Lazy Days-ee

This weekend, Craig and I did some shopping and on or walk home, we passed by the neighboUring boarding school which is called Cheltenham College. There were two sets of kids on the playing fields taking part in a strangely familiar game. It was American flag football!!! We watched for a bit because it was interesting to see an actual forward pass. One team was called the Redskins and they even called out plays before the snap. Our overall impressions were that English children have difficulty throwing a ball overhand and that anything goes as the refs (PE teachers) allowed a pass to bounce before being caught yet the play continued.

On Sunday, Craig and I took advantage of a very lazy afternoon and hoofed it to one of our favoUrite pubs, The Jolly Brewmaster, for a couple of pints each (well, one and a half for me) and a bag of crisps. Then Craig watched the Arsenal football match on the telly in the late afternoon and sulked upstairs for the rest of the evening.

Cerne Abbas and a Giant Discovery

On our way home from Dorset, we detoured to Cerne Abbas.
The town itself was a quintessential English village and very lovely. We had a scrummy lunch at The Royal Oak which played rocking 70's and 80's tunes.
Then we walked around the village and the Cerne Abbey
and popped into the church.
Then it was time to find what we had come to see.
The real reason for the detour was to see the Cerne Abbas Giant.
(Go to the Wikipedia link for more information and especially read the "Folklore" and "Publicity" sections.) Like the White Horse in Uffington, the Giant is a chalk hill figure.
Needless to say, it was an "exciting" detour.
I think he was excited to see us too.

Spring Half-Term Break: Lyme Regis

Firstly, I want to talk about school terms here. There are three school terms: Autumn, Spring and Summer. "What happened to winter?", you ask. I am not exactly sure. All I know is that Spring Term begins in January and ends in the first days of April. It seems that no one wants to admit that there is a winter in England, or that the lack of daylight and sunshine are depressing enough without bringing the mention of winter into the mix. The terms are divided into halves and the school is closed for a week hence the "half-term break".

We spent half of this half-term in a town called Lyme Regis which is on the southern coast of England in Dorset. It was an easy drive and could also be done as a day trip. Make sure you pack your wellies, another pair of shoes and extra clothing; it is muddy and wet. Oh, and a hammer and chisel, too.
There are two reasons we went there: 1. Our neighboUrs who live in the other side of our semi-detached house own a cottage there which is about two blinks of an eye from the beach. I exaggerate, but it is really close. They have offered it to us on many occasions and we finally took their offer.
2. Lyme Regis is on the Jurassic Coast which is a stretch of land known for its abundance of fossils. It was boy (& man) heaven.
Many complete and new species of dinosaurs were (and still are) discovered in Lyme Regis. Lyme Regis is also the setting for The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles who lived here. There is also a new historical fiction book, Remarkable Creatures by Tracey Chevalier, which is a wonderful read and tells the story of fossil hunting back in the day from a woman's perspective.

Usually, we try to pack in a lot of activities on holiday, but this time we did nothing except hunt for fossils,
A'fossiiling we go...
read,
walk,
relax
and do puzzles.
Lyme Regis is very quaint in a good way.
There really is a bunch of stuff to see (museums, churches, neighboUring townes, lots of National Trust sites) but we just didn't. The kids and Craig found some awesome fossils - both Finn and Owen found an ammonite in full form - and I found handfuls of sea glass and pottery shards, an old marble and an old bottle without a scratch.
Enjoy the photos.
Now I just have to get through a mound of laundry...

A La Ronde

On our way to Lyme Regis for the half-term break, we stopped at a National Trust property called A La Ronde. It was built in the late 18th century for two spinster cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter, upon their return from a European grand tour that lasted 10 years. They incorporated items from their tour in the decoration of the house.
The sixteen-sided house was based on this Byzantine church, San Vitale, in Ravenna, Italy.
The last descendant of the cousins now lives in Canada. These are Inuit dolls from Canada.
It was full of amazing trinkets from all over the world.
These items were as small as my finger.
The cousins did a lot of decorative paper cutting and made elaborate pictures.
They also loved shells and made amazing pictures all from shells
as well as a fragile shell-encrusted gallery, said to contain nearly 25,000 shells.
We were amazed at the decoration in the main reception room. "The extraordinary interior decoration includes a feather frieze from many species of birds, including game birds, fowl, jays and parrots, laboriously stuck down with isinglass." (NT brochure) Isinglass is a paste made from dried fish bladders.
These are feathers!
Needless to say, these ladies had A LOT of time on their hands, but they were also very creative!
Here are some other pretty pictures inside and outside of the house.
View of Exmouth (or possibly Exeter) from the upstairs bedroom
I would love to wake up to this view everyday.
The wonky floorboards pieced together to fit into a sixteen-sided house
My kids love to dress up, even as the Parminter cousins.
A way olde bar of Fairy soap
I use different forms of Fairy brands to wash our clothes, in the dishwasher and as dish liquid.
There was a table with drawers labeled ABC, DEF, etc. There were three mistakes: the above drawer with the U and V juxtaposed, and the omission of the letters J and Z. J was missing because in Latin, I replaced J in spelling. We see that all of the time on old gravestones. The Z was missing because X replaced Z in spelling and also according to our guide because there were no English surnames beginning with Z. I like our explanation better.
The shell gallery is at the very top where you see a railing. We were not allowed up there. You could peek upstairs through the doorway (previous photo) or look at it via CCTV.There is a plant like this in our back garden. Ours is potted and is about chest high. This one was at least 15 feet high, maybe 20'.
This ladybug says, "It's Spring!"
It was a fun visit and we are off to Lyme Regis. More on that another day...