More of Sunny, Summery England

It's getting down into the 30s here now, so I'm going to carry on with my summer England travelogue.

Salisbury

Sweetie and I paid a visit to the town of Salisbury, which was really cool as I read "Pillars of the Earth" last year (fantastic read!!!) and I could just imagine it in medieval times. The Cathedral is stunningly large and very impressive inside.

We grabbed some soup and a sandwich for lunch at a small cafe in the town before heading off to our next stop.

Kingston Lacy

Since Sweetie has a National Trust membership, getting him into NT properties for free, we stopped at every NT property we could as we traversed the countryside.  Kingston Lacy was a grand specimen -- an enormous estate house with expansive gardens showcasing everything from hostas to Japanese maples.  They even had a "Japanese garden," which, while not quite my vision of a Japanese garden, was very nice to look at.

From there, we headed to the town of Swanage, along the coast, where we spent several nights in a neat little boutique B&B:   "Swanage Haven."  The owner showed us up to our room and pointed out the various amenities.  Sweetie and I took a brief nap and then showered and got ready to head out for dinner.  Except I couldn't find the hairdryer.  Which was really odd, because I absolutely positively remembered seeing it when the owner showed us the room.  I remembered him opening the top drawer of the dresser and there it was.  But it wasn't there now.  

Sweetie and I actually BOTH remembered seeing the hairdryer, which made it all the more perplexing . We eventually gave up and went downstairs in search of one of the owners.  We found David and we enlightened us about the "secret drawer" which was hidden INSIDE the top drawer.  DUH.  Anyway, crisis resolved.

Swanage was a great launching point for some amazing sites.  The town itself was impressive mostly in the sense that it had an INDIAN restaurant which we definitely took advantage of (somewhat unfortunate that we were so stuffed from good-eating on our trip that we could not quite finish our meals), and lovely seaside scenery.

Just a short drive or train ride away was the village of Corfe and the ruins of the mighty Corfe Castle, which could not have been more spectacular.  Despite some pretty ferocious winds at the ruins, Sweetie and I explored them at length and got some amazing photos.

The site was actually pretty mobbed with people, but you can't really tell that from the photo.  The village itself was absolutely adorable, and the ancient stone houses were so old that the doorways were noticeably shorter than average.

After exploring the ruins, we indulged in some delicious Purbeck ice cream, named for this region of England.