We are saying goodbye today to the French bunnies.

Kindra & Mitzi on the ferry.

Everyone on deck saying goodbye to France for now.

Brad and the while cliffs of Dover.

Me and Mitzi with the Dover cliffs in back.

Stonehenge is still just a bunch of big rocks.

The girls on a bench in Sandy lane.

One of the many thatched roof cottages in Sandy Lane.

Another cute cottage in Sandy Lane.

I've heard of free range chicken, but I hadn't heard of free range children before.

Some of the many flowers in Castle Combe.

Lots of neat cottages and buildings in Castle Combe.

Castle Combe is basically one long street of cottages.

A view over the bridge and stream at Castle Combe.

A knight's tomb inside Castle Combe. Notice the date of 1270. Wow!

Ashley and Ian liked the doors just their size.

All of the family leaving Castle Combe. What a day!
7-24-10 Saturday
OK, so I haven’t really written in our journal/blog now for about 3 weeks. It’s amazing not working you’d think I’d have all day to do things, but between bike riding, getting everyone up and running for the day, traveling, seeing everything, cleaning, laundry, and everything else that needs to be done, the day is sometimes gone without me writing. I keep telling myself I’ll start catching up tomorrow, and tomorrow comes and is busy and gone, and I’m another day behind. So I guess I’d better start catching up or I’ll lose the chance. Today is actually Sunday the 25th, but I thought I’d write about yesterday first before I start trying to catch up the earlier days. I figure the most recent is the freshest in my memory. We need to leave on Saturday to head to England, and our ferry was leaving at 11am. It’s about a 2 ½ hour + ride from where we were staying just outside of Blaru to where we catch the ferry south of Calais about 30km. I figured we needed to be on the road by 8am at the latest to plan for traffic, any missed turns, checking into the ferry, etc. With us needing to leave at 8am, that put a lot of pressure on us to get up early, have most of the cleaning and packing done the night before, and take quick showers, finish the cleaning and packing, and hitting the road. I got up at 6am, hit the shower, and started getting ready. I let Kindra sleep until about 6:30, and let the other kids sleep until about 7am. I was a little worried about making sure we left this place very clean and in good shape, as the French lady was a little anal when we checked in to stay at her place. She had me leave a $1200 deposit, had charged an extra 13 euros per bed, and was charging for any electricity, etc. We hurried quick, and we were just wrapping up when the French lady arrived to make sure the place was left in decent shape and return our deposit if it was. We had re-made the beds, laundered the towels and everything. I think she was very surprised. We hit the road quickly and I drove as fast as I dared as we didn’t actually leave until 8:19am. The GPS unit I’ve been using estimates your arrival time, and is fairly accurate. I find I can usually make up a little time on the freeway (not much), and usually lose a little time in the cities with lights. I wanted to arrive at the ferry port by 10:30, and when we hit the road, it was projecting 10:39am. I was a little worried. I worked it down to estimating about 10:34, but then needed to stop for gas and use the restroom. When I started again, it was back to 10:39 as out ETA. When we finally got there we had to check in with the ferry company, then pass through French control and show our passports (which all but mine were in a back buried under a ton of others, so I had to dig them out), then show our passports again at the British control, then finally drive onto the ferry. I’m pretty sure we were the last ones on the ferry and it was about ready to leave. We went upstairs and I had brought a picnic type lunch for us to have. After a bite to eat, Kindra went back to the car to try and sleep, and a couple kids went back to the car to watch movies. I wandered around and found that they rent cabins for the trip over for 12 pounds. I think I’ll rent 1 or 2 cabins for the trip back so we can try and sleep for a couple of hours. We saw the white cliffs of Dover appearing on the horizon and then got closer. They are pretty impressive and probably at least a couple hundred feet high. We finally made it off the ferry and started heading towards Stonehenge. We were staying the night not too far from Stonehenge (about 30-40 miles) and planning on seeing a number of sites I knew from my mission around that area. It was originally estimating 2 ½ hours drive from the ferry to Stonehenge, but we hit lots of traffic, tried to detour around the traffic, hit more traffic as we got closer to Stonehenge, and it ended up being closer to 3 ½ hours. After the early morning and the drive to the ferry, everyone was starting to get pretty wiped out. We stopped at Stonehenge for a few minutes. We didn’t pay to go in. You can view it from one side of the fence for free, or pay about $10/person to get 30’ closer. The view is virtually the same, and in any case you are just looking at a bunch of big rocks. I know for the kids though they had heard about Stonehenge so they wanted to see it. We then drove to a place I had found on my mission called Sandy Lane. Sandy Lane is a little village in the middle of nowhere that is extremely cute. It only has about 12-14 buildings not counting garages and they are thatched roofs except the pub and 2 cottages. It’s extremely quaint and not what most tourists ever see. Certainly worth seeing if you are at Stonehenge as it’s only about 20 minutes away and is actually probably neater than Stonehenge. We stopped and got some drinks then went to Castle Combe. Castle Combe is another extremely quaint village totally different than Sandy Lane. I’ve never quite figured out, but there isn’t a castle at Castle Combe, so I’m not exactly sure why it’s called that. The village has these very old row houses with doorways about 5 ½’ tall and stone roofs. It winds down from a church to the bottom of the little village that has a picturesque bridge with a little stream. The church was really cool and we wandered around it. They had a tomb of a night from about 1270 and an explanation of his tomb. For instance his sword was partially out supposedly meaning he met a violent death. His legs were crossed, his feet were on a lion, and other things that were very symbolic. He supposedly went on 2 crusades. We then decided to go find our hotel, and I realized when I looked at our confirmation sheet to find the address that the dates were off. Our confirmation was for Sunday night, not Saturday night. Somehow I had got off 1 day, so we didn’t have a hotel for the night. We decided to go to the hotel anyway and ask if they had a room for tonight as well. They didn’t and they checked a couple places and couldn’t find a place for us. The kids were getting tired so we decided to go to McDonalds and use the WiFi there to try and find a place. At McDonalds the internet was very slow and I wasn’t having much luck. I finally found a place that looked like it probably would have 2 rooms for us, wasn’t too far away, so I called them, and they did have 2 rooms that would sleep us all. We went and found the hotel which is just outside of Swindon which is one of the areas I served in on my mission. I told my wife I should have brought the addresses I stayed in while on my mission. It would have been interesting to drive by and show the kids where I lived when I was on my mission. Kindra decided to stay in the room while I went out with the older 4 kids to try and find something to eat. It was just after 9pm when we went to find something for dinner. We finally found a “Chippy” in Swindon that serves fish & chips. The kids were extremely impressed with the fish & chips. When I asked them how they would rate the fish & chips, they all said either 9 or 9 ½ even though didn’t think they were the best I have had. By the time we made it back, it was almost 11pm, which figuring in we gained an hour coming from France was midnight in France. No wonder we were all very tired by the time we went to bed.