Gloucestershire: Bath, Westerleigh, and the Reid Residence

Jonny finished up his work on Wednesday.  A British military man by the name of Major Reid (from Scotland) invited us to stay the night at his house near Bristol with he and his wife and 1 yr old daughter.  That invitation opened up an opportunity for us to drive through Westerleigh to research our Crandall origins.  It had seemed out of the way before, but suddenly the drive was worth it. 

So we drove through the English countryside in our BMW past pig and sheep farms and rolling green hills towards the county of Gloucestershire.  Gloucestershire is higher in elevation and a bit more rugged and rocky. 

We drove first to Bath. While there, we toured the ancient Roman baths mentioned in many 18th century setting novels. The Roman baths have been around for more than 1,000 years. A Bath House was built in the late 1800's over the top of the ancient ruins. Today, there are stair cases that lead below where they have unearthed and preserved for display in an underground museum, the original stonework, piping, and baths along with fascinating history.

Bath Abbey in the background.

 

 



You could sample 1 glass of Bath water for free and pay for more.  It tasted just like Yuma water hot out of the tap in the summertime...yech!



We spent a lot of time in Bath because we couldn't find where we parked our car.  The streets are somewhat meandering and we had walked all over.  The human brain can only retain so much information and that important detail slipped our minds.  Everything in Bath is uphill both ways.  It was a tiring search.  We came across the Jane Austen center and had to stop in.  I was a dorky tourist and I asked the butler if I could take his picture because I loved the high collars just like Jane Austen described in her novels.  She ridiculed the style as silly and pretentious because they had to turn their whole bodies instead of just their heads to look around.  I bought myself a monogrammed stamp with wax for sealing letters here and a map of Bath throughout the centuries.

This was a circular street at the top of a hill with these townhouses all around referred to as the Circus.  Jonny is standing at the base of the trees in the middle.  Aren't they ancient and huge?!

Once we finally found our car, we drove through Winterbourne and Westerleigh locating the St. James church where Elder John Crandall was baptized as an infant.  I found some interesting information on the internet the night before.  I wasn't able to accomplish much as far as research goes but I was able to find enough to satisfy. 

As the sun was setting, we arrived at the Reid's home.  GPS was invaluable in our driving around England.  Although it wasn't always perfect, it made it much easier to find places.  We arrived after dark about 5:30 p.m. and sat in the car until 6pm which was the appointed time.  We were greeted at the door by a young, beautiful red-headed Scottish woman with a very endearing accent.  Her husband arrived home shortly after.  They prepared a meal of salmon wrapped in phyllo dough with steamed broccoli and potatoes.  For dessert there was a delicious raspberry trifle. 

We enjoyed getting to know them.  It was fun to hear their scottish brogue.  I don't know why I thought they would be able to understand us easier than we could them because we speak normal English, right??  They had as much difficulty understanding us as we did them.  We finally laughed over different words and phrases between American and Scottish English.  The funniest was pants and trousers.  To them "pants" are underwear.  So it would be amusing if we were to say "Oh, I've gotten my pants dirty" etc.  They refer to pants as trousers.  I explained that to my kids when we returned home and we all like to refer to them as trousers now. 

They were a lovely couple with a beautiful daughter named Mairi pronounced just like the girl's name in Thomasina the Disney movie.  I wish that we had taken a picture with them.  Upon departing in the morning, I received a kiss on the cheek from the husband which I wasn't prepared for...I thought that was a French thing or a South American thing but apparently it's everywhere else in the world except for the U.S.  I can only hope that our manners were acceptable enough while we were there.  Their bed was the most amazingly comfortable bed that I'd slept in all week with a feather-down comforter.  In the morning, we drove to the airport for our long journey home.  It was even longer than expected.  With a computer glitch on one plane, we were delayed which caused us to miss our last flight by about 20 minutes.  This meant we stayed overnight in Phoenix and left early again in the morning.  We were picked up at the Yuma airport by Kelsey Hall who had been watching Britton and Nikki.  She took us home where we immediately picked up Britton and left to watch his soccer game.  I sat in the warm green grass of Yuma in January which I'm sure only seemed warm after being in England all week.  It was so nice to be home and a very fun adventure overall.