Our Homes Away from Home

Thought I would make a post to show you the wonderful places Jeff has found for us to stay.  I can't thank him enough ~ his planning has made this trip the wonderful experience it has been thus far.

Our first "Home Away from Home" was Dalhousie Castle, outside of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Below is Dalhousie at night ~ beautiful!

Next stop was "Kiloran", a B&B in Inverness, Scotland.  The proprietors, Anthony and Maggie, were so friendly and helpful ~ just what one would expect from people running a B&B.  

Ben and Chris with "Mr. Anthony".  Anthony was born and raised in Inverness, which made him the perfect person to give us advice on our day trips around the area.  He was wonderful to the boys and had a great Scottish accent.  Anthony and Maggie said they bought the house in rough condition and he re-did every room ~ it was beautifully done.  I wish I would have taken a picture of the dining room ~ I loved the look of it.  Below are a couple of pictures from our room, called "Muckle",which means "large" in Celtic.  We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Kiloran.

We left Scotland and headed for the area in northern England known as "The Lake District".  It was mountainous, very green, covered with thousands of sheep, miles of stone fences, and, as you might guess....lakes. :)   We stayed just outside a town called Ambleside at a property called Grove Farm.  This is a view of Grove Farm from the road across the fields.

A closer view of Grove Farm

One interesting thing we have noticed is that in each region we have visited, the houses are made of different types of stone.  In the Lake District, it was a lot of this flat grey stone.  This was the entrance to our part of the farm, called "High Grove".

Our Living Room

Our Kitchen

After the Lake District, we headed south to a village called Oakridge Lynch in the Cotswolds.  If you have ever seen an English Cottage in the movies, it was probably located here in the Cotswolds.

The property was called "Well Close".  It was owned by a really great family, whose two boys I have already introduced you to.  They live right next door to the property and had, not only 2 boys, but 2 huge rabbits, a kitten named Buttons who I thought Ben might try to smuggle into the car with us when we left and a big old chocolate lab named Oscar.  I think having the animals around really helped keep all of us from missing Emma too much.

There are very few bugs here in Great Britain, so there are no screens on any of the windows and people keep their windows wide open most of the time.  This is a refreshing change from Charlottesville, where we keep our windows closed nearly all year-round because either the air-conditioning is on or the heat is on.  Feels great to sleep with the fresh air coming in at night, though I will admit that 4 weeks into this trip now, it is getting a little too chilly.

We liked the area we were in so much, that when our time at "Well Close"came to an end and we had another 3 days before we had to be in Cornwall, we moved into the Davie's other rental property in a village about 15 minutes away called Minchinhampton.  The sign below is pretty typical of the area and made me smile.

There are cattle everywhere.  There was also a golf course in Minchinhampton.  I get the feeling they don't take golf quite as seriously as golfers in America.  There were pretty heavily traveled roads criss-crossing the course.  There were cows grazing on it, people riding horses across it, and people walking and riding bikes on paths around it.  Seeing as all four of us enjoy a round of golf, we found it pretty amusing.

This was Newton Cottage.  Another pretty typical Cotswold cottage.  It looks old but had all the amenities inside.

Newton Cottage was right across the street from what is called an "allotment garden".  Most people have small yards, and though most have beautiful flower gardens and often fruit trees, people grow their vegetables in the allotment gardens.  Apparently the village government is required by law to provide land for the people of the villages to use for growing food.  You get a small plot and you go and work it as much or as little as you want to.  If you give up your plot, it goes to the next person on the waiting list.  In some villages there is a 40 year waiting list for a plot.....kind of like with Packer tickets. :)  This is not a very good picture but I thought the whole concept very interesting so I wanted to include it.

And for those of you into detail....the stone of the houses in the Cotswolds is thicker and tan-colored than that of the Lake District.  :)

While I have loved all of the places we have visited, each area having a charm all its own, I may have loved our time in Cornwall the most so far.  Cornwall is the southwest corner of England, on the ocean ~ beach country.  There are immense rocky cliffs going down to beautiful beaches with blue-green water that makes you think you could be in the Caribbean.  Ben and Chris loved the beaches too.  The beaches of Cornwall will likely be a post all its own, so back to our "home" there.  We stayed at a cottage attached to an inn called Landewednack House.

Between our cottage and the ocean, there was a really old parish church with an eery but cool graveyard.  We have seen (and loved) many cathedrals and churches on this trip, and most have traditional steeples.  Churches all over Cornwall look like the church below, with a bigger, square "steeple".

We walked to the ocean the first day there ~ Ben and Chris were SO excited to get in the water, but it was very rocky near our cottage as you can see in the picture.  We tried a beach or two that day, but it was high tide so there was no sand.  The beach had to wait until the next day. :)

This is "The Sunday Cottage".  It was surrounded by amazing gardens, fruit trees, grape vines, manicured green areas, and an inground pool.  Ben and Chris' favorite part was the swing!

Notice the church and the ocean in the background.

Landewednack House had a fabulous cook ~ Antony.  He was hilarious, and always SO nice to Ben and Chris ~ slipping them candy all the time!  We usually ate breakfast at the inn ~ what a spread.  Never have I seen such attention to detail.  Met another nice family that we took some meals with who had a 1 year old daughter named Poppy who the boys were enthralled with....along with Poppy they also loved the 4 pugs and huge puffball of a cat.  They are making friends everywhere!

Guess that is it for Cornwall.  Will post soon about our stop in Dorset.