July 08, Bledington to Bourton-on-the-Water

Began with the reverse of yesterday's finale: train from Moreton to Kingham thence on foot to Bledington to begin the official walk of the day. Whilst on the platform at the Moreton station, I contemplated the prohibitions and the offers of help:

 and was pleased to know that the station did not smoke.

I was not on the train two minutes—out of a total of seven— when the conductor came along and asked, nicely, may I say, for my ticket.  Had I not been ticketed, I suppose he would have told me to get off the train at the next stop..... a bre'er rabbit and bre'er fox situation if ever there was one.

Bledington is an upscale townlet, uhh, does that make it a village?  

This is the landscaping in front of Pear Cottage:

Houses have names here, not numbers.  I wonder if, when you buy a house, you are compelled to keep the name it came with. What if you hate it?  And how does Amazon cope with this system?

Another Bledington house: 

And a Bledington doggie, who was friendly and out all alone:

This is still high-end horse area:

Some of the beasties even have little booties:

The walking was quite pleasant.  There was some hillage, still lots of fields but they offered easier passage and flowers:

One barrier to scale only because I did not discover its cunning little mechanism that had to be turned before you could pull the bolt that releases the gate until after I had climbed over.

Stone sculpture:

Though there was nothing super dramatic about today's walk, it was  enjoyable despite the rain and a few very tricky turn-offs.  Got a delicious ice cream in Bourton, and while I was tackling it—it was very large—I engaged in conversation with a six year-old boy who was also enjoying a cone (his was a bright bluish green bubblegum flavor).  Some six year-olds are more interesting to talk to than adults!

Then I visited the Motor Museum:  

It would have been a lot more interesting if the audio had worked but you needed internet and there was none.  At the museum, I did learn about a sport "invented" in France called motoball.  You can read about it or you can watch a bunch of meshugenehs playing.

I did have a most exciting experience this afternoon.  The RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) was having a fundraiser.  The booth that caught my eye was the mini-boat racing. For £2 a boat—and you can enter as many as you want to pay for—you become a contestant:

Every half hour, these tiny boats are thrown into the shallow river that runs through the middle of town, and the one that reaches the end—it is all of about 200 feet— first wins its patron £10.  One of my boats, #2, won!! (If you look carefully, you can see a 2 in the winner's box.)

And I have the certificate to prove it!  

This was so exciting!!  The winnings went back to the RNLI.  They do such important work and almost of all it by volunteers.

By the way, I was not supposed to stay in Bourton tonight, but a couple miles south at Mavis in the Cotswolds, a converted bus that looked like so much fun, but, alas, some months ago, Mavis got washed out, so I had to scramble to find a place that would take a one- night-on-the-weekend reservation, which explains why I am staying in a total dump (it smells of cooking oil, is noisy, the room is the size of a postage stamp, the paint is peeling, the bathroom is moldy.  Shall I stop there?) for the princely price of £175. In all my travels in England, this is the first time there has not been a kettle in the room. 

It does have art in the bathroom:

My feelings exactly!