Cheltenham

Cheltenham II.

On Saturday, July 21, we spent a lazy morning at Catherine's house, took some pictures of her cottage and got ready to move to our next residence.

This is the back garden of Catherine's wonderful little cottage.

We had a wonderful dinner the evening before and we are now leaving Marston Cottage. On the right are Elaine and me, Catherine and her friend Bill. Our destination is a B& B that we must have walked, driven and cycled by hundreds of times when we lived there. I don't think we ever noticed it during those three years.

Elaine had a very pleasant place to do some emailing and upgrading of the churches 'Coming Events' page.

This is our small but adequate room. Elaine looks out the

Brits don't need soil to have a front garden. At one of these shops below, a little wee girl looked at Elaine and exclaimed, "You used to work with my father." 'Twas true; Allan Watts from many years ago.

window at the Hewlett Arms pub and the B & B sign.

After having a pint at the Hewlett Arms, we decided to shop a bit before having dinner at an Italian restaurant we discovered. Below is the beautiful garden in front of the tourist information place.

Sunday, after doing much needed laundry, we drove out to Richard and Kathy Booth's home in Woodmancote.

Richard, Elaine and I walked to the pub above . . .

Walking back, Richard greeted his next door neighbor who was busy trimming his very tall hedge. The neighbor said he had that portable scaffolding in his garage for the purpose of trimming his tall hedge. So, that's how the Brits do it.

Richard and Kathy are in the midst of

. . . and had the pints above while Kathy fixed lunch.

After a very nice lunch indeed. Nice shot of Richard, Kathy and daughter. I've known Richard ever since 1985 when he worked next to me at NSA. He and I worked very closely on a computer project the three years we were in England.

an incredible home renovation project.

Monday was our Oxford-day. On the way, we took the Burford turnoff and went to Cotswald Woolen mills in Filkins. The tweed hat I have worn for ages was bought there and I bought two more.

In Oxford, we met Cecelia, the daughter of our Lake District friends, her friend from Denmark (to her right) and her husband Graham (to her left). We lunched, shopped a bit for the book I left in Cumbria, gawked at the Oxford colleges and left for Cheltenham. Nice relaxed day.

Left to right, Howard Davies, Elaine, Joan Davies, and Janet. We worked with Howard and sang with Joan.

Above is Janet Wilkinson and Elaine. We took the picture the previous Saturday when we dropped in to see her. She and her husband Dick, now deceased, were very good friends of Claire and Jerry Miller. He was a Bach choir member. Janet was happy to see us. We phoned the Davies from there who lived very near us in Cheltenham, found them home and got an invite to their house on Monday for dinner. Janet was also invited -- now she was REALLY happy we dropped in.

But here you see the whole uncropped picture to the left. That little bit of wooden fence to the right of Janet is the fence next to the footpath which we took every time we walked to Pip & Jim's and the Indian restaurant. Look at the size of that hedge! Just imagine the scaffolding they need for the trim. And Joan insists that the hedge was once even higher.