Monday's Memories: The Lion and Fiddle

When we left Oxford Saturday evening we were getting ready to start the second week of our trip, and we discovered a more economical way of feeding ourselves:  grocery stores.  Who would have thought?  I think this was the first night we stopped at a local ASDA, a British supermarket chain.  I had such a good time walking the aisles of that store, looking at the familiar yet different products.  

One thing I found interesting was that the U.S. obviously rounds up when they print the number of calories in packaged food.  Granola bars that would have 140 calories here listed things like 137 kcal there.  I just thought that was interesting.  

So that night we picked up sandwiches from the deli, as well as some snacks for the road.  I found a version of my favorite sparkling water, and my brilliant husband suggested we buy a case of Diet Coke so that I'd no longer be hunting for a shop to buy one every morning.  Brilliant, I tell you.  In the absence of a refrigerator in our room we simply left the drinks in the car, and they were nice and cold by morning.  

We spent Saturday and Sunday night at The Lion and Fiddle in the county of Wiltshire.  After long days of walking we grew to enjoy settling in early in the evening with the BBC television and free WiFi.  I would go through pictures and blog.  This night we watched a special on WWII on the British History Channel, followed by a movie I couldn't remember seeing before, and I don't remember the name of it now.  Whatever it was, it was quite relaxing. I really miss British television and recognizing the voices of Michael Gambon and Matthew Macfadyen doing voice-overs on commercials.  It was so fun.

Twin rooms are cheaper!

 the porta-shower, or so I called it

You couldn't hear a thing once you stepped in and shut the door.

Sunday morning dawned cold and bright, and we enjoyed another good English breakfast.  I definitely missed having someone cook for me every morning when we came home.  The radio (wireless?) was tuned in to a local station, and it felt like a Sunday morning back home.  KJ said he heard A Mighty Fortress is our God playing when he came downstairs.  We were sitting there discussing how we hadn't found the people as cold and completely secular as we'd been led to believe and maybe churches weren't as dead as we'd heard either.

Right about that time we heard the lady on the radio announcing events taking place in Wiltshire that morning, and she said, "There will be a spiritual reading at _______ Church this afternoon."  KJ and I got really quiet and looked at each other.  A spiritual reading?  In a church?  Maybe things were kind of bad in churches here...  A few seconds later the announcer went on to say which books of the Bible the reading would be coming from.  Ooohhh, that kind of spiritual reading.  We were relieved to hear they were reading from the Bible on Sundays and not reading palms and telling fortunes.

We finished our breakfast with light hearts and prepared for a morning in Lacock, a.k.a Cranford.