May Require Parental Supervision

Canterbury

It felt so surreal having my parents over on my side of the pond. Though I did show them around Canterbury’s hotspots, the Cathedral, the West Gate Towers, the City wall, the place they saw the most was the inside of a Cream’s Dessert Cafe. Both nights, after dinner, we ended up there and they both ordered gelato crepes. Mom insisted she would eat better on the rest of the trip… she didn't. They also got to see where I work, the Shakespeare and the Canterbury Tales and I got to show them my life here.

Dover Castle

I’ve been to Dover so many times I feel like they should just give me a tour guide badge at this point. I’ve worked my route around the castle down to an art. First the Dunkirk Tunnels as soon as it opens so you don’t get stuck in a line, then the hospital tunnels, up to the Anglo-Saxon Church, the Roman lighthouse, through the history of the castle exhibit and then into the Keep while managing to avoid the school groups. Simple. We didn’t actually have time to go to the white cliffs since we didn’t have a car yet, but the view from the castle itself was clear and beautiful.  

Highclere Castle

We picked up the right-hand drive rental car, and after a few encounters with the curb (Mom claims 5) we headed towards Bath, with a day stop at Highclere Castle. The castle has two main claims to fame; it’s the filming location for Downton Abbey and was the home of Lord Carnarvon, the man who financed Howard Carter’s discoveries in Egypt. 

I had watched some of Downton Abbey but I never bothered keeping up with it. The time period is amazing and Dame Maggie Smith is a national treasure, but there were too many things that annoyed me about the series. Mainly - spoiler alert - that every time a baby was born, they felt the need to knock off one of the parents. When they did it for the second time, I gave up. Inside was beautiful. Watch an episode of the TV show since I wasn’t allowed to take photos… ok maybe I took one. It’s true that these houses could only exist because they were built on an elitist class system of indentured servitude that bordered on slavery, but man if they aren’t pretty. 

The castle itself felt like a retirement home. Since it wasn’t school holidays and we were travelling in the middle of the week, almost everywhere we went there was a shuffling sea of seniors to maneuver around. After lunch things tended to be quieter, I assume because the rest of the tourists were down for their afternoon naps. 

In the basement, there was a mini museum dedicated to the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. The man had so many hobbies. I guess, when you’re born into an elite ruling class and you don’t really have to work, you have a lot of time on your hands. So he had tons of different motor cars, was very involved in horse racing, played around with early photography, and invested in Egyptian Archaeology - as you do. There was an exhibit of some of Lord Carnarvon’s earlier finds and then replicas of the greatest find in Egyptology- the treasures of Tutankhamen. I have so many books back home that seeing these replicas felt familiar. The real treasures are coming to the London in November and I’m sure I’ll be able to sneak up there for a day or two. 

Bath

We passed Stonehenge on the highway, heading towards Bath, so mom and dad got to see it for about 20 seconds, which, honestly, is really all you need. Big old rocks. Check. 

We were staying just south of Bath, in a town called Norton-St-Philip and I have found my new favourite pub. It’s called The George Inn and it is a gorgeous medieval building, complete with partially covered courtyard and doors you have to stoop through, the kind of creaky-floor character that makes pubs great. Our BnB also had a dog named Rosie who was a lovely addition to our stay. The owner wasn’t in when we got there, but he had left arrows on the floor directing us to our room so it felt like a treasure hunt. 

In Bath itself, we did a walking tour around the city, seeing most of the main sites. Basically Bath wasn’t much of anything until it became a Georgian party town, the 18th century Las Vegas. The city looks beautiful and uniform because most of it was built at the same time and all out of the same quarry, which had been the same quarry that the Romans had used. It rained off and on, it seems like as soon as we went inside it would stop, and then start up again once we stepped foot outside. I had a Poundland special umbrella which looked rather arthritic but it stayed between me and the rain so it was a pound well spent.  

It would be a bit ridiculous to go to Bath, and then not see the Romans baths. The museum was great and the baths themselves were gorgeous. On a sunnier day in the early AD’s, it would have been a prime vacation spot. One of the coolest things in the Roman Bath Museum were a few simple pieces of flattened lead. Inscribed on these tablets were curses, where people invoked the gods to punish the unknown thief of various items. Sometimes they would list potential suspects and name the goods that were taken from them: bracelets, coins, cloaks, gloves, and even part of a plough. One of the sheets has a language that is potentially a lost Celtic language, preserved in history because someone was ticked off enough to summon a curse. 

The Cotswolds

The next day was a long meandering drive through some of the cutest, quaintest, towns in England. The kind of charming places where someone will get murdered in a very convoluted and creative way so either a portly policeman or a snoopy senior citizen can figure it out every week on the BBC. Tons of places had little signs up about what had all been filmed there; Harry Potter, War Horse, documentaries etc. The towns themselves were so cute you wanted to pinch the cheeks they didn’t have, like a great-aunt who has come to visit. We started in Lacock, visited the abbey there, which apparently had been the place where the first photograph was taken, then continued to Castle Combe, Stow-on-the-Wold, Burton-on-the-Water, and probably a few other hyphenated places I’ve forgotten. In one of the towns, the one that had been advertised as ‘the mini Venice,’ by someone who has clearly never been to Venice, we did a round of antique shopping. Mom was very pleased to find a Lladro statue and dad found a hat.

Warwick Castle

We had tried to do a quick drive-by of the Shakespeare locations of Stratford-Upon-Avon, however the confusing road layout and my inability to navigate properly meant that on our second lap around, we decided to give up and just head to the castle.

I was going to be leaving mom and dad for a little while to join my re-enactment group, but first we explored Warwick Castle. Different castles market to different things, this was definitely a more Disney-eque versions, where they attach characters and fantasy plots to all of the different bits of information. It was clearly geared more to a younger audience, but still largely entertaining. Mom had booked us on a dungeon tour, not realizing that it was a DungeonTM tour, one of those jump-scare, strobe-lit, smoke screened shows, with ashen-faced over-actors who drag you into their storylines. I loved it- Dad probably less so! I managed to be picked for something almost every-other room, from being lobotomized by the plague doctor, to being the first into a room to be jump-scared, to being accused of witchcraft since I had been spotted dancing naked on the tower trying to conjure a husband (for which I was horribly sentenced to live in Wales), and then reading the sentence for my traitorous father’s execution. Emerging back into the daylight, we saw the birds of prey show, and made the loops through the various rooms showing everything from the Henry VIII stuff to the more modern Georgian rooms and climbed the 200 steps to the castle tower for a lovely view. Slightly after midday, I hopped on a train to Birmingham to meet up with Tom and drive up to Sherwood for the weekend. Mom and dad went to Bletchley and then met up with me on Sunday.