Monday 5th December

So our adventure to the English country side began bright and early this morning (around 8:30am). Adam meticulously packed (after all you want to take as little as possible when you have to carry it all on trains to go and collect your hire car) and we loaded the pram full of our bags and children and set off. I had suggested to Adam that perhaps he could go and collect the car then come and collect us and the kids, as let's be honest, Stella, is being less than pleasant so far this trip but he was nervous about driving through inner London suburbs, which I guess is understandable. Because we had elected to save about 30 pound and get a manual, he had to do all the driving as I have zero clue when it comes to a manual, had we got an auto however, I totes would have had a crack at driving through the city.

So a walk to the local train station was the start to our day, where we learned from our mistakes of previous train travel that there are special carriages for those with 'buggies' and boarded a very crowded morning train with our pram and 2 small children asking an insane amount of questions. Xavier wanted to know where everyone on the train was going, and in all honestly I would have thought that at least 1 person would talk to a small child and let him know they were going to work, visit a friend, whatevs, but no, many looked and smiled, but not one person spoke to him. We swapped trains at Wimbeldon buying the kids some chips from the vending machine in the hope that they may stay a bit quiet for the trip to our next train swap. We then got off at Earl's Court to swap to the train to Heathrow where we were collecting our car (the lonely planet guide suggested getting hire cars from here to avoid driving through the city).

At Earl's court the lift was not working, so we had to get the kids out of the pram and Adam had to carry it down the stairs to the lower platform where we needed to be. The woman working at the station was busy telling off another traveller who had left 2 suitcases at the bottom of the steps to go back to the top to collect the rest of his bags and his wife, all the while with a small baby strapped to his chest. After she has finished abusing him, she then turned on us for carrying the pram down the stairs, I pointed out that seeing the lift was broken we didn't have another option and she told me to watch my mouth and that we shouldn't have even got off at that station, there was another station we could get the airport train to. Yep because we totally psychically knew that the lift was broken at the station that is advertised as one that is disabled compatible. All in all she was nothing short of a bitch and she is lucky I didn't tell her so.

The train to Heathrow was long and boring, Stella was completely over it all by this point and was carrying on like nothing else, Xavier was feeding off her energy and I was silently cursing Adam for being too scared to drive through the city and inflicting trains with our horrid children on me. Once at the airport we found our way to the rental car courtesy bus and finally we were able to get to the car at 11:10am (yep, almost 3 hours after we left our house). We somehow got upgraded to a Ford Focus station wagon, which Adam told me at least a dozen times over the coming days that he loved, the kids car seats were organised (car seat rules are pretty relaxed here compared to in Australia, I was not really comfortable that Xavier who sits in a 5 point booster at home, just had a booster cushion and adult seat belt here), the GPS was set to Stonehenge and off we went.

Stella was asleep before we even got out of the airport, and all I have to say on that matter is Thank God!

We had heard that Stonehenge literally just pops up at you as you are driving down the road, and its true, it does. All of a sudden you come over a hill and BAM, there it is. Despite the fact that you can just stand at the fence on the side of the road and look at it, we opted to not be total tight arses and paid to go in and look at it closer. It was so very very very cold there, I think its quite possibly the coldest I have even been. We had to wake Stella when we got there, so she was in fine form once again.

Stonehenge in all its glory.
I have wanted to be at this very place since I did an assignment in grade 6 on Stonehenge.

Knowing the history of Stonehenge I really did expect to feel some kind of spiritual experience while I was there. But it's hard to feel anything when you have a 2 year old screaming at you, you cant feel your face from the cold, there are people everywhere and 2 busy roads run either side of this historical monument. The stones are not as big as you would imagine, don't get me wrong, they are big, but not mammoth like I had built up in my mind. Apparently there has been much campaigning for them to build a bypass under Stonehenge to reduce the traffic that goes past, perhaps that would make it feel more like the kind of sacred place its supposed to be.

Yep, it's cold alright.

Considering it afterwards I would totally love to be hanging there with my village, drums holding a beat and beautiful people twirling fire all over. The best bit is its dark by 4:30pm here, so we could twirl for hours and hours.

You's almost think she was happy here.

We piled back into the car, cranked the heater and set the GPS to take us to the town of Bath where we had accommodation booked for the night. We drove through some of the most beautiful little villages, the English country side is just amazing. So green and vast and old. You would spend time driving through areas of green paddocks, then suddenly around a bend there would be a dozen of so stone houses then back to open space again. Its just gorgeous. Sadly the roads are so narrow, its really hard to stop to take photos safely of just how beautiful the area is.

We got to Bath, checked in to the local youth hostel (yep they cater for families too) then headed into town to have a look around and try to find something for dinner. Because its December all the small towns have Christmas markets going on, so we wandered the stone streets, bought warm chocolates for the kids, let them ride the carousel, marvelled at the Christmas lights decorating the streets, and found something new every corner we turned. We also popped into the Disney store and I sneakily purchased something for Stella for Christmas, seeing as she is very into Tinkerbell at the moment. I also convinced the kids to come into the Clarks store with me as they both needed new shoes and managed to pick up 2 pairs each for a total of 90 pound (about $150 Australian, bargain).

We headed back to the hostel with plans to explore the town more before we headed off in the morning, and I do believe that I crashed before the kids.