Day 8- Chipping Campden

On our eighth day of travel, we were in Chipping Campden...for an entire day...free of trains, packing, and rushing around stations and streets. My sister and I woke up thinking it was earlier than it actually was, being that our room's shade was magical and darkened the entire room. However, it was 8:30, and we had thought about eating at 8:45 am so we quickly dressed and threw on our slippers and headed down to the breakfast table. We quietly walked down the stairs because we heard voices in the dining hall and we were not sure if we could go in or not, plus we are awkward so we just hesistated.....and hesitated...and almost ran back up to our room. We were whispering to each other "You go." "No you go." "I don't want to go first, you go first." "No you." After about 2 min of that, we entered the dining room. There was another couple there, much older, but very friendly. They were travelling from Indiana, and were planning on leaving for Wales the next day. Sally took our orders for breakfast, brought us tea and told us to help ourselves to fruit, cereal, yogurt, anything. I had scrambled eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tea, brown toast, honey dew and grapes. My sister had the same except had her eggs differently and had no mushrooms, and had beans. It was delish. And nutrish.
After breakfast, we sat there questioning whether or not we were supposed to clear our plates, Sally came in and said "Oh no! That's my job, go have fun! You are on holiday!". We laughed, thanked her for breakfast and went up to our room. We decided we would just wander the town in the morning, and seeing that it was foggy and misty we didn't plan on being out much more than a few hours.

We walked all around the town centre, taking a lot of photos. And then my camera died. So I continued the photography on to my phone. My sister and I got lost trying to find the thatched roof cottages, so we made our way back to the middle of town and went down a street called "Birdcage Walk", we passed an older woman working diligently in her garden, then we crossed the street to a tiny graveyard. It was almost hidden, and had a wooden fence with a latch that was rather hard to open, the fence was falling apart as well. 

The graveyard was surrounded by tall hedges and trees, and had the graves of locals. I walked off by myself, took a look at the graves, and out of no where tears came rolling down my cheeks. I took a moment and remembered my grandpa. I was caught off guard by my emotion but apparently the serenity and cool fall air got to me and I just let the emotion happen. A few sniffles later, we left the graveyard and continued walking around the town.

We took some random public footpaths through locals fields and gardens, turned the corner, and there sitting on the hill, was the 900 year old church Barry our taxi driver had told us about the day prior.

We walked up the walkway, and apparently all the trees that were lining the walkway had been planted back in the 1700's. We oogled over the gravestones, because all of them were from the 1600's all the way to the late 1800's. It was so cool to read them (of what you could make out) and see something so old. We walked around the entire church, made our way to the backside of it, and walked down to another gravestone field that looked out to the foggy hills where Stratford-upon-Avon sits and the rest of the hills being farm land.

We took more photos, made our way back up to the side of the church, looked at more graves, and while I was standing by a rather large tree looking out to the hills I heard an owl hooing in the tree. It was really neat. And peaceful. Then we decided to go inside the church where we saw a clergyman's robe from the 1500's sitting in a case, a lecturer stand (where they read Bible verses and give the sermons) that was built in the 1600's. The church was beautiful in it's own way. It had no stained glass, no scalloped ceiling, but in it's own refined way it was beautiful. We also found out that one wall in the church was built in the 1200's, anothe in 1400, 1450, 1600, 1750, etc. Sooo cool!

 (Side of the Church)

After our exploring of Chipping Campden, we headed to the local grocery store (tiniest store ever) and bought some much needed cookies and candy. Then we headed back to our B&B for movie and tea time....maybe even fit in a nap.....being that it was only 1pm.
We finished Lord of the Rings (although I have no clue what happened because it was LotR-RotK. And I have never seen LotR's in the first place. All I know if smeagle is evil and good...) I took a nap, and we just hung out in our room til about 5 or 6pm. We decided on a pub for dinner, and headed out into the night. When we arrived at this pub we, AGAIN, stood around like two dumb tourists not wanting to do the wrong thing, and thus making our selves awkward...however, this time we made it inside before we got all awkward like. Then the owner of the pub/hotel could tell we were confused, and told us we could sit in either room (there was the bar room and a dining hall, thus confusion). We decided upon the bar room, it just looked quite pubby. Plaid carpeting, dark wood everywhere, a giant fire in the fireplace and.....halloween decorations strung from the ceiling....haha. We were the only females there under the age of 40, and thusly, we were catered to by the two young 20 something males that worked the bar. We ordered two small dinners since we were still full from cookies and candy, ordered a pint and shared it. And just sat around enjoying our last night in Chipping Campden. After dinner, we had some panic on whether or not we leave a tip (since the served us), so my sister stepped outside and texted our 3 go to British guy friends, all of which told us to leave a tip. So we did....not..jokes we did. Hahaha.
We walked arm in arm up to the B&B, talking how we always did "I can't believe we are here!" Once we got back to our room, I did some washing of my clothes, then we facetimed our parents and hit the hay....after our cups of tea of course. The next morning was going to be a busy one because we were going to Cambridge!