The Countryside

I wanted to drive out into the English countryside, so I rented a car for the day. Driving on the left was really not that bad. What was challenging was shifting the manual transmission with my left hand. I did pretty good staying to the left. When driving on an "interstate", you really can't tell you are on the left, other than the far left lanes are the slow lanes. What I did notice, though, was that I would drift to the left of the lane. In the USA, when driving on the right, the driver sits in the left side of the lane. In the UK, when driving on the left, the driver sits in the RIGHT side of the lane. I kept drifting to the US side, instead of staying on the UK side.

What I was really interested in seeing was a hotel that used to be the manor house of Baron Grey du Ruthin. I had done some research on this English lord and really wanted to see the house and grounds and the town of Wolston, where the house lived. We also visited the church where he was married and buried. And I do mean buried. He was buried in side the church, not the churchyard. There is a graveyard around the church where other people of the town had been buried. But he was in the church. It was not uncommon for nobles to be buried inside churches. West Minister Abbey is the final resting place for more than one hundred people. We did not get inside the church because it was closed on Saturday.

Finally, we wanted to visit a typical castle, that was a stronghold and not a royal palace. I had heard about Warwick Castle and we were nearby. I had no trouble finding it. However, the castle had become Castle Disneyland with reenactments, dragons, costumed characters and a steep price. We had got there at 5 pm. The place closed at 6pm and they still wanted 17 British pound sterling (GBP) to get in. . . . uh. . . let me think about this. . . NO! So instead we took some pictures of the tower and walked around the cute little town of Warwick.