You Are Now Leaving Destination 1

Here is what was supposed to happen this morning:

6:00 AM - Wake up and have a cup of tea
6:30 AM - Pack up our bags and load the car
7:30 AM - Explore St. Mary's
8:30 AM - Breakfast
9:00 AM - Checkout and explore Ilminster
10:00 AM - Tea with Will's Granddad and Nan
11:00 AM - Leave Ilminster and drive past the house where Will's family used to stay when visiting
12:30 PM - Arrive in Lyme Regis
1:00 PM - Meet Will's Grandma for tea

Can you picture it happening? Neither can I. I don't know what we were thinking. Here's what actually happened:

8:20 AM - Woke up. We were already off to a really good start. We traded our pajama pants for actual pants and did literally nothing else before going down to breakfast.
8:35 AM - Arrived at breakfast.You may be thinking, "How did it take 15 minutes to change your pants?" And that's an excellent question to which I do not have an answer.
9:00 AM - Got dressed in actual clothes and went to explore St. Mary's
9:30 AM - Packed up and loaded car
10:00 AM - Checked out and did not explore Ilminster
10:15 AM - Arrived at Will's Granddad's and Nan's for tea
11:30 AM - Left Ilminster
11:45 AM - Attempted to drive past the house where Will's family used to stay when visiting
1:00 PM - Arrived in Lyme Regis

Only half an hour behind schedule, which isn't too bad. However, we didn't make it into Ilminster which means that we still have not picked up cash. Thankfully, pretty much everywhere we've been we've been able to use contactless pay, if not our cards. We're moving a little better today than we were yesterday, probably because we dialed it back on breakfast this morning. A full English is not meant for daily consumption I've realized.

St. Mary's was a nice detour. The church was pretty, but it undergoing renovations so we were unable to go in. What is interesting is that they still seem to be using the graveyard, which makes sense for such a small town, but is not something you commonly see.

Tea was very nice. We met their friend/neighbor Steve. The first thing he said when we introduced ourselves was "Oh I've met William, don't you remember?" After teasing him a bit for forgetting him, Steve finally explained that he had met William when he was approximately four. If you ask my family, they will explain to you that I am fully capable of recalling memories from that age. I am very impressive when it comes to strength and detail of memory. However, most of the common people cannot recall that far back, so I don't understand why grownups (that is, anyone older than my current age because my current age will never be considered grown up) like to play this game of "Don't you remember me?? I passed your mom once on the street while you were in utero. I can't believe you don't remember!" In any case, we met (or remet) Steve and sat down to have tea.

The weather was very nice again today, so we were able to have tea outside. Will's Nan brought out several HUGE slices of cake to have with our tea. It turns out my understanding of "teacake" is incorrect. Will and I both nearly finished our slices, but couldn't quite get there after breakfast. We had a nice time chatting, I did not hit my head on a hanging planter (this time) and we took some ipad pictures, which are always excellent. It's unfortunate that we had to leave, since it would have been nice to stay and visit longer.

On our way out of town, Will wanted to stop by the house they used to visit in, just so that I could see it. He knew that it was in Broadway, he just couldn't remember exactly where. So we turned down a windy hedge maze road into Broadway. And he knew things looked familiar, so he knew we were in the right spot. Several times, he would say a landmark and say "I remember that house!" or "I remember that tree!" only to then realize that it was not the house or the tree he thought he remembered. After several minutes of turning down many different streets and doubling back on ourselves many times, we decided that we were not likely to find the house and decided to drive on to Lyme Regis. As we were turning out of Broadway, we passed a sign for the neighboring town, Horton, at which point will realized "Ohhhh we used to stay in HORTON, not Broadway!" We may never know whether that's true, as we didn't have time for another side trip. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that it was.

Once we had the Horton/Broadway (mostly) sorted out, we continued our windy hedge maze journey to the sea!Read more