Mr. Toad's Wild Ride ... wrong side of the car, wrong side of the road, wrong hand to shift ...

Oh My!!!

Basically our travel from Texas to England was fairly uneventful ... we did in fact have a 2 hour delay in Dallas due to weather which meant we left DFW at 11:10PM Tuesday night and were confusedly eating our 'dinner/snack' about 1AM on the plane but other than that getting to Heathrow and getting the car rented was fairly mundane.  Then ... the excitement began in earnest ...

Woodie had done some driving in England at some point in his far distant storied past and thus he was the de-facto "first driver"  for our happy troop ... lucky him!!  We spent a little time in the Hertz parking lot familiarizing ourselves with our SEAT LX -- apparently a SEAT is a Spanish Fiat.  It is in fact a diesel for which we are grateful realizing we have about 2500 miles to pay the fuel cost on.  Diesel looks to be about 1.17 British Pounds per liter.  And then ,,, we were OFF !!!!!

Driving out of Heathrow on the wrong side of the road with the driver on the wrong side of the car and him shifting with his left hand was ... an "interesting" experience for all involved ... those in our car and those sharing the road with us ... I have to give Woodie credit ... he managed the task without killing anyone, I didn't see any rude jesters from any other motorists and for the most part we all managed to stay calm and collected.  I have to say sitting in the front seat on the left zipping down the motorway at 70 mph with big trucks inches away from my cringing whimpering self was exciting but a little unnerving.

From Great Britain Odyssey 2010

But we did make it to our first stop .. Manor Farm in the Cotswolds. ... we walked around the corner

From Great Britain Odyssey 2010

and had a nice dinner at the local "pub" ... not a pub in the truest sense but 3 of us had Fish & Chips, we had a bottle of wine to celebrate our success at making it this far ...

From Great Britain Odyssey 2010

Tomorrow, after breakfast at 8:30am we venture to Salsbury and Stone Henge.

Flight delay brings out the animal...

An hour plus flight delay out of Dallas can cause stress on the weary traveler!!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

'Tally Ho ... or Head 'em and move 'em out!!!"

And they're off! Sitting at the San Antonio airport waiting for the adventure to begin.

With over 3 hours layover in Dallas and 9 hours flight to London this is gonna be a LONG DAY.

Posted from Droid X!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

I added a link to our itinerary on the sidebar to the left...

Just a very brief housekeeping update ... I added a link over on the left to our "itinerary" ... this is kinda handy and a really good tool to use if you are planning a trip that involves things like airline reservations, hotels, events like concerts or what have you ... once you make a reservation and receive the confirmation email .. you simply forward that confirmation email to the Kayak service (free) and it gets "automatically" parsed and added to your itinerary.  You can make manual additions, changes as well ... really a very handy tool for keeping track of what your overall travel plan is ... take a look.

Well it's now 21 days until departure on the great adventure ... 'tally ho ....

A journey to the lands of lore and legend ... or "On the road again ..."

Four daringly intrepid adventurers are making the final preparations for a journey of such bold enterprise that it boggles the mind just to contemplate ...

Into the land of King Arthur, Robin Hood, Leprechauns, faeries, William Wallace and Richard Burton these brave souls will venture with nothing more than their collective wits, a GPS or two, some well worn maps and travel guides, as regular as possible connection to the internet, a couple of netbooks, some smartphones, a willingness to depend on the kindness of strangers and the clear knowledge that people generally make allowances for the aged and infirm ...

And so ... on September 14 in the year of our Lord 2010 ... Linda, Carolyn, Woodie and Bade will cheerfully depart San Antonio aboard American Airlines flight 1057 connecting to AA Flight 80 and wing our way across the great pond to jolly old England ... we will be in Great Britain for approximately three weeks, returning home on October 6.

Our 'general' travel plan is to rent a car at Heathrow and drive in a huge loop from London, stopping over for a few days in the Cotswolds just West and North of London doing some site seeing in the area, then drive up through Wales and cross over to Ireland via ferry.  We will spend several days driving around the highpoints of Ireland and then depart from Belfast again via ferry to Scotland.  A short couple of days driving in Southern Scotland and then heading back down towards London.  A few days in London to see the sites and then fly back home.

That's "the plan" ... some of our arrangements are already made and some we intend to make "as we journey along", hoping to have some flexibility in the sojourn to allow for 'interesting discoveries' we might encounter along the way.

As in the past it is our intention to maintain some fairly timely updates to this travelogue that we hope will be of interest to our friends and families ... please look in from time to time or better yet subscribe with the link on the upper left of this web log page ...