Today dawned warm (OK so other people may say hot but we have just come back from 93 degrees so 73 is just warm) and sunny and so we decided to get back into the English groove by doing a treasure hunt. We do love them and it was a glorious day. Packing my new picnic hamper we headed off to the Tarrants, a series of beautiful villages in our home county of Dorset. It was nice to go out and remember what we love about England.
The treasure trails always take us to many churches, often very old, and this one at Tarrant Crawford was ancient and beautiful with old frescoes.
We stopped to admire the beautiful fields of grain and maize.
It was also a perfect day for making daisy chains and being utterly stupid!
and acting our shoe sizes not our ages
I was sad when we had to investigate the churchyard at Tarrant Keynstone. I had just been telling Nigel about visiting here before in 1984 or 1985 to go to the house of a colleague – Judith. She had invited lots of staff over when we broke up from school to go and have afternoon tea after picking strawberries in a nearby field. Nigel remembered me going round to his house after with the fresh strawberries. I was saddened to see the headstone below in the churchyard. Judith had passed away in 2003. I hadn’t appreciated she was more than 20 years older than me when I worked with her but she was still awfully young to have passed away.
I have been scrapping but sadly it is new stuff I cannot share at this point!
Today I am thankful for
- a lovely English day out
- laughter
- a picnic
Wednesday 15th July
The forecast said it would be cloudy in the morning … it lied … but we were not worried as we had a shopping day planned. Shopping for us is like going to another theme park. Even if we don’t buy much we love looking.
We headed first to Hobby Lobby – always worth a visit. Apart from the craft stuff, I could happily furnish a lot of my home from there and the only sadness is that much is too big to get home. They had amazing offers on wall art and pictures and stuff … much of which we loved.
I did buy some craft supplies but the biggest haul was in felt. Sheets of felt – better quality and larger sheets than at home – were 4 for $1 (approx. 18p a sheet) making them way cheaper than at home where they are 50p a sheet. Boy did I buy a lot of felt.
We went to other stores too like Beales, Walmart (don’t knock it – we bought pool shoes at $4 each, more flip flops, some trainers and lovely cool towels to keep us cool in the parks and me in bed when I get home!) We also went to Joann and to Michaels. I had printed coupons for both before I left (yes I am a savvy shopper) and I also had a $50 gift card for Joann that Mike had sent me. I bought some lovely fabric things at Joann and then an amazing load of stuff at Michaels. I always leave Michaels feeling the police are going to arrest me for theft. The prices are so cheap anyway, much of what I bought was on sale plus I had a 25% off coupon off the whole lot. I couldn’t believe what I bought for less than £70 including 3 new albums, a mess of paper, Tim Holtz dies and stamps and inks, sizzix dies, punches, stamps and flowers and washi tape.
Sadly I felt poorly whilst shopping though. Travel often doesn’t agree with me and my insides get easily upset by stress and by a change of diet and I had terrible tummy cramps. We went back to our room for a while then went to Epcot as we had various things we wanted to do. We rode Spaceship earth, always one of my favourites, and then had dinner in the Electric Umbrella.
We used our fast pass for Soaring - which was great but I cannot see why the lines are so very very long all day. We had planned to stay and see the fireworks but I was feeling too poorly to stay so we returned for an earlier night.
You always have such lovely adventures when you are on your treasure hunts---fantastic history in your country.
I recently found that the last remaining covered bridge in Minnesota was only 20 miles from my city. We had company from Missouri visiting, so we went there. They really enjoyed seeing the bridge.
Sorry to read about you not feeling well on your trip. I hope tomorrow's submission will show you were much healthier :-)
Posted by: Barb in AK | August 01, 2015 at 09:23 AM