London

London is “Full On”. The museums, attractions, meeting places, beer and shopping are first rate. Prices were about twice those at home so it wasn’t a place to sit around. We did a lot, hopefully much more then we’ll do in other places.
We enjoyed using the Tube to pop up anywhere in town that we wanted to, disappear and then pop up somewhere else. Even the backpack-laden, commuter crush on our way to Heathrow was ok.

I’ve got a new found appreciation for stained glass after taking a class with Peter McGrain. The Victoria and Albert Museum had fantastic displays of 900 year old pieces.

They also had a 3500 year old Egyptian face murini. For the most part, this art died out until Franchini briefly resurrected it 150 years ago. They had some Franchini portrait canes and murini which are the original inspiration for Loren Stump’s shaded face murini which are the original inspiration for my silly face murini. Nice to make the connections. Loren’s Madonna on the Rocks murini should be alongside these, mine will have to stay in my pocket.

South Devon

After leaving North Devon with its rolling hillsides and fields we headed south through the ancient town of Bath and on to our friends Paul, Ivana, Mia and Sol. We had a great time playing with them, touring the National Aquarium with their home teaching group and picking plums for marmalade.
They set up stays for us with Paul’s mom near the New Forest (wild horses) and Ivana’s sister Nadia in Newbury. In Newbury, we saw an outrageously creative version of Taming of the Shrew by an all male acting troupe called Propeller.
I have to mention the GPS system in our rental car. It did a fantastic job directing us in and around the countryside and cities. In a lovely British accent, she told us when to turn and if there was traffic to avoid. We spent little time off course and could focus on the terrifying small streets, roundabouts and tiny parking spaces and single lane.





North Devon

This is the middle of 5 days in our stone cottage in North Devon. We went to the cliffside village of Clovelly with it's stone pavings and cute houses. It could show LA how to build on a cliif, it's survived since early medeival times. The bench is on the walk down to the village.

The racing and shore pictures are in Westward Ho, a town that changed it's named based on a movie. This area has regular 9 meter tides so there are beached boats laying around half the time.

Cotswolds

We’ve just spent a week in the Cotswolds, England’s gorgeous rolling hills countryside. We spent much of the time walking through fields, past lakes and through villages. We’ve had fun sharing the fields with horses, sheep and cattle. A little unnerving at first but we survived with few attacks and no sightings of the drear dun cow.
We’ve spent two nights each in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Chipping Campden, outside of Stow-on-the Wold and are now in Bath. All are dominated by stone buildings in a style that’s been pretty consistent for about 800 years. We even found a sod roof home like the one I may have to live in someday.
The pictures show Ben saving a pug dog from a wayward hay roll. I’d hate think what would have happened if we had been a bit later.
We are heading south and west from here for parts of Cornwall yet to be determined. We do have a mobile phone with us that costs nothing for us to receive on. The number is 07857 015789. I think you need to dial 01144 in front of that.....
MD

A Tough Cut

This video shows our first night in Stratford-Upon-Avon after our flight and jet lag fighting.