South West England Trip

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Wolcott Society
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We had to do something worthwhile during England's record breaking heatwave that passed through.
Our trip was originally only supposed to be 2 days but as we were heading out we quickly realized we should really make the most of it and pushed our rental to 4.   The roads were pretty busy as everyone else had the same idea as us but I honestly don't think we could have had a more enjoyable time seeing this surprisingly beautiful part of England.
Susan had been planning on coming out to these parts since we moved here as she has ancestral roots within Exmoor Park.  On our last day we managed to get a hold of the gentleman who takes care of Tolland church. This is the church which the original Wolcott family would have used and still has tomb sites on the church yard from the 1600's!   We received a lot of interesting information about the area and were even given instructions on how to walk to the original manor where Wolcott's lived. You can read more about Henry Wolcott and the history here.

One of the many miniature steam trains driving around Exbury park.

Quick tour of the church in Tolland Somerset.

Lea Valley Canal (Heading south)

Susan has been wanting to show me the ride along the Lea Valley canal to the Thames since she's gotten her new bike.   We had a sunny weekend and made the best of it. 

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Heading out from our place in Walthamstow

One of a few interesting bridges and tunnels along the way

Looking at Three Mills where a lot of Stop Motion productions are done. (Including the new Frankenweenie movie)

Lea Valley canal merges into Thames water (Tide was out)

Bending around before meeting up with Regents Canal

Just finished having a sandwich in Victoria Park

The new athletic Olympic stadium which is next to Victoria Park

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HMS Belfast: Check!

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So we finally saw the HMS Belfast museum that sits on the Thames river.  We had a good excuse to go with Ben and Brian who were visiting from Canada. The ship sits all year round right across from the Tower Castle and it's always one of those things that's a either too expensive to bother or you just don't have enough time to see it.  Truthfully we still didn't have enough time to see it all but that was partially because we didn't know our way around the ship before they started closing down sections.   If you like WW2 stuff then there's plenty to see and learn plus it's all decked out with creepy mannequins posing all around the ship.  

Road trip through Scotland Ireland and Wales

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We had lots of sun cloud and rain everyday, our stereotype of of Irish and Scottish weather was strongly reinforced.  Luckily we would get some really interesting photo's in the process.   Our odometer on our rental bill was at 2200 miles of driving in our 11 day trip.   I never expected everything to be quite so beautiful throughout our trip,  I definitely think it's something worth experiencing even if its a bit cooler in the summer.
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At the top of Ben Nevis: 1344m

Caernarfon Castle sword fight

Welsh Highland railway steam train in Caernarfon.

Switzerland and South Germany (Luxembourg too!)

Between Zurich/Chur

On our 7 hour train trip to Zermatt with 7 train transfers!

Between Chur/Visp

Between Zermatt/Gornergrat

360 at Gornergrat station.

Between Zermatt/Gornergrat

Zermatt Downtown

Uhh.. I was too hungry to remember to photo our awesome Bratwurst  with bread and mustard in Basel Switzerland  :D

Dion, Ace and Suz.

Baden-Baden

Black Forest

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Bacharach

Bacharach

Luxembourg

Aschaffenburg

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Our 5 day speed vacation all came together very quickly once we got a call from Asaph telling us he suddenly decided to do a week vacation in Germany/Paris and wondered if we wanted to join him.  I've spent all my free time after work booking flights hotels and cars scrambling to put together a trip worthy of the giant price tag attached to flying with short notice.   It's hard to believe how well it all turned out and how much we accomplished in such a short period of time.  With some help from an unexpected change of warm sunny weather we were able to get some great views of central Europe.
Our journey through Switzerland is fantastic by train, it turns out doing a trip from one end of Switzerland to the other and back works perfectly for getting a "Swiss Pass" which gives you unlimited train travel for two days on the main train lines. It's pricey at 180 Swiss Francs per person but in the end your saving quite a bit and not worrying about where you go.   However while travelling in Germany I would recommend renting a car as it's surprisingly similar to driving in North America.  In fact I really enjoyed that part and it allowed us to cover lots of land and see many things in a short period of time.  We even ambitiously decided to trek it all the way into Luxembourg and when your driving at 200 kph it doesn't take as long as you think!