Cheers

After a lazy morning in the caravan, we drove in to Stratford and parked in a car park down near the river. We had a reservation for lunch on The Countess of Evesham - a river boat restaurant. Since our 30th anniversary in April 2019 I had been keen to do something more memorable with some money we had been given as a present. This caught my eye when scouring the restaurants.

We arrived and boarded the boat with 5 other couples at 12.15 and took our seats. They had probably removed half of the original seats in order to make it safe, and it was nice to feel we had lots of space us our own window seat. The weather and food was lovely and we had a very enjoyable 2 hour relaxing lunch.

From disembarking, we got in the car and drove out to Chipping Campden. It was heaving with cars parked all along the street edge, with no spaces. We decided not to stop, but took in the beauty of the high street, which I think is what it is known for. A pretty cotswold town. We drove back to the caravan via Long Marston. It just happened to be somewhere dad was chatting to me about when I was at theirs last week. Dad began his national service in 1948 at Long Marston Royal Engineers depot. Sadly, the depot is no longer there, even though it had originally covered a vast area. I made Jon drive up and down a few roads, as I was looking for a sign of a railway. There had been 45 miles of railway track on the site when dad was here, and I had read that in recent years one area had been used just to keep railway rolling stock. As we went over a small bridge, I spotted a load of engines and Jon was able to pull over so that I could walk back up to the bridge to get a picture. Hopefully I can upload to my extras. The original base now has a variety of housing estates on it, and I'm sure everything else was dismantled when the MoD sold it off a good 20 to 30 years ago. A real coincidence that we were in the area this week, so soon after my conversation with dad. He wasn't based here long, before getting his longed for posting overseas to Egypt, that was 72 years ago!

We drove back to the caravan, possibly only 15 minutes up the road, and after a cup of tea both dozed. That's what holidays are for I'm sure.

Some cheese and biscuits for tea, and some tv and I might even make some Christmas cards.