We were up and out early this morning, hoping to beat the queues and the rain at Notre Dame Cathedral. We did good too – there were zero people waiting at the Cathedral entrance when we arrived, and there was a mass on too, very nice. The Cathedral is stunning – I’ve been here a couple of times already, but always keen for another look. It’s one of the best examples of gothic architecture in the world. The stonework outside is just awesome – gargoyles, beautiful statues and carvings.

The queue to go up to the top towers was just getting started when we came out of the Cathedral, so we joined that and had about a 15 minute wait (google warned me that the wait can be hours during the day). We went all the way to the very top of the Cathedral for stunning views of Paris, and an up-close look at the carvings. The queue for the Cathedral was veeeeery long when we came down the tower. Winning!

It was starting to rain as we came down, so we decided to head to the Louvre shopping area to wait out the rain for a bit – there are some nice shops and a Starbucks there. After about an hour the rain showed no signs of stopping so we went back to the hotel. On the way we stopped at the fruit shop and pastry shop for some snacks.

At about 3pm the weather looked like it might be clearing, so we went off to find a laundromat and had a lovely hour with some locals and their clothes.

And then it was still fine, so we had dinner at our local restaurant before going off for some more adventuring – to the Eiffel Tower. There were a gazillion tourists there, and heaps of street vendors selling trinkets and selfie-sticks. We had a lovely walk through the park and then stopped for ice cream before heading home again.

We had a bit of a lazy today – we didn’t set off out for the day until about 9.30am. It was still early for most people – not much traffic, not many people on the trains, and best of all, hardly any people at the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay.

Confession…we didn’t go into the Louvre. I’ve been their twice, and Stephen wasn’t overly fussed, so we skipped it in favour of the Musee d’Orsay – it has a great collection of impressionist art – including some of my all-time favourite painting.

It was pouring with rain at this point, so we made a dash for the train after attempting to get to Notre Dame, and headed straight back to the hotel for a bit to dry out. It stopped raining after a couple of hours, so we headed out again – this time to the Eiffel Tower. We made it all the way there and the heavens opened up again, so we scuttled back underground and to the hotel. It’s a bit disappointing that it’s raining so hard, but also quite nice to have a quiet day, just cruising on the trains and popping up here and there.

We also braved a local restaurant and had a delicious lunch/dinner of Guinea fowl and pilaf rice. The staff spoke excellent English, which makes me feel relief and shame in about equal parts.

It stopped raining again about 7pm, but we decided to stay in for the evening – we’re just enjoying some reading / TV / blogging time.

We were up with the bird this morning, eager to make an early start. The ferry left at 8.25am and we needed to get there by 7.30. We were there just after 7am, and sailing at 8.25 on the dot. The crossing was really fast – I barely had time to get my laptop out to settle in for some blogging before we were in France!

We walked the 2.2km into Calais Ville (fully laden I might add!) and found the train station easily. It took some time to sort out our tickets for Paris – we failed to notice the English flag (language selection) on the ticket machine and had trouble deciphering the French. The lovely ticket booth man spoke good English though (as do most French) so we were fine. We managed to negotiate a ham sandwich with the local cafe lady – she had no English, but we bumbled our way through.

The train trip to Paris also went by quickly – less than three hours. We were speeding along at about 250km p/h most of the time. Arriving in Paris was an experience – it’s such an assault on the senses – so many people, so much noise, so much going on! But we figured out how to get money, buy our ticket to Avignon, find a taxi. Our hotel is lovely – we really lucked out there. It’s small, but very comfy and the staff are very helpful. And also just by a Metro station, so easy to get around.

We took a bit of a rest and then went for a bit of a wander. We jumped on the Metro to Champs Elysees and walked down to the Arc de Triomphe. Again, very overwhelming – there were so many people and cars everywhere! And the queue to go up the Arc was way too long. We found a Pret café while trying to figure out where to eat so took the easy option and had a sandwich for tea and went back to the hotel for the night. Big day!

We started the day by going into Canterbury to check out St Augustine’s Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral. Both were really good – such history! This is the place of the founding of Christianity in England. Mind-boggling really. St Augustine himself was buried at the Abbey (although I don’t think he’s still there).

Canterbury Cathedral was spectacular. Big, beautiful and bristling with important English history. St Thomas Beckett is entombed here – he was killed in the church in 1170 by King Henry II’s soldiers. Apparently Beckett was causing the King a bit of trouble. Beckett was canonised soon after his death, and the Cathedral has been a pilgrimage site since then.

King Henry IV is entombed here also, as is Prince Edward, the so-called Black Prince.

We got to Dover about midday, and spent a lovely afternoon exploring Dover Castle. It’s at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean, and has been a defensive fort for almost 1000 years. It was an important military based during WWII – with big anti-aircraft guns defending London against the Germans.

The castle has a massive intact keep (tower at the top of a motte), with some really good re-creations of what it would have been like in its day – wall hangings and furniture etc. We had a good poke around.

We completed our mission of dropping of the rental car and went to our hotel for a bit of much needed R&R. It’s been a busy week!

Tomorrow we finish our stay in England, and head off for France.

We started the day with a spot of laundry-doing. It’s always a pleasant reprieve from the travelling to pause for a couple of hours and watch your clothes spinning around.

After that, we were on a mission! We were off to see Battle, where the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. We were not disappointed – the battleground (really just a big open field of grass and sheep) has a great pathway and audio guide that gave us the full history of the battle. What amazes me, looking down from the English front line to where the Normans were fighting from, was how the English managed to lose. The Normans had to battle their way up a steep slope to get at the English. It really was the English’s battle to lose, and lose they did. King Harold (only crowned a few weeks prior) was killed in the fight, and William the Bastard walked away with a new title – the Conqueror.

We made a quick trip into Hastings to swap my sunglasses (the ones I had purchased in Oxford were broken) then made our way to Ashford for the night. Hastings was an …interesting… place. Let’s just say that the average wage here seems like it’s a lot lower than other places we’ve visited.

We chose to stay at Ashford Holiday Inn rather than driving into Canterbury – it’s much cheaper to stay in smaller places just outside main cities, and the hotels are better set up for working travellers, so we can usually get a big breakfast and wi-fi included in the room rate. And we don’t have to worry about parking.

I had a really tasty Indian meal at the local pub – amongst the best I’ve ever had!

We drove into Oxford in the morning to look around, but mostly so I could do some shopping. Gap, Marks and Spencer, yes! Oxford Castle was expensive and not terribly impressive – just a stumpy mound with no actual stones. So we went in search of other, less stumpy mounds in the area.

Berkhamsted Castle was a good place to stop for lunch. We parked up at the train station and wandered around town. Berkhamsted village had the feel of being quite wealthy – perhaps inhabited by workers who commute to London, and London retirees?

From there, we made a beeline for Stevenage, so we could meet up with Dave and Margareta – Stephen’s gamer friends from way back. We met up with Margareta in London last time we were here, but Stephen had never met Dave IRL before. Dave was in Ghana for work last time we were here.

We had a lovely dinner out with them – nice to have other people to talk to! It was a late night for us – we didn’t get to bed until about 11pm, and considering we’ve been waking up between 5-6am, that felt quite late.

This day contained a lot of driving. It’s a bloody long way from Plymouth to Oxford!

We’ve been taken aback by how big Cornwall and Devon are, and how much slower it is to get around. The roads are much smaller and everything is more spaced out that the north, so there has been a lot of driving. The up side is that the countryside is just lovely. I could definitely have spent more time in this area, but we needed to make our way to the South-East ready for the boat ride to France.

We had a couple of quick stops along the way – Farleigh Hungerford Castle. It’s an impressive ruin – built later than the other ones we’ve seen – in the late 1300s, and more of a trumped up manor house than a fortification.

We also stopped in Avebury to have a look at the very impressive standing stones there, and to have some dinner at the local pub. The stones here are quite different from the ones just up the road at Stonehenge, and in a way, more impressive. The stone circle is massive (420 metres in diameter) and the stones are all just sitting in the fields with the sheep. You can walk all around them and get up close – Stonehenge keeps you at a distance (understandably so).

We finished the day early, heading to our (very interesting) hotel in Witney, just outside Oxford. We were given the four poster room….we slept like kings that night…

We hit the road early this morning, and headed straight for … you guessed it, a castle!

Launceston Castle is another motte and bailey castle, much larger than Okehampton. It was also built shortly after the Norman conquest. It was a wealthy and powerful castle, being the administrative headquarters for the Earl of Cornwall. You can definitely see the difference between Okahampton and Launceston – Launceston is huge!

We happened to arrive in Launceston village just as they were starting their annual 10km fun run, so that made life a bit interesting. A bagpiper sent the runners on their way. We watched them leave from the town square, and then wandered down to the castle (aka the finishing line), and were just leaving the castle as the first runners came in – accompanied by the pipes. It made the whole visit a little bit interesting.

The next stop was a prime destination for me – Tintagel Castle. I’ve dreamed of going to this place since I was a small child – I read a lot of books about castles and this was my favourite. And it was everything I imagined. Tintagel the village is cute and touristy, the castle complex is huge and spectacular. The main castle is on an island just off the end of a peninsula, with a bridge connecting the two. There has been buildings on the site since Roman times, but the castle that’s there now was build in the 1200s.

Tintagel is most famous for being the place where King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table hung out – though there is no evidence that this is actually true facts.

We were hoping to be able to get to a couple more castles before heading for Plymouth (a barren wasteland, history-wise according to locals), but we were running out of time, so opted for Lands End as our final stop for the day. It was a lovely spot to have a coffee and a sit down.

We finally arrived in Plymouth about 7pm, weary and hungry. Our grand plans to go out for a nice dinner somewhere lasted as long as elevator ride to the lobby….we ate our meal at the hotel restaurant and retired early.

I managed to sleep until about 3.30am then I was up for the day, so did some research on where we were going for the day.

The first stop for the day was Maiden Castle in Dorchester – not really a castle at all, but a massive Iron-Age hill fort. We went up and around it for a nice morning walk. The sun was shining and the sheep were chatty. Delightful!

From there we went on to Corfe Castle, which is the name of both the village and the castle. What a beauty! It’s a massive complex, with an inner and outer bailey, and obviously grand in its day.

Next stop was Okehampton Castle – a big motte and bailey castle that was built immediately after William the Conquerer arrived in Britain. The ‘motte’ refers to the large mound that the main fortification (keep) sits on, and the ‘bailey’ is the courtyard that surrounds it, containing a main hall, kitchens, chapel, stables, workshops, etc. This one is in a lovely out-of-the way spot that was clearly a good place to  defend the area – you can see for miles from the top of the hill.

We were planning to go to Penzance from here, but we had been delayed by Saturday traffic all day, so decided to skooch across to Bude where we were staying for the night, and call it a day.

Bude is a lovely seaside town. We took a stroll in the evening, no castles to see here.

The second flight was longer – 13 hours 40 minutes – so I aimed to have a couple of naps on this one. Still got heaps of movie-watching done too.

We stopped for coffee and snacks at Heathrow after a veeeeery long queue at immigration, then picked up the rental car. We got an upgrade from a Ford Focus to a Mercedes something something, nice. Weird thing is though, the headrests are missing.

It took us a couple of go-rounds to figure out how to get on the M3 so we didn’t get to our B&B in Wareham until about 9.30pm. I was wide awake at this point, so we did some planning and called Arlia for her birthday then eventually got some sleep. Somehow we were in single beds, but I don’t think either of us cared – it was just good to lie down for a bit!