Cold, but certainly not hungry, in England.

Talk about a change in scenery - we're in England! To explain, we arranged ages ago to meet in England with two separate American groups of friends. At the time we had no idea whereabouts in Europe we would be but we figured that nothing is far away in this part of the world.

We left Bruce the Bike in a garage in Istria and flew to London. We hired a car and headed out - into the rain! It's supposed to be summer and the skies were grey and the rain was bucketing down!

It was weird driving back on the proper side of the road again. I'm glad John was driving!

We arrived at our first destination - a lovely town called Wells. It's famous for a few things but mainly its amazing old cathedral. John had done all the accommodation booking for England so all these places we stayed at are totally his doing. And he nailed it! Our room at Wells was in the Ancient Gateway Hotel and it was truly amazing. Just getting to it was a job in itself. First you enter the hotel, then go past reception, then go through a door, then up some creaky old steps then through another door. Then go along a passage and through another door. You then come to an old spiral staircase. Climb up it.

The ancient stone steps were so worn it was getting difficult to walk on them.

At the top of the spiral staircase is the door to our room. Watch your head as you go through the doorway - people weren't as tall when these old rooms were built.

And inside - a four-poster bed!

And the view out of the old leadlight windows? We're looking straight at the Cathedral!

But wait - there's more! The reason our room was so old is because we were inside the Ancient Gateway itself! Here's our room from the outside. Yep - it's over the old arched gateway. We were sleeping in the medieval guard room!

I was really rapt we stayed here but I probably wouldn't do it again. With all those glamourous things about staying in old places come a few unglamourous ones too - the curtains around the four-poster stank, the bathroom smelled and the old bed creaked and groaned every time we moved. It was magical nonetheless!

We didn't explore the cathedral too closely but we did check out the Vicar's Close nearby. It's Europe's oldest complete medieval street. It was built in the 14th Century and is still lived in by members of the Cathedral choir. It was stunning.

We both love the gorgeous old stone houses in the town and this unusual tree set this one off beautifully.

Wells' other claim to fame is that the movie 'Hot Fuzz' was filmed there. We ate dinner in the pub where some of the movie was shot.

We also checked out the Bishop's Palace. It was built in the 13th Century and is supposed to be the oldest inhabited building in England. It had a real moat around it! Note that the weather hadn't improved. We had to drag our coats out!

The palace was partly restored and partly in ruins and had the most stunning gardens around it.

One place nearby that we just had to visit was Cheddar. Yep - this is where the cheese comes from. And the amazing thing is that John had never been there! He was pretty pleased to finally visit the place. 

We started with a walk around the top of the cliff at Cheddar Gorge. Climbing stiles on these walks is fun - it's such an English thing to do! At one stage we had to walk on the road and it was so narrow that when cars came along there was nowhere for us to go. We had to jump into the bushes which often contained nettles!

We then visited the only dairy still operating in Cheddar. It was quite small but it was interesting.

 Our ticket to do the cliff walk also included visits to two caves. We weren't really interested but went along just because we had paid for them. They turned out to be fun! The first cave had an interesting history in that some important archaeological discoveries were made there and the man who found the cave took eight years of working at night to open it up.

They even store some of the cheddar in caves!

The second cave wasn't so interesting in a cave formation sense so they had a series of films that they projected onto the rocky cave walls. It was all about prehistoric man and it was surprisingly good! The first photo is a scene where a bear tried to attack people living in the cave.

Next we headed to Glastonbury, home of the big music festival. We went there to see Glastonbury Tor where an ancient tower stands alone on a grassy hill. In older times, the area around the hill was covered by water for most of the year so the hill appeared as an island in the water. Legend has it that this is the famous Isle of Avalon, King Arthur's resting place. It's also supposed to be a place where Ley lines converge so there were plenty of spiritual people meditating or taking in the energy on the hill.

We climbed to the top of the hill. The wind nearly blew us off but the views were spectacular. There were even patches of sunshine!

The food in England has been pleasantly surprising. Even the most basic pub has quite a range of interesting options. I can feel the kilos piling on though as everything comes with chips! The first thing we ate was a Cornish pasty with HP sauce on top. Classic! We've also really enjoyed ploughman's lunches with great English cheeses and wonderful ham. Nearly all our accommodation has included breakfast so we've had a cooked breakfast almost every day. We are going to have to do some serious exercise to compensate for all these extra calories!

I'll be back soon with our next English instalment.

Heather and John