Friday driving through the Midlands

Fairly boring day today... woke up, enjoyed the continental breakfast at the hotel, loaded the car and headed northward. We took

gillo's suggestion and used the M6 Toll road -- she was right, it had MUCH lighter traffic. Mostly, it was a day filled with admiring the English countryside... we took a few jaunts off the Motorway to do just that. We stopped at an outlet mall at one point, just to see what they had... and lucked out to get a Thornton's outlet. Yummy chocolate and fudge!!

Lunch was picked up at a Moto-M&S (Marks & Spencer's). The cafeteria looked like a clone of the one we tried outside Warwick the other day, but there was a really nice M&S store filled with refrigerated pre-prepared foods. We ended up with a Wensleydale & caramelized carrot chutney sandwich and a salmon & watercress sandwich (with Scottish salmon!), both on whole grain breads with yogurt spreads. Much better than what we found at the Welcome Break!

At one point, we passed a lorry hauling Andrex Toilet Tissue... it had a huge ad plastered on the side with what we assume was their slogan ("Puppies on a Roll") surrounded by the photos of cute, frolicking little puppies. I don't know about you, but I find the mental image of using cute little puppies in place of toilet paper to be just a little disturbing.

Checked in at the Premier Travel Inn in Preston East... a nice, comfortable hotel and not terribly pricey, though the internet connection is not cheap (thankfully, they offer shorter connection times for less money). The room has a queen-sized bed (huzzah! We were in a double last night, which was just way too small, considering we have a king at home), quite a bit of floorspace, and a towel warming rack in the bathroom(!) -- we're still not too sure about that last thing.

We drove over to Blackpool and just wandered around a bit... drove down along the promenade, but didn't have any luck finding parking. The Illuminations were still up, but we drove by just a bit too early in the evening to see them all lit up... and in the waning light they look kinda, well, tacky (they may be better in the dark). Back to the hotel and the Brewer's Fayre restaurant next door for dinner... looking over the menu, we had to ask what a yorkie was (as in Sausage and Mash in a Giant Yorkie), because the only thing we knew of that fit that name was a candy bar (and it's not for girls, anyway!). I should have realized it meant yorkshire pudding, since it's one of my favorites! One of these days I'll have to figure out how to make it.

We were able to get directions (after a bit of discussion with some of the hotel staff) to the Preston LDS Temple, which is gorgeous at night, even if we were never able to find an entrance to the grounds (there was quite a bit of driving around going "now we're getting further away... okay closer, now further... wait, now it's behind us..."). So, yeah, we saw the temple (which is more than we can say about the London Temple... we never got by there at all), but didn't really ever get close to it.

This is likely the last time I'll have internet access until sometime next week, since we'll be staying at Bed & Breakfasts for the next few days. I'm planning on writing updates as I go, though, and will try to post them before we fly home!