📸 — Road trip, England & Wales

Europe has so many big and beautiful cities with lots to do, we often overlook the amazing sights to explore outside of them.

This time around we ventured on a week long road-trip through England and Wales. We saw a TON of sheep (and it reminded us of our time in New Zealand), drove in our third country on the left and were totally surprised at the diverse scenery in the UK.

There is a bunch of amazing roads for our friend Steve and a ton of castles for our medieval homies out there.

See more on our website www.alittledetour.ca🌏✈️👫

As you drive out of the city, you actually pass Stonehenge on the right side. Maeghan’s brother strongly warned us that it was not worth the stop… but we thought “heck, we are here anyway…” and pulled in for a look. But tickets to visit the 25 foot tall rocks is closed at 3pm so we only got to see it from the side of the road.

After that, we passed through a windy road that was a military training zone…. we could only drive in the car and not exit.. and had to keep an eye out for tanks!

Then we arrived in lovely Bath.

Bath is a town set in the countryside of England and known for its natural hot springs and 18th-century Georgian architecture. You can walk around this super cute town and see all the stone buildings that were originally built in the Roman-era and includes a hot thermal Bath that had a line up around the block to go and see!

We instead walked around the cute town, most popular now for its University. The stone work is really impressive, and you can see in this church the amount of detail went into it’s construction.

The golden hour was on point!

The weather was so much better than expected! We had 19–20 degree days and 13–16 degree nights.

A super long building that wraps around in a circle around the block.

We stopped in for a stellar dinner and enjoyed some lamb and stacked potatoes.

The next day we ventured on to see a TON of castles. It’s kind of hilarious, there are ruins that are just lying around as you drive by. It’s fun to spot them and then Oli and I would talk about what we thought used to be there.

First castle tour of the trip.

This castle was taken over by King Edward II (the young prince in the movie Braveheart). His wife, Isabella of France, had run away with her lover. She returned to get her husband’s head. Edward II hid in that castle, but ultimately she prevailed. She ruled, until her son took the throne, and had her lover killed.

Apparently there were dragons.

You can walk around the castle and see the various rooms that are still in incredible condition. This is the biggest and best preserved castle in Wales.

A bigger castle nerd told us that the best way to know how rich the owner of the castle was is to look for fireplaces. They were a big deal back then.

Some lovely couple offered to take our picture, so we tried to look royal.

the leaves!

Now this is the part we compiled for our friend Steve who should have been with us. He wasn’t, so he can just look at this collection of photos of roads and enjoy what he missed ;) Just kidding, we love you Steve and wished you could have joined us! This is our journey through the Brecon Beacons National Park.

Next to crazy amazing scenery that changes every 30 min, there were tons and tons of sheep. They all hang out on the side of the road and graze. We saw a few dead ones along the side of the road, but most of them are pretty smart.

After a quick roadside break, we kept driving to the place we wanted to stop for dinner. But it had another castle so we thought it would be worth the visit.

We made it all the way up to Snowdonia National Park and stayed for a few days to hike and relax. The Airbnb we stayed in is in a little town that is not included in the national park, but the park grounds wrap all the way around it! So we had a lovely view of nature around.

This was funny — we had all our gear on, boots, jackets, layers etc.. and were ready for an intense hike. But we kept passing older folks on the trail, some even with walkers… we realized we picked a super simple hike and looked way to hard core for it… but enjoyed the outing anyway.

We’ve been listening to a ton of podcasts on our trip. But Maeghan is a sucker for a solid murder mystery or criminal injustice type story. Olivier found Atlanta Monster and we plowed through this podcast!

As we were driving along the highway, we saw these three geese walking in a single file line along the road. Oli wanted to stand up and stretch his legs so we pulled over maybe 10 meters in front of them. Well, them ducks came waddling even faster towards us and started pecking the car and demanding some sort of food. You could tell this wasn’t their first rodeo and they wanted the goods from us.

The geese look like they’re about to drop the hottest record of the year

You may notice something is off with the boats… well, there is no water in the canal.

Everyone in London told us not to get fish and chips in London (they suck) and to get them on our road trip.. so we stopped by the smallest town with a huge castle and got some made fresh fish and chips. They were delicious!

Last stop on the coast was to visit a famous light house.

We enjoyed a nice coffee and view before heading back towards London.

Before leaving Snowdonia, our Airbnb host (who lives in a converted church :P ) recommend we do one of the hikes just behind the house. We thought we would give it a try before hitting the road again.

It is a slate mountain and has abandoned houses along the way with water falls and lakes all around.

The slate all just falls into piles — it is a pretty crazy thing to see.

We kept driving and passed through big mountains and green spaces.

And Maeghan FINALLY watched Braveheart for the first time. She will now be relevant when we get to Scotland.

After a long drive we arrived in Oxford.

Maeghan has an interesting hobby of collecting Ivy league university sweaters. She has Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkley and now Oxford.

We did our own self-guided walking tour and Maeghan loved hanging around all the students and university buildings. You can tell she was homeschooled

After that we drove right back to London to catch a flight — we are headed to Ireland! 🇮🇪

See more on our website www.alittledetour.ca🌏✈️👫