Entries about walking

It's finally starting to feel like spring over here. Actually, it feels more like summer than spring. It seems that we've skipped spring altogether this year. We took advantage of the gorgeous weather today and took a walk through the German countryside. There were fields of wildflowers and rolling hills on all sides. We came across a number of cows lazing about in the sun, and a little glen dubbed "Hexenwald", which roughly translates to "witches' forest". There was a tiny cottage and a dried-up well where two recently transformed frog princes were perched.

Our current home is comfortable, warm and just the right amount of rustic. We get to hear a herd of cattle walk by twice a day, bells clanging. We also have a few pet cats wandering about outside. There are supposedly three or four of them, but we've only seen two. The friendliest of these is named Emma, and she's made her way inside a number of times, so she and I have bonded over the time spent carrying her to the door.

We tried more German sausages, and found that we much preferred them to the weisswurst we'd had earlier. That being said, we're fairly certain that we botched the cooking and eating process. Apparently there's a fairly specific way of doing both. (website) The reason we tried them in the first place was actually because of a blog post that I saw awhile ago (Here's a link to the main blog. I recommend you read some of her travel articles. You may even recognise some of these places from our earlier blog posts.). We're at 5/7 so far.

Today we celebrated Mother's Day, even though in the UK, Mother's Day had been on March 30th. It was kind of a relief, as we didn't run into hoards of mothers wanting the world to comply with everything and anything they wanted. So it was good, as we only had to deal with one of them.

Homemade Mother's Day scones with clotted cream and jam - thanks, Hannah!

We started the day off with some freshly baked scones that Hannah had gotten up early to make. Breakfast was followed by presents, which consisted of two pairs of earings (one from Hannah and one from Dad), a matching necklace (Dad), and a SUPER FANTASTIC AWESEOME SPA SET, which was made up of Scottish soap, Hadrian's Foot Balm, English hot chocolate and a card with a 19th century paisly pattern offering free nailpolish paintings and foot massage.

Mother's Day in the Cotswolds

After cleanup we were all off to Burton-on-the-water to walk around a little and look at shops. Most of the stores were packed full of little objects, and even though we knew we wouldn't be able to buy anything (if we had even wanted any of the stuff) it was fun to look. The weather wasn't that great, and it rained a sprinkled for the duration of our time out, but it wasn't too bad as we spent most of the time in the stores anyways. Going through the little town is a river which we walked beside for some time, watching the ducks and ducklings trying to swim against the current, and getting pushed back by the pressure of the water.

At around three o'clock my mom decided to go back home and we ate lunch back at the house and then spent the rest of the afternoon looking at earlier pictures from the trip. For dinner we had hamburgers and salad, and finished the evening with three West Wings, cookies and chips. Mom says that she loved the day, and that she definately didn't waste it because we got up at 9 and didn't go to bed until after midnight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourton-on-the-Water
http://www.bourtoninfo.com/