Thursday in England

[fenchurch]

This morning we explored the exotic environs of a Warwick laundrette (in this case, the Washeteria), one of the places gillo helped us find on our quick tour of the area last night. We actually managed to enjoy ourselves, though, due to some wonderfully talkative locals and a small museum just across the street... and now we have enough clean clothes to last through the rest of our vacation! We dropped the clean laundry at the hotel then headed back to the block with the laundrette and got lunch at the fish and chips shop there... which we took out to Kenilworth Castle. Okay, I know I've been talking a lot about the food we've tried, but I really do love British food and this was no different... a pile of fresh-cooked chips (aka fries) with breaded and fried fish on top, the whole thing doused with malt vinegar, sprinkled with salt and smothered in curry sauce. Absolute heaven.

Last night, down in the hotel lobby, we found some pamphlets for local sights and attractions, one of which was for Warwick Castle (the place we'd originally planned to visit today). Um... Yeah. It's apparently owned by the same folks who run Madame Tussaud's -- NOT a good sign. In the end, we decided to just give it a miss... there are way too many other castles around that aren't complete tourists traps. We ended up spending the afternoon exploring Kenilworth Castle, which was incredible... there was a very informative audiotour of the castle and the grounds and an interesting guided tour of the gatehouse, plus the ruins were pretty much open... there was so much to see! I've said it before, but it's been fun connecting the dots with the bits and pieces I knew about the history of England.

The ruins were impressive and the views of the countryside were just stunning (I tried doing a panorama shot, but I suspect it's not going to turn out... I have the worst time lining things up properly). We spent a bit of time on the castle wall just enjoying the views and the sounds of the wind whipping past, and also reading some of the graffiti carved into the castle walls... which raises the question, exactly how old does graffiti have to be before it ceases to be vandalism and starts to become history? The earliest ones we could find were dated 1760, though there were quite a few from about 1845 to 1890.

By the time we'd finished exploring, it was too late to see any of the other nearby castles, so we headed back to the hotel to check our email, catch a few of the afternoon shows (yes, we're becoming addicted to British game shows... they have one based entirely around grammar! It's so cool!!) and wait for rush hour traffic to die down. We got directions to the local Sainsbury's and walked up and down the aisles just seeing what was there... We ended up picking up some Coronation Chicken Salad, a three pack of hummus (in various flavors), some pita bread, a bit of Cheshire cheese and a carton of Tangy Apple and Blackcurrant Smoothie drink to take back to the hotel room for dinner (we also snagged another flavor of crisps (the Roasted Lamb and Morroccan Spices flavor we tried the other day was a big hit) for the drive north tomorrow). We just wanted to stay in tonight, and it made a pretty decent meal... and we were able to catch another episode of Ladette to Lady (no, I don't know why we're getting sucked into that show, since neither of us can usually stand reality television). All in all, it was a fun day, we got to see a lot, yet we also got to relax a bit (this is a vacation, after all!)

I realized this morning that we should have taken some pictures when we met up with Gillo last night! I never think of these things until it's too late!

Tomorrow we head up north past Birmingham and on up to Preston, which should let us get into Whalley at a decent hour on Saturday. I can't believe how quickly this vacation has gone! It's only been a little bit over a week, but we're already on the downhill side of things!

Comments

[ayinhara.livejournal.com]

I visited Kenilworth Castle 44 years ago. Wow, until just now I didn't realize how long ago that was. I met a really nice family who took me to Warwick Castle the following day. When I was there it was not commercial. The contrast between the two castles was interesting. It depended on which side the castle owner fought in the 17th century English Civil War.