Our Adventure in the Cotswolds

Tuesday morning, Tooley and I woke up and prepared to head to the village Chipping Campden for a fun day of shopping and sightseeing. When we arrived at the center of town to catch the bus, we saw...that the Mops Fair had arrived! Hooray! Stratford looks COMPLETELY different! There are rides, booths, games, and what-not throughout all of the major streets! It reminds me so much of the fair back home: awesome rides, greasy food (fish and chips instead of chicken on a stick), carnies (from East Europe instead of redneck towns), and lots of games. I've been sad about missing the Mississippi State Fair, but what a little blessing to have the fair brought to me! :) We left Stratford and rode the bus to Chipping Campden, which is about 35 minutes away. That town is adorable! All of the building are made out of brown stone, and it looks like the town hasn't changed much since the 1700s. We browsed through little stores and antique shops, and decided to go on the Cotswold Way walk, which leads you around the outskirts of the village and into the beautiful hills of the Cotswolds. We starting walking up a path on a hill, and after about twenty minutes, Tooley and I were like, "Where's the scenery? What's going on here?" All we could see was a farm house at the top of the hill. We stopped for a second, and turned around...there was the most breathtaking view! We started cracking up, because the scenery had been behind us the whole time! We just had to keep climbing higher in order to see it. I took lots of pictures, which I'm going to try to post later today. The farms on the hills look like patchwork quilts, because they're separated by hedges and bushes instead of fences. The grass is SO green! Tooley and I kept walking through fields, and over hills, and finally...realized we had stumbled onto the wrong path! The path we had been on was supposed to be a two hour walk around Chipping Campden. We had made some kind of zigzag detour through a field and ended up closer to the next town, Broadway! I was actually kind of excited, because I visited Broadway on my last trip to England with Jeannie, and we loved it! So we followed what we thought was the path to Broadway, and passed by the Broadway tower, a beautiful stone tower that is the highest point in the Cotswolds. Somehow, we got off THAT path and ended up on some deserted road. It was really kind of funny...what else can you do in a situation like that but laugh? So we walked along the road, and finally flagged over a guy driving by, who pointed us in the direction of Broadway...two and a half miles away (by this time, we had been walking 4 hours)! So we walked through another field, down a hill, past a farm and beautiful farm house, along a narrow road, and made it to Broadway, over five hours after we left Chipping Campden. We were so blessed, though...the whole time we were walking, we saw more and more dark rain clouds moving in, but the rain held off until we reached Broadway! When we arrived in Broadway, we went to a hotel and called a cab. We made it back to Chipping Campden fifteen minutes before the last bus headed back to Stratford...whew! We made it back to Stratford upon Avon around 7:30, and the fair was in full swing. Tooley and I made the rounds, and sampled some delicious chocolate fondue! We're going to go back to the fair tonight with some other people to ride a few rides. I can't wait! **Fun fact: Prince William is working at my bank! I have a bank account at HSBC, which I just found out is the world's second largest bank. Prince William will be interning at the branch in London for a few months. How cool is that? :)