The McGrath's Travel Adventures

So it is Monday morning and the first day of our road trip to celebrate my brother Rick’s 60th Birthday,  He does not know where we are going, how many days it will take or what adventures lie ahead.  The trip is a combination of Dianne’s planning of the event and I volunteered to sort out the daily travel itinerary.

The day started at 6:00am with a Massive walk around Cambourne knowing we would be in and out of the car for the day.

The car is a big car but the boot is quite small.  This caused us plenty of anxiety when packing to leave NZ as we knew this and had to plan for it.  Everything was in and we were on the road from Cambourne to the Cotswolds, to a little picture postcard village called Bourton-On-The=Water.

Our first stop along the way was a Motoring and flight museum at Shuttleworth.  The place runs airshows and motor racing for classic planes/cars. but not today.  We could only get a brief look around.

You can get up close and personal with the equipment.  I was way to small for this cockpit!

The planes are really well restored and all are still flying.

They also have a garden here that we just did not have time to look around.

We both really loved the composition of this photo. We think it might become the cover page of our Snapfish Book when we get home.

Back on the road after the obligatory cup of tea and coffee and we headed off to Woburn Abbey.  What an amazing place.  Essentially the family have single handedly brought back from near extinction a specific breed of chinese deer. At the lowest count there were under 10 left in the world. Now there are over 5000.  The main road in has them wandering free all around with very slow speed signs to make sure  you don’t hit them.  This one came very close.

We did not have time to explore the house so did a walk around the gardens and outside of th e house.

 

 

Jeanette wandered through the sculpture garden and was shocked by the nudity there.  She couldn’t let me photograph the sculptures with censoring the image.

It was a little damp around the gardens but nothing to deter us from exploring all that we could.  After we had been around the entire place we decided to move on to our next destination – Bletchley. Famous for running the code breakers during World War II.

It was quite amazing how nondescript this complex was considering the important role it played in helping win the war for Britain.  Apparently the ‘Committee’ who decided where it was to go had very special criteria in mind and Milton Keynes fit the bill perfectly.  It is so top secret that we can not show you pictures for fear of being interrogated by the officials at Bletchley.  So on we went to our next destination. Decided to ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross!  This was amazing.  Just to see a childhood nursery rhyme come to life before us.

Jeanette was very interested in why they call it a cock horse so went to investigate.

For those who can not remember the words to the rhyme here they are:

Banbury was fantastic.  So we all spent a penny (Actually 20 cents each) and used the Banbury Cross Toilets and set off on the final leg of our day 1 journey to Bourton-On-The-Water in the Cotswolds.  The region is beautiful.  We checked into our hotel ‘Chester House’ and prepared for our evening.

The hotel was quirky and our room was very hot. Otherwise it was a perfect place for our first night on the road. We unpacked, and dressed for dinner where we went out to the Croft Restaurant for dinner with Rick and Dianne and two of their friends Chris & Deborah who recently moved to the Cotswolds.

The food and the evening were fantastic.

By the time dinner was over it was dark and we went for a late night stroll around the hotel/restaurant.  It is beautiful at night.

And the Scenery wasn’t that bad either…

End of Day #1 – Goodnight