Jackie and Aubrey while catching up on old times - a lot happens in 30+ years. It was good to see them both in very good health and still enjoying life.

Inevitably we had to leave so headed south travelling mostly on the Fosse Way which traverses modern roads with mostly 'A' names and pretty much follows the original Roman road. Navigating Coverntry's Ring Road was exciting with a more-than-usually lavish serving of roundabouts. By intently following the road markers ('Axxx' etc) we made it through without any more hassle than being in the wrong lane at one rab and having to quickly navigate left before being swamped by another influx of cars. Oh, and of course, Coventry's ring-road rabs are a testimony to their ineffectiveness at handling high traffic volumes - they are all fitted with traffic lights as well.

We passed through some lovely scenery typical of the English countryside at its best. Following the Fosse Way put us onto roads that were generally smaller than the busy through roads but the drive was all the more pleasant because of it. We lunched at a pub in Stow in the Wold which was just a short detour off our route. Afterwards we came to Bourton on Water which is one of the quintessentially picturesque Cotswold villages which grace calendars and to which tourists flock. Garth was driving so took us for a spin through the village. Remember it was Friday but the village was full of car and bus loads of tourists. It was certainly very picturesque but made us realise that living in such a pretty place is probably not all that its cracked up to be with hoardes of tourists all year round.

We had decided to make Salisbury our overnight stop so eventually arrived in the town right in the evening rush period. We had located a potential hotel to stay at so, while we were crawling through the town traffic I gave them a call. After checking that rooms were available I asked them to give me directions from where we were and then, after clearing through the traffic jams we arrived at Grasmere Court hotel not too much the worse for wear. Of course it was another typical English country hotel with no elevators and no porter so we had to lug our heavy bags up three flights to our rooms. The bright spot of it was that we had practically the whole of the top floor - two bedrooms and a sitting room (there was a third, unoccupied, bedroom) with wonderful views back over the town and the famous cathedral. This was also to be the only hotel at which I was successful in using a pre-paid voucher.

Pat wasn't particularly hungry so Garth and I walked back to a place we had spotted which seemed to a be a member of some family fast-food chain but their meals were OK. The place was pretty full and decked out in Halloween themes - including the waiting staff. The English seem to have picked up on the American trends in celebrating Halloween and while it is a bit of fun for the young kids, tends to be taken to excess by older 'kids' who can get quite nasty.