My England Trip #10YearsAgo #FantasyTravel #BriFri
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Last week, I shared Lucy Worsley’s documentary about Agatha Christie, to celebrate her September 15 birthday. Heather enjoyed Rosie’s Travelling Tea Shop by Rebecca Raisin, once she suspended her disbelief. Tina put some British books on her fall reading list. Come to think of it, there are some on my fall TBR, too. Margaret took us along on her blog tour stop for Written in the Stars by Helen Rolfe.
Ten years ago this month, we traveled in England. I’ve been reliving the trip through Facebook posts. Later, I wrote our adventures as blog posts in the months following our trip. Today, I want to revisit some memories while also thinking about what I would do if I went again.
We started our trip in Bath, an excellent place for jet lag recovery.
My one regret about our time in Bath was that I skipped the Thermae Spa, the opportunity to bathe like the Romans.
I also didn’t realize, at that time, that it would been as easy and not much more time to get to Cardiff, Wales by train. If I were to make a similar trip, today, I think I would take four days in Cardiff to recover from jet lag. Then, stop for a couple of nights in Bath. Besides the Thermae Spa, I would revisit the Roman Baths. We loved that so much that we would be happy to go again.
We went from Bath to Birmingham which turned out to be a terrific base for exploring the Midlands. The most memorable sites were the steam engines at ThinkTank (the science museum in Birmingham), the industrial Victorian living history village at Black Country Living Museum, and Bletchley Park.
I know that Bletchley Park has expanded and improved over the last decade, so I want to go back there. In fact, I think in a future trip, I would stay for three or four nights in either Bletchley or Milton Keynes so that we could visit multiple times without feeling rushed.
Since we visited the Midlands, I want my next trip to include a destination north of there — either the Lake District or Edinburgh.
We ended our 2014 trip with ten days in London. I could easily spend that much time there again, or even more.
Our highlights from 2014 included:
- The Museum of London
- The Benjamin Franklin House
- Greenwich
- The Science Museum
- A daytrip to Crofton Pumping Station
Those were great, but there are some obvious things missing from my London experience:
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- The British Museum
- The British Library
- The Imperial War Museum
- The Tower of London (we did see it from the road and the river)
- The London Transport Museum
- Westminster Abbey
Also, after last week’s post, I want to see The Mousetrap.
Clearly, I need to return to Great Britain!