England – Off the Beaten Path

I’m not sure if you recognize one of the most famous ruins in England above… Stonehenge.

It is just one of the stops we have made whilst traveling around England, visiting family and traveling “off the beaten path”…

Travel Tips in the UK

If you are thinking about visiting England – in addition to all the famous tourist spots in London, Big Ben, and all the cathedrals and landmarks, the English countryside is a whole different experience, with rolling green hills, tiny one lane roads (where they drive on the wrong side of the road), and quaint old homes, hundreds of years old. We stayed a few days with my cousin and his family in this old Vicarage – it was just oozing with charm and history with 2 foot thick stone walls, washbasins in each bedroom, a large kitchen that was warmed by an auger (kind of a wood stove), and all sorts of random rooms and passageways, set on a few acres of land right in the middle of the village.

And for anyone who loves gardening, English gardens are one of those unique things, where everything seems wild and blossoming everywhere, but they are designed in a way that they are actually very low maintenance. They have different plants and flowers blooming at different times all summer – and my cousin enlisted me to help with some of the “maintaining” one day in the rain !

We went on long walks up and down the cliffs here on what they call the “Jurassic Coast” in Dorset – the cliffs you can see in the picture are filled with ancient fossils. There are little cottages in the cliffs along the coast owned by the
National Trust that you can actually rent and stay in absolute peace and privacy with no one around as you watch the sun set over the ocean at the end of the day.

And we took a quick trip to Oxford to visit some more of my cousins – visiting this famous University was like being in an entire city of history – the old stately buildings, the manicured botanical gardens and playing fields, the chapels and choirs in each of the colleges, the rowing teams practicing down the rivers as you cross the bridges – it is a truly unique place to visit. Oxford is known as the oldest University in the English-speaking world, and I can’t even imagine being able to live and attend school there.