The cotswolds 2

We went for a walk down into the painswick valley and looked at some of the old mill houses built along the River
This is the Church across the Road from the Falcon Inn where we had dinner on Friday night. The topiary on the Yew trees was just amazing!
This is Wifey looking gorgeous in the Model Village in BOTW.
This is another Old Mill House in Lower Slaughter. On Saturday night, on advice from our B&B owners we went to a very small village over the Hill and via a very one way road to Sheepcombe. They have a great little pub called the Butchers arms with really good food, beer and waitresses. As an entree we ordered some roasted camembert with bread croutons. We assumed this would be a few bits of camembert but no we got a whole 4-500 g oozing hot camembert between the four of us. It dissapeared quickly and was followed by some Steak, ale and mushroom pies and lasagne. We made our way back cautiously along the perilous, dark one way road through the forest and back over the hill. We spent the rest of the night at the Royal Oak Pub in Painswick where the beer is cold and the service awful.

The Cotswolds

This weekend we met up with Liv and Downy in Painswick - a small village in the Costwolds. The cotswolds is a region near Bath and Brisol and is Classic English countryside, full of quaint stone villages, streams, rolling hills, forests etc. We spent much of Saturday in and around Bourton-on-the -water, Lower and Upper Slaughter and Stow.

We went to a model village in BOTW and also walked between the two Slaughters - a hot sunny day in the fields. We had an excellent lunch at an overtly christian cafe that had jesus music playing and little handouts everywhere - the food was great.

There are many beautiful houses around, all made of similar coloured cotswold stone and also many large estates and manors. There is some serious cash in the Cwolds with the main cars driven being ferraris, porches, BMW M3's, mercedes etc. Many actors and famous people live or have homes here.
On The friday night we went straight out to Dinner in Painswick to the Falcon Inn. We had some very nice food like rack of lamb, venison and steak with veges. We also had XXXX and Fosters on Tap - hilarious really. Afterwards we were invited to a Dance out the back of the pub that actually ended up being another strange overtly christian gathering where we were invited to attend some sort of Goat sacrifice in the park the next day - no not really but we were encouraged to go to a christian wholeness party.

BOG ON A STICK (in Sutton park)

On the weekend we bought ourselves a disposable BBQ (1.5 pounds) and went to Sutton Park in Birmingham north. It is a huge park, more like a forest really, hundreds of acres. We bought some bogs on a stick as you will agree this is what they resemble. They were actually alright anyway.



The portable BBQ's are really good, lite quickly and burn hot though they do make a fair bit of smoke and burn the grass under them

We also had time for some nature photography when this little yellow ladybird turned up trying to steal one of the leftover bogs. We stopped it of course and promptly crushed it into oblivion - just kidding - we took a bunch of photos of it instead.

Weekends with Rob, The Stoff, Harry and a few Beers

In the past few weeks we have spent some time in the 'Ham' wih Rob, as he lives and works here now, and a few weeks ago another vet Called "The Stoff". We don't know his name but he is very old and wise. We went out to the pub and talked about the crisis in Chad and also the falling pound sterling compared to the australian dollar and its implication on trade between the two countries.

We also had a few beers and a big hangover.

We bought harry a new toy the other day so he can run aorund the house without disappearing. Harry is very exercise conscious and likes to spend about 3 hours per night running on his wheel. now he can also run around the room in his ball. He is good at it and happliy explores the whole room.





This is what you can do if you really put your mind and a bit of elbow grease into it. We wanted to make a tower of beer so we had to drink all these cans. It was tough but we did and our livers are still functioning. The funny thing about the UK is that you always drink pints and so the volume consumed seems to increase quite easily such as the 20 litres consumed over the weekend.