As far as planning, we spent (on and off) about 7 months planning this trip. I was concerned at various stages about overplanning it (trying too hard to account for every hour of every day) and underplanning it (leaving ourselves with too little to occupy the time or setting up excursions that were untenable once we hit the road, or not accounting for the unexpected like weather or closures.)
Turns out, we did it just about right. We had an itinerary every day, although mostly due to Sharon's online work each night before which bore only passing resemblance to much of the at-home planning we did prior to the trip. We got a good mix of towns, planned and unplanned churches, and historic sites likes castles and abbeys. A few surprises as well - the Templar Knight sarcophagus at the Holy Cross Church in Gilling East, and the Jewel Tower just across the street from Parliament and behind Westminster Abbey, an English Heritage site we didn't know about and merely stumbled upon while walking around the Abbey.
And a lot of driving. When we returned the car on Wednesday evening, 9/12, we had logged just under 1200 miles of driving. They say England is a small country...but it's not that small. More on the driving soon.
We were blessed with amazingly - freakishly - good weather, sunny and 70-ish every day. Couldn't count the number of locals who noted what good weather we had for our trip. We got some rain the evening we stayed at Thornbury Castle, but were we inside anyway and planning to stay in. It drizzled a little the afternoon we arrived, but very little, and the one real downpour we got was Wednesday night on the London return, when we were in the pub having dinner. The water was running down through one of the light fixtures - interesting, we thought, aren't these folks used to rain?
We'll follow up with a few more posts on some of the details, and a few pictures. And yes, we do plan to return, income and other circumstances permitting.
