Our Datchet Days are over for now. We are back on American soil and are doing our best to deal with the reverse culture shock.

Since our time in England is finished, I suppose it is time for this blog to be finished as well. From now on I’ll be posting on our Kramarville blog, and I will continue working on my reading list. A word of warning about the Kramarville blog though – the computer we use as a server for it is in transit from the UK, so it won’t be up and running again until a week or so from now.

Ta!

We are on holiday, so there isn’t much happening for us in terms of “Datchet Days”. However, today we got news that our friend Janet Piggott died on Wednesday evening after a brief struggle against liver cancer. She was a lovely lady and a integral part of life in Datchet and St. Mary’s church. Our family all had associations with her through choir, music group, bible study, the Bridge Tea Shop and the village pantomime. She will be sorely missed.

Godspeed, Janet.

Today was our official last Sunday at St. Mary’s. We were given a very nice send off. Vicky said some nice things about us and we were presented with this lovely framed print. (It is titled Sing a New Song.) After that we had wine and nibbles.

Later Pauline and David Roberts came by and gave us a copy of the book The British Isles published to go with the BBC series of the same name. A very nice send off!

Right on the border of England and Wales there is a village called Hay-on-Wye. Touted as the “used book capitol of the world”, Hay-on-Wye is a treat for book lovers. We spent a delightful day browsing bookshops. I’d highly recommend this quaint village for any book lover. To see some of our photos from the day, click here. (There are also some photos of Arthur’s Stone. As we were coming home we saw a small road sign that said Arthur’s Stone and pointed up a small winding road. We followed it and found it at the top of a hill with a lovely view.)

Room with a view for Charles-Camilla wedding

London, March. 30 (AP): Bidding is intensifying, albeit slowy, on the Interet for a clear balcony view on the wedding of Prince Charles to his longtime partner Camilla Parker Bowles.

Real estate agency Nelson Bakewell, put the corner balcony in Windsor, west of London, up for auction on eBay last Friday with a starting bid of just one pound. By 9:30 am (1400 IST) today the bidding had gone up to 26 pounds, but a higher price is expected before the auction winds up on Friday — exactly one week before the nuptials.

‘The package includes a private room that can accommodate up to 20 people. The balconies (sic) provide excellent views to The Guildhall where the royal couple will be married,’ said the description on eBay. ‘You can bring your own catering (but) you and all guests are potentially subject to police checks,’ it said, adding: ‘To enhance your viewing experience, we advise that you may want to bring binoculars.’

Only a select group of friends and family will be inside the Guildhall for the civil wedding, after which Charles and Camilla are to make their way back to adjacent Windsor Castle for an Anglican blessing and a reception.

The very best views on the Guildhall are to be had from a hotel right across the street from the 17th century town hall, but rooms there have been re-priced for the day to a eye-popping 1,000 pounds.”

On the Thames in Datchet there is an establishment called Kris Cruisers that offers boats for hire. We’d been having sunny days and decided to try our weather luck and hire a boat for the day. We did not have perfect sunny weather; but we did not get rained on and the sun broke through a few times.

We started off at about 0945 and headed towards Windsor and points beyond. We made it as far as Maidenhead by 1300 and stopped for lunch in a pub. After lunch we headed back down river. We were able to make it past Datchet to Old Windsor before we needed to turn back in order to return the boat on time.

If you were to look at a map of the Thames, you’d see we didn’t go particularly far. These boats are cruisers, not speed boats. We did five mph tops. Though the speed was slow, it was very pleasant. I would not have wanted to speed up the river, though I’m pretty sure that a couple of members of the party would have been happy to have picked up the speed a bit.

We went through four locks, enjoying the process of filling on our way upriver and emptying on our way down. The lock operators quit for the day at 1700, so Steve and John got to do the last lock we went through by themselves.

It was a very agreeable way to pass the day. Perhaps some day we will be able to hire a boat for a week and make it even further upriver, perhaps in the fashion of Three Men in a Boat.

The photo included here is Windsor Castle as seen from the Thames (headed back towards Datchet). For more photos of the day, including a larger copy of the Windsor Castle shot, click here.

The Air Force Memorial is at the top of this slope. Sadly, the sign saying that it was a slope was not down at the bottom of the hill where we started.

Fortunately we were rewarded with a lovely view of the surrounding area.

This monument reads:

This acre of English ground was given
to the United States of America by
the people of Britain in memory of
John F. Kennedy Born 29 May 1917
President of the United States 1961-1963
Died by an assassin’s hand 22 November 1963
Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill
that we shall pay any price bear any burden meet any hardship
support any friend or oppose any foe in order to assure
the survival and success of liberty
From the inaugural address of
President Kennedy January 1961

The memorial reads:

To Commemorate
Magna Carta
Symbol of
Freedom
Under Law

And was erected by the American Bar Association (!)

Click here for photos from our outing to Runnymede last week.

We’ve had glorious weather the last couple of days. Since it is approaching 70 degrees out, Steve and I went for a bike ride into Windsor. We rode to the Long Walk, then walked the bikes up to the walk a ways (no cycles allowed) and biked back through Old Windsor.

We stopped in at the Windsor Farm Shop to have a bite to eat at their Coffee Shop. I had a lovely turkey and cranberry sandwich and a bottle of sparkling water. Steve had a piece of cake and a bottle of juice. We sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine.

After we ate we wandered around the shop a bit. It’s not very big, but has a nice selection of fresh veg and canned sauces and spreads. They have a bakery, a deli and some dairy as well. I found a jar of cranberry sauce that I got with a mind to trying to make my own turkey and cranberry sandwich.