It was nice to wake up slowly — at least for me: Dan was up before 6AM and I did wake up slightly before 6 but then set my alarm for 7:45 so I could sleep more. Sleep hasn’t been great much of the time (typical of me) and I knew an extra 45 minutes would be welcome.

It was nice, as well, to not have to pack everything and haul the luggage downstairs to its pickup spot. Today we are to walk to our destination and then get a taxi back. Cotswold Journeys, the company we are using, isn’t exactly clear about how we go about doing that. It says the car picks us up at 3:30, but I didn’t find info about just where that might be. Perhaps, though, it’s just right at the end of our route. We are using the app Ride with GPS, and it takes us through the entire route. (And it makes a sound when we’ve gone off the path. The weird voiced lady inside the app — she must be so tiny! — also tells us turns and the like. I don’t think, though, that she will tell us where our taxi is.

We got ourselves ready for breakfast and I started this blog entry. You can see that we have a fan running in this photo. You can also see the large TV. We make it a point of never turning on a TV when we travel. This is a vacation from everything, including TV!

We met up with Jan and Greg for breakfast. This place isn’t quite as extravagant with their menu: if we wanted a full English or the like we had to pay extra. In reality that means we ate a more reasonable meal, even while it not only included our egg dish but a bowl of yogurt and granola as well. Dan’s poached eggs on toast came without the eggs on top of the toast. It looked rather sad at that point! My mushroom and cheese omelette was tasty but I could only manage to eat half of it.

After getting teeth brushed (Funny: I must have misspelled “brushed” at first and it decided I mean “bruised”!) and putting things away in our room we met up with Jan and Greg to begin our trek for the day.

Out we went, passing some lovely homes on the way.

We then wound up on a path. We walked a good distance through beautiful areas. Early on we did get a few sprinkles, but nothing we worried about. Later it was a bit more, but never enough to worry me. Jan was smart and brought a rain jacket, but the rest of us had skipped that. It’s typical of me not to bring one, but it was surprising to me that Dan didn’t! Still, aside from my putting my camera away for a time it really wasn’t an issue. As you might notice, one photo shows a sign that warns of CCTV. I have no clue where they might have been … up in trees? Hidden on the fence? I never could see even one.

We saw the sign below, saying we were on the Gustav Holst Way. I will have to look that up to see why it is called that. But of course Dan and I started singing things from The Planets. Because.

More and more walking …

The app we use is handy to tell us about turns, but it also makes me laugh sometimes.

I thought the stone slab would be something huge and significant. See if you can figure out which photo includes it. (And do ignore our speed … we do a ton of stopping!)

We reached Naunton, which was a nice place to stop just for a beer. Then on we went. (Sorry, you don’t get a photo of our beers.)

We saw so much of a particular plant, but I’ve yet to figure out what it is. Maybe it’s rye, as we saw yesterday, but it seemed different to me.

Finally we were at our final destination: Guiting Power.

We were to meet our driver at The Old Post Office, but he had written to say he was running late. That was fine by us — we stopped at a pub and some of us had “zero zero”, some a half-pint, and perhaps one had a pint. We also had some cookies from our hotel room, so we pulled out those as well. That would tide us over until our 6:30 dinner reservation.

Our driver arrived and he chatted with us as he drove. The funny bit, for me, was hearing Dan, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, say how he then understood my whimpering! So I wasn’t as crazy as maybe we both thought, eh?

Back in our room we showered, I did more of this blog, and rested. And then … dinner!

We went to the spot we opted for after have some wine there last night. Okay, so it was a lot more expensive than the initial Italian place I’d booked, but we had the entire room to ourselves, as everyone else opted to eat outside (it was too sunny for us: it seems many are thrilled with sun, but we aren’t that sort). The food was delicious — or at least my gazpacho and chicken were. (And Dan’s salmon appetizer looked wonderful.) I didn’t take photos of everyone else’s plates, but I will assume they were happy with their meals.

We also had desserts (only two — one per couple) which we really didn’t need to certainly enjoyed.

Then it was a quick walk back to our home for the night.

Tomorrow we have to get our luggage downstairs for pickup by 8:30, and then our driver is to arrive at 9:30 to take us back to Guiting Power where we begin the day’s walk. It’s only 6 miles, and I’m hoping for an easy walk. Time will tell.

And now … goodnight!

19,705 steps, 7.84 miles, 12 flights climbed
(Just a quick note: Jan, Dan, and I all have Apple Watches. Each give a different number of miles and flights climbed. I expected steps to differ due to our strides, but it does seem to me miles and flights climbed really should be more similar. That shows just how accurate all of this is, I suppose!)