"Hugging the Line" - England Part One

This year for our spring/summer vacation, we took a trip to Europe!  Peter has always wanted to go back and visit his mission (he served in the England Manchester Mission) and we finally decided we had the funds and the freedom to do it! This trip will require multiple posts, so here is part one!

Friday 

13 May 

2016

In the airport, waiting on our plane

At about 7:30pm, we boarded a plane bound for England!!  Take off was at 8pm.  After dinner, snacks and watching part of a movie, I slept better on the plane than I dared to hope.  Our goal was to try to sleep for about the first half of the 10 hour plane ride and wake up for the second half to try to start getting our bodies on European time zones.  I sort of succeeded (at least with the sleeping), but Peter didn't really get much sleep.

On the plane, waiting for take off!!!

Saturday

14 May 

2016

We arrived safely in England around 1pm, made it through security and customs (phew!) and found the shuttle to our car rental place.  Unfortunately, they seemed to be having issues with their computer system, so getting our car took something around an hour.  It was ridiculous.  Fortunately, they had a bowl of free candy, so I got to taste my first English sweets!  We were finally able to drive off at about 4pm.

English Sweets - the round one
was tasty, the rectangular one -
not as much

This is where the title of my post comes in.  Peter was comfortable driving in England on the wrong side of the road...about 5 years ago.  When we first got in the rental car, he was a little nervous driving on English roads, and he kept drifting to the left, trying to keep the car in the lane the same way he would do it in the US.  He didn't go over the line, but he got awfully close.  Since I was on the left side of the car, I could tell better when he was hanging a bit too close to the line, so I'd warn him, "Hugging the line".  This became our mantra the first day of driving.  

Wooden fences and hedgerows -- now it's starting to feel like
England!

At first I was a little disappointed because we were driving on the motorway, and it really didn't look much different than an American freeway.  However, as we started getting closer to where we were staying in the Peak District, it started looking a bit more like what I had imagined.

The first town Peter said he recognized: Ashbourne

We arrived at our first bed and breakfast, the Smithy.  It used to be, surprise!, a Smithy.  Before that, it was some sort of livestock market, and people would come in for a bite to eat.

Our bedroom

The view out our window

The nifty smithy dining room

We hadn't really stopped for lunch or dinner, so we headed into Buxton, a nearby town Peter served in for a bit, to find a bite to eat.  It was a rather small town, but we wandered a bit before we finally found some dinner.

The Opera House

Sunday 

15 May 

2016

We didn't actually get to eat in the Smithy's dining room because we had to leave out early to get to church on time in Rochdale.

Leaving the Smithy

My handsome man, ready for church!

On our drive to church, we found ourselves getting quite frustrated with each other.  We were tired and struggling a bit with directions and figuring out where we were supposed to go. In Utah, because everything is laid out in a grid, Peter is used to being able to glancing at where we are supposed to go and being able to figure it out from there while driving -- and I'm used to letting him.  In England, the roads were not well marked, and sometimes it was hard to tell which way we were supposed to go. Combine that with driving a stick shift on the wrong side of the road and Peter was a bit hard-put to do it all.  Finally, we stopped and said a prayer, took a deep breath and tried again. 

Heavenly Father blessed us immediately.  I started paying closer attention and giving Peter a heads up on his next turn as soon as we completed the last one.  Over the course of the week, I got better and better at this.  We also became more patient with ourselves when we made a mistake and missed a turn.  We figured out that we would be able to either find a place to turn around or find a different way to go.  Having data on my phone was a life saver because I could have Google maps display our route, and it also showed me right where we were, so I could immediately tell if we were going the right way or the wrong way.  By the time we returned the car, we were pretty much pros at navigating.

A narrow two-way road

Attending church where almost everyone spoke with an English accent was pretty fun.  The ward had changed quite a bit, though, and there were only a couple of people Peter recognized.

Rochdale LDS Church Building 

After church, Peter showed me the apartment where he lived as a missionary.

We were hoping to catch some people Peter knew, and he had scheduled to hopefully meet up with one or two of them, but nobody was responding to our messages this day, so we actually didn't end up meeting up with anyone.  This wasn't completely a bad thing, though, as both of us were pretty wiped out.  We ended up heading over to our B&B, The Villas, and taking a much-needed nap.

Bedroom at the Villas

Very Pretty Wardrobe

Shower

After our naps, we went to Punjabs for Kabobs.  I have been hearing about Donner kabobs for as long as I have known Peter.  Even after having one, I didn't quite understand the draw, but Peter was happy that we got to eat at Punjabs at least once, so that was good enough for me.  We actually went to a little park close to Punjabs to eat our picnic lunch/dinner.  As we came in we heard singing so we went over to investigate, of course.  It was the Church of England hosting a multi-denominational Sing' for The Day of Pentecost.  We actually joined in for a song or two, although they were definitely singing different words to sometimes familiar sometimes unfamiliar tunes.  They also wrote prayers for the town on balloons and released them into the sky.  It was interesting to watch.

The 'Sing'

Releasing the balloons

Once we were done eating, we wandered around town for a bit by foot.  The park was near St Chad's, which is likely why they were using it for their Sing.  The architecture on this building was brilliant.

St Chad's

A little bit of history - if you're interested

Peter said he used these stairs a lot on his
mission 

Town Hall

Using my tripod to take a picture of us together

Town Hall from the other side

Town Hall Clock Tower

Peter's most shocking discovery of the day was that they moved the bus station and built a train station where the bus station used to be.  We finally headed back to the B&B, where we planned for the next day.