Earlier this year, on January 1, 2017 we set out from from Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America and we traveled all the way home driving overland. I named the trip "Santo Fuego" which, loosely translated means "Holy Fire".
So this last couple weeks we've been on a trip through the British Isles, and I'm going to name this trip "A Walking Tour Through Great Britain".
This country has a series of "public footpaths" that are unequaled anywhere else in the world. You can cross the entire country in any direction hiking on public footpaths. It's brilliant!
We didn't quite spend all our time walking. Fiona's injured knee limited her time on the trail. But in the last seven days we hiked almost 61 miles. If you do the math, that's just under nine miles a day. (Of course some of that includes running most mornings for me)
But it was very enjoyable, and really interesting, and we were blessed with good weather. And full disclosure here, in reality, some of the walking/trekking was around historical sites - not necessarily on a trail, and to some small extent for Fiona: shopping.
In the last couple days, we've been in and around Flitwick (prounced flit-ick) England. I spent a day hiking the nearby hills with my nephew Paul, who knows his way around. The trails and views were amazing.
To use a popular British phrase, I was "chuffed to bits" meaning "very pleased or delighted; happy".
I didn't get a whole lot of pictures while hiking, but I've included a few to give you an idea. The original intent was to hike most of the Cotswold Way, but that didn't quite happen. As it was, we covered a a lot of ground there, and in Scotland, and around the above mentioned Flitwick area.
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There were plenty of other events as well.
Not far from where we stayed in England was a village called Blechley Park. It is the home of the British efforts to break the secret code of the Germans during WWII. It was said that the code could not be broken.
You may have seen the movie Enigma, or The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
Well, this was the actual place where the code breaking took place. It was a massive effort by thousands, and the fact that it was achieved (they broke the code!) resulted in shortening the war and saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
The guys who developed the machines that enabled the large team to decipher the code were actually in the process of inventing what became the modern computer. There are still some replicas in place at the site.
The whole place is like a visit to the past. The events there took place over 75 years ago. There were other historic items, like this ambulance shown below.
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Is this place a palace or what? The great mansions of Great Britain.
Another day trip was a visit to the grounds of one of Britains great "Houses" - a simple word that does not real convey the grand and palatial nature of this building and the grounds around it. And there are a lot of them in the UK, fantastic estates with with huge gardens surrounded by enormous stately lands.
One such place is the Wrest House near Bedford England. We went there on a clear and very cold day and toured not only the grand Mansion, but the gardens that spread out in many directions. This place dated back to the 1300's.
Wow! This place was amazing, and what's even more impressive is that there are many, many such places like it all other England and Scotland. This one was the home of the Earl of Grey.
When I visit these fantastic estates, like the one in Scotland where Sir Walter Scott lived (The Scott House), I am always struck by ... how did they amass this wealth in the first place? These people were the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet of their times. But often they did not earn the wealth, although Sir Walter did, they were born into it or married into it.
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I will finish this post with one other picture, again related to the war effort in Britain. There were several posters from the era on the walls of the Blechley Park campus, urging the workers to not talk about the top secret work going on.
This picture captured the spirit of the times, in a somewhat whimsical way. Loose lips sink ships! Be careful what you say, or better yet, don't ever talk about it!
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