England and France 2013 - one

A while back Mary got invited to speak at the second annual Awakening to Animals Conference in England.  At the time we thought it would be great to extend our trip a few weeks and explore France and connect with a couple of friends living in France.

As it turned out the trip came only two months after we moved into our new house in Florida, so we weren’t real anxious to leave our new home on an extended trip. But, airfare is expensive, so we decided to keep to our original schedule; 10 days in England and 23 days in France.

England June 19-30, 2013

Before the conference we spent a night in Oxfordshire at Swinford Manor Farm B&B.  The farm was very nice and located right along the Thames, near Oxford.  There was a nice trail beside the river

where we could see the private barges and view the very old and still operating hand-powered lock system.

The conference in Kenilworth was excellent; eight presenters over two days - topics ranged from saving white lions in Africa, to natural horsemanship and emotional healing with horses, to holistic veterinary care, to Tellington Touch, to Mary’s presentation on Whale and Dolphin Consciousness & Spirituality.

After the conference Mary and I went to see the ancient stones of Avebury and Stonehenge, and to the Glastonbury area where we met up with Mary’s friend Madeleine. She showed us the sacred sites of the Tor and the Chalice Well. Glastonbury is quite the ‘new-age’ town, and we had fun wandering through the many crystal and rock shops.

Thanks to a picture on a BING search engine home page, we headed south to the Dorset Coast to explore Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door. This area along the English Channel across from Normandy is very beautiful with rolling hills and cliffs and some very interesting rock formations.  Durdle Door is an arched rock formation that looks a lot like a very large Dragon taking a drink of water from the ocean.  We had a nice hike along the coast.

We then drove to London for two days of sightseeing before heading to France.  London was packed with tourists and they were also in the middle of the Gay Pride weekend when we arrived, so the people watching was fantastic, but the crowds and traffic were a bit much.

  

As we traveled the English countryside trying to stay on the left side of the road and not hit the quaint stone buildings jutting into the roadway, we were longing for the wide open spaces of North America. We got spoiled traveling in our fifth-wheel trailer for so long - always the same bed, air conditioning and no hauling heavy suitcases up and down narrow 300 year-old staircases. We looked forward to France where we could at least drive on the right side of the road again. Driving on the left side of the road from the right hand drive cars was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

We were surprised by a few things in England. We didn’t see hardly any wildlife other than a few dead badgers on the road. The only crops we saw were hay and wheat. The food and drink were very expensive, and except for London – the food choices were pretty boring and almost always the same. It was hard to even find a green salad on the menu! We did find the rest areas on the English motorways to have excellent services and snacks.