Big Ben, Parliment, and London Eye. 

Westminster Abbey.

Big Ben and Little Ben. 

Big Ben, Parliment and Westminster Abbey from the London Eye.

Snoozypaloozy, Warrington to London.  Troy wants to be well rested. 

Troy, Robyn, Julie and Ben outside the Tower of London.

London Tower Bridge from the Thames river boat.

the whole gang in front of the John Wayne Saloon. 

Castle in Wales.

Car bombs (guiness, baileys & jameson) in Warrington.

Mountain biking in Wales!

Robyn and the Karioke Guy.

Roy and Brenda, host and hostess of the John Wayne Saloon and Ponderosa Lodge in Wales.

Serious dancers, Ha!

Troy and I are standing at the top of the stairs to the beech at Saint Bee’s, and we just realized we are underdressed and underwarmed. Everybody we know is down on the beach right now, including some people we don’t know. So we are going to go check it out. We just busted out of Saint Bees, we’re in the warm car so Troy and I aren’t sniffling anymore. And we noticed that Julie has some peculiar behaviour around chocolate. She actually purrs when she sees chocolate. We just passed “The Legend of Oily Johnny’s”. We are at the William Wordsworth museum, the Dove cottage, and Troy is pretty psyched with all the buildings made of stone.

We just finished touring Wordsworth’s cabin, aka the Dove Cottage. It was very nice, but I can’t believe they had that many people living there. Now we are on a hike, passing “Bridal Water”. Now we’re just south of Grassmere, hiking up a little trail above the river and below one of the lakes of the Lakes District. Somewhere the we saw the names “White Moss Commons” and “Bridal Water”. The sky is filled with lots of great colors, blues, grays, and a bunch of other colors I just don’t know the names of – and we’re just having a great time. We hope to get a group photo at the top!

We stopped back through Warrington to meet up with Shelley’s co-workers, and pick up Shelley’s mountain biking gear. We then headed off to Wales. We’re on our way to Wales, and we’re a little alarmed that we cant’ read anything on any of the road signs. So far we have deduced that “ARUF” means “slow”. A couple more hours of driving, and reading many road signs with way too many consonants, we arrived at the “John Wayne Saloon” and the “Ponderosa Ranch”. I’m pretty sure at this point that our favorite Welsh word is ARUF. We just past the “Whatever Pub”. While we can’t stop, we wondered how this would be translated into Welsh.

After a yummy breakfast, we’re off on a brisk hike and we’re having some fun. Troy’s already confused a telephone pole for a tree. The sound of rushing water is all around us, we have just explored a really cool waterfall which is called falls-pool. Er, that’s not the name of it, I think that just means the pool for the falls. Snapped some interesting photos, one at the base of the falls, and one from the cliff above which is about 150ft above the falls-pool. Now we are headed to a pub (can you believe it?), followed by a cafe, followed by Thanksgiving dinner. Happy Thanksgiving!

Just watched the sheepherders in action, out in “Boot” which is just outside of “St. Bees” (where we are staying). Neill was kind enough to take us out hiking here while putting up with us in his house. This is our second hike today. Instead of pictures of the sheep, we have pictures of the sheep dogs. The dogs definitely do the majority of the work. I only took a couple guys, with about 5 dogs to round up a whole bunch of sheep. Shelley asked a great question about how long it takes to train the dogs to do this kind of work. The answer to which was “they either have it or they don’t”.

It’s Wednesday morning – there is teeths a brushin’, I can’t believe Troy is going to eat his leftover chips & peas covered in curry from last night – nor can anyone else, and I think someone said coffee. Believe it or not, it’s gray outside. Shelley and Troy “hired” a car. Shelley is running some errands which she shall return from shortly, after which we are headed for the Lakes District. While getting ready, we had a brief moment of excitement. The sun shined on a building and Robyn started jumping up and down! Then we opened the curtains and realized that we still couldn’t see the sun. We do know it’s out there though.

Now we are winding through the south-western tip of the Lakes District. SR-Foyt is rapidly piloting us safely, through the twisting, winding roads (we think it’s safe, but she may dissagree). Troy is fulfilling his role as our excellent “nagivator”. On second thought, Troy isn’t nagivating, he’s only watching, Julie is nagivating from the back seat where Julie, Robyn and I are sandwiched. Julie says “it’s very warm in here”. We see nothing but rolling hills, stone buildings, stone walls, no longer seeing hedgerows, but still seeing gray skies as far as we can see. Julie says “it’s raining, surprise surprise”. Lots of sheep out here – baahaahaaaahaahahahaaa. Would somebody please change the CD?

Beautiful sunset, reds, yellows – over the Irish Sea. Very pretty.

And rolling green hills. And gray clouds all around us. Ooooh, I see water now. And Robyn was kind enough to inform me that the Irish Sea is made of water.

I woke up this morning and I was sooooo glad!

Somehow we had a discussion about how Julie had helped Niell with certain American phrases while they worked together in Denver. I think this topic started after Troy used the phrase “bad-ass”. “Table-saw” was apparently another. The real guiness of the whole ordeal is that Troy was able to use both, back to back – “bad-ass table-saw”. Which for the purposes of this discussion, was “a special saw for sawing up tables”. Now I am wrought with anticipation, to see this “bad-ass table-saw”.

OK, I believe I’m traveling with 4 other people who have never heard of Lucky Lager & Puzzle Caps. Good grief!

Today I’ve taken the trains to Chester – I believe it’s Tuesday. Chester is an old fortress city and currently I’m walking along the old guard mount. It’s a stone pathway on the inside of the stone wall that surrounds the city. The stone looks amazingly like red sandstone that I’m used to seeing in Colorado – it’s a pretty cool sight! Noticed a couple walking by having a little disagreement. He said “he’ll make an excuse to grope you, and you respond – that’s what’s bugging me”. I just finished walking around the cathedral in Chester and it is simply amazing in very many regards. The first thing that catches you is the architecture. It’s a huge, huge building completely made of stone. I can’t imagine lifting any of the stones, let alone some of the ones at the top. The spires are ornately carved and it is a very striking building. The fact that people took the time to put something like this together is just amazing. Then there is the spiritual point to be observed as well, and the architecture does a good jo of bringing that out. You get the feeling of respect as you walk in, you experience it. It was a fantastic “must see” that I was able to visit!

Tuesday night, gang is all here. Julie, Robyn and Troy have arrived and we’re goin’ out to a pub. Over the past couple days I spotted a copy of the first Harry Potter book, which is titled “The Sorcerer’s Stone” in America. The copies in England are titled “The Philosopher’s Stone”. According to Sarah, this was done on purpose due to the world impression that we Americans are not sophisticated enough to understand the same book with the different title – interesting… She shared this info with us at the pub. We survived the pub, we survived the beer, we managed to talk the bartender into making “car-bombs” for Troy and I – missed you on this one Robyn, and we survived the fish & chips. When asked for comments, at the end of the night, Robyn only shook her head.

Day, uh, whatever day it is. I wrapped up the Museum of Science and industry that Shelley and I started yesterday. Also stumbled around town, looked at castlefields, the old stone roman villages in the area. Wandered around Manchester a bit and go to see more of the city. Took a walk down Canal St. then found out on the bus ride home that it happens to be the gay and lesbian section of town. After the bus ride home, I had 20 minutes to wait for my bus back to Warrington so I decided to walk. Only problem is that I took the round about way. Lucky coincidence for me, Shelley recognized my hat and jacket as she and her housemate Sarah were driving home from work, so they stopped and picked me up and I got home a lot quicker. After arriving at their home, Sarah was trying to squeeze the big car (to her, little to me) into a parking spot. It was ever so slightly on the curb, so Shelley and I proceded to push the car off the curb, into an almost perfect parking job.

Manchester, took the bus with Shelley. All kinds of church towers (spires) all around us. The sun is shining, which is really strange.