Hidcote Gardens - Winchcombe - Gloucester - Cheltenham

Busy day that was.... we toured Hidcote Gardens, which were just beautiful.  We also saw Lawrence Johnson's "American Gardens," beautifully designed garden rooms on acres and acres of lush property.  Johnson's home was also on the property, and I wish I could have spent more time in his library which was covered wall-to-wall with bookshelves filled with beautiful antiquarian volumes.

In Winchcombe, we toured Sudeley Castle.... still occupied by descendants of the family, rooms filled with priceless antiques and heirlooms. In one of the hallways, there is a full-length stained glass window-portrait of Queen Elizabeth I --- absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous, and it's mesmerizing when the sunlight comes through it, making Elizabeth seem to come alive right in front of you. Beautiful beyond description and I can still see it in my mind's eye. Forever more, when I read my volumes about Elizabeth I, that window-portrait is what I will see as I read.

In Gloucester, we toured the Gloucestershire Cathedral. No matter how many cathedrals and churches one sees in England, there is never an absence of beauty and serenity.  The stained glass windows, the altars, the grave-slabs set into the marble and stone floors, ornately carved wooden pews, embroidered cushions for kneeling, gold altar accessories and elaborate lecterns for the minister to rest his sermon notes upon. And the massive and ancient organs, with hundreds and hundreds of gleaming pipes rising up towards the ceiling. You honestly don't know where to look first when you walk into such a church.... the stained glass windows are priceless works of art, the ceilings are carved and decorated with such elaborate details that they look like a spider web of perfect and delicate lace. And whether one is religious or not, just walking through such structures filled with awe-inspiring craftsmanship makes one want to sit in one of the pews and wonder who sat in that very same spot hundreds of years ago.

We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast home in Cheltenham that night.... the owners were out of town and had contacted us to let us know the location of the key to the front door. Very nice to have a two-story townhouse to ourselves, but in the morning, the electric "mains" were not working... we had overhead lighting, but none of the wall outlets would work.  That was the downside of absent home-owners. We managed, however.... minus a hair-dryer for myself.  We had a light breakfast in the kitchen of the B&B, consisting of left-overs from the previous night's dinner, then off we went to drive further into the Cotswolds.

By that time, my husband was more than adjusted to the opposite-ness of English driving, and I was able to enjoy the scenery instead of constantly watching the left side of the road to make sure the tires of our rental car didn't keep hitting the curb.  Looking back, I wish I would have tried some of the driving, to get a sense of the difference, and just for the satisfaction of having driven a car in the countryside of England.

We had brought along a GPS thing to mount on the windshield of the rental car.  It was helpful in some areas, useless in others. For instance, the residence of Prince Charles (Highgrove House) did not show up on the GPS.  And some of the locations of cafes and B&B homes did not come through via the GPS. On many occasions, my husband told the GPS, in no uncertain terms, that it wasn't worth the plastic it was made of. (As a note, we did not get to tour Highgrove... tickets are sold out for months and months ahead of time, and for security reasons, tickets are scarce to begin with.)