Barbara & Tom walking and eating in Painswick

25-June-06

Woke up a little before dawn, heard someone talking on the lawn, looked out and ralized it was Barbara's tv below me. Slept awhile longer before having tea on the balcony and finishing the Sarah Churchill book. My favorite part was Sarah's favorite drawing. Some artist had stayed with them painting everyone's portrait and anything else around. The drawing is a cartoon of a classic woman leaning against a greek pillar, her hand absently tousling a naked boy's hair as he waved around some sort of pinwheel. The caption read, "Necessity endeavoring to recollect the father of Invention."

Had porridge for breakfast. Barbara raved about the porridge at Oxford with all the fruit on it. This was fine thick oatmeal with a crusty glaze of sugar on top, but no fruit. Still it was good and filling. A new family was here with two adorable boys with hair like Barbara and Brendan's, one could have been Invention. They swaggered, barefoot, into the dining room telling their parents exactly what they wanted to eat, then eagerly accepting food from their parents plates when they didn't like theirs. Very soon they led their mother out to play croquet while dad got to eat in peace. I later watched them play croquet from my attic window. Barbara watched them too. I think most everyone did. They are the most interesting thing happening at the hotel.

Barbara had read about a regular trail maintenance party two Sundays a month and this was supposed to be one. I thought I knew where to meet but apparently there's another car park across from another golf course. It would have been a great story for the Foothills Coalition. I wandered around town awhile longer then found Barbara. I thought she'd been sleeping but she'd been wandering some too. We headed off for the Roccoco Gardens.

It was a beautiful garden with lots of fragrant roses, a fun triple maze (it was in the shape of 250 because of its 250th anniversary a few years ago), and a lot of strange disney-like structures for no apparent reason. Guess we should have shelled out 2 pounds for the guide book, but after paying 10 pounds for admission I couldn't quite see it.

We walked back to town, ordered lunch from the grouchy waitress at our favorite spot, the Royal Oak Inn. She said that the kitchen was closing down so we just got ploughman's lunches. Mine had a huge hunk of stilton and other good cheeses.

Then we headed off to follow the Painswick stream along several mills. The booklet we followed was very informative about the mills - they'd milled corn, woven wool, made red soldier coats (the Redcoats!) and made pins for centuries. Now they were being converted to residences.

I wish the booklet had paid as much attention to directions because we lost the trail about halfway through. We couldn't find anything to match it's mileposts and had to resort to the bail-out shortcut for wimps. I was pissed because I really wanted to see the rest of the stream and mills, but I was also hot and tired and feel much better now laying on my bed after a shower.

There was no fish of the day for dinner and I'd tried everything else, so I had the two new items on the menu, jeruselum artichoke soup and pork belly. The soup tasted like pureed weeds. The pork belly was just fat with sickening sweet sauces to make it even worse. The iced blackcurrent parfait with poached fruits was delicious but it was too late. I'd really like to puke.

The fancy-ass dinner was fun, delicious, and entertaining the first night, tasty but tedious the second. Now it's disgusting and infuriating. I'm dreaming of my kitchenette in Edinburgh.

We went for a walk after dinner - through the churchyard, up Hamm Butts and around a few neighborhoods. Barbara is ready to move here. Even though I hate the dining room, I still love the hotel and especially the town. But I'm ready for the next experience. Well maybe the experience after next. Driving back to Oxford at rush hour with Barbara at the wheel and trying to get the right train is an experience I'm not looking forward to.

Barbara heard a new term on tv the other day - bitch bonding. Consider this our bonding moment.

Mileage 10.8