Well, we just keep zipping along through England! I guess I'm a few days behind now. We woke up Saturday in Salisbury (the B&B was amazing and we were sad to leave) and headed out on a leisurely trip toward Bath, stopping at Stourhead, Longleat, and Wells to see the cathedral. I was not a fan of Longleat particularly, although the house was beautiful. Seems like the current Marquess is a bit of a nut and if I owned an entire beautiful valley like that, I certainly wouldn't turn it into a safari park and amusement park sort of thing with motion simulator rides, Love Labyrinth, and fast food stalls. It was too much commercialization for me and all of the amusement stuff ruined the aspect of the Elizabethan house and parklike grounds. Mom and I were excited to see the advertised Victorian kitchen but when we got there it was one big gift shop with a Victorian oven set in one wall. Ridiculous in a different way were the boxwood hedge mazes advertised on teh map; when we got there, it was to read that the hedges had been planted in 1996 but were still too small to open the mazes to the public! As much as I'm critizing the place, though, Mom and I loved the interior of the house: the Elizabethan Great Hall and the Georgian opulence of the state rooms, dining rooms, saloon, etc. that we were allowed to see.

Stourhead was a beautiful house but it was the grounds that got me. Huge, park-like but carefully planned and landscaped by Capability Brown. We went on a long walk around a picturesque lake with views periodically opening among the rhododendrons and cedar (we think many of the trees were cedar) that showed us glimpses of classical-looking buildings at various points around the water. It was hard to believe that one person could hold a landscape of that scale in his head to plan the construction and placement of various temples, obelisks, and cottages, let alone the placement of different tree and shrub species. Our last stop on Saturday before arriving in Bath was at Wells Cathedral, not originally on our itinerary but given Grandma's recommendation and the fact that our hotel in Bath had a 24-hour front desk, we took a short detour to Wells and had time for a few minutes in the Cathedral. It was Mom's and my favorite cathedral in England so far (out of Winchester, Salisbury, and Wells) for its simplicity, the warmth of the yellow stone, and of course the wonderful weathered statues and carvings on the front of the cathedral. Really, really beautiful.

Our day in Bath, Sunday, was incredibly exhausting, I think because all of our other days so far had been punctuated by at least short car trips as we traveled from place to place but we spent the entirety of our day in Bath on our feet and seeing things. First was a walk around the Bath Abbey and surrounding streets to get our bearings. Then a looooong tour of the Roman Baths and a visit to the Pump Room for lunch. I don't think either of us expected the Roman Baths to take so long but it was a wonderfully done audio tour. Not only did we see the great main bath but the tour also took us through some exhibits built in parts of the original bath complex and took us underground in a large radius around the main bath looking at all of excavations of the adjoining smaller rooms. Really incredible and there was lots to see and read. After the Baths we walked up to the Circus and visited the Fashion Museum and Assembly Rooms. Of the Fashion Museum, we enjoyed the exhibits pertaining to women's dress in the Georgian, Regency, and Victorian periods. Particularly the Regency for me, since I was most interested in picturing the styles of Jane Austen's time. The Assembly Rooms were beautiful and the Ballroom was currently in use while we were there - a live band and a bunch of people ballroom-dancing! It was pretty neat to see the Assembly Rooms still in use. We headed up to the Royal Crescent next and toured a Georgian house and museum at No. 1 Royal Crescent, then walked the length of the street taking in the view down toward the lower part of the town and enjoying peering into the basement gardens of the houses in the Crescent. Then we walked down Gay Street to the Jane Austen Centre, located a few houses down from No. 25 where she lived for a little bit while she was in Bath. Unfortunately we got there for the last entrance prior to closing and didn't get to spend as much time reading everything as we would have liked. But what we did read was such a perfect addition to everything we'd read and seen at Austen's house in Chawton and really felt like we were getting a complete biography between the two places. We ended our day with a walk over the Pulteney Bridge and dinner at a nice Indian restaurant on the other side.

Today we woke up in Bath, popped over to the Abbey to take a quick peek inside (beautiful, of course!) and then headed out of the city and north toward the Cotswolds. The main point of today and tomorrow is to leisurely make our way from Bath toward Stratford-upon-Avon just enjoying the beautiful countryside. We drove through Castle Combe first and it was teeny tiny. Our guidebook says that the old version of Dr. Doolittle, filmed in CC, was a financial disaster, which really surprised me since I loved that movie so much as a little kid. We couldn't make it up to the manor house which was Dr. Doolittle's house in the movie because it's turned into a fancy schmancy hotel with a gated entrance. The village was certainly lovely, though, and I had to stop a bunch of times so that mom could quickly snap pictures through the windshield. After driving through the village we went up to Painswick and got out there to walk around the village. We went on a fruitless search for the Quaker Meetinghouse, which was NOT where all the signs we saw said that it was supposed to be. Hmph. So we found solace in some brie and cranberry paninis at a cute little deli, wandered around a churchyard dotted with 99 yew trees, and then went on our way. Our last stop was Sudeley Castle. The exhibitions were small but contained some really interesting things - mainly textiles from the 18th and 19th centuries. The gardens and grounds were unbelievable, though. Part of the castle, built in the 17th century, is in ruins and was a stunning setting for the formal gardens and the lived-in part of the castle. A large part of the grounds was roped off as private for the family that still lives in the castle (imagine living in a castle!!!) but the part that we could wander through was exactly what you would expect the grounds of a English castle/estate house to look like a few hundred years ago. Once we'd explored the castle grounds, we came here to Cheltenham and found our hotel. Tomorrow we're off to explore a few more villages in the Cotswolds, visit Hidcote, and arrive in Stratford-upon-Avon where we'll settle for two nights. Definitely looking forward to seeing some Shakespeare sites now that we've seen so many things related to Jane Austen!