#94 August 20, 2022. Nomad Diary. Long Walks. Wells. Travel Day. Milton Keynes Housesit. Ubigi Data.
Saturday Activities. 20. We do a DDP yoga routine each morning before breakfast. Darrell made pancakes (yum! These are especially good as he is using a combination of kefir and greek Uyogurt). We take a walk and we eat lunch out.
Week’s Highlights.
Friday. 19. On this day, Darrell is working on our cellular phone data issues. We have been using GoogleFi and we have been out of the US getting close to 90 days and this company has warned us that we will lose our data access per contract. We knew this was coming for a while and tried to get it figured out a month ago, but now he has to come up with the solution and get it working. He does it and we have a second company loaded onto our phones called Ubigi for keeping us connected to the internet between gaps of wifi! The best part is it’s affordable. I have a phone call with my friend Sharon who is working toward going on the road and has questions for me.
Thursday. 18. We slept well at the tiny hotel room. We get up early and go walk about a half mile uphill (lol) to the gigantic mall. All we can find is a Costa coffee shop with pastries. It’s before 8am and finding a restaurant cooking a breakfast this early seems rare here. The schedules seem pretty tight as we have been touring and living here. We are on a much earlier schedule than the majority. Well, we have our coffee and a pastry. Then we walk around and find the bus stop. We go back to the hotel, pack up and check out. We get to the bus, ride to our residential area and walk about 2/10ths of a mile to the house. We are early as it is just after 10am. Sandy has a friend there who we meet and explains that Sandy is out for a walk. They are going to housesit at the coast for her birthday excursion. She arrives back and tells us all we need to know to get around her house and care for her older grey cat Smokey. After they leave us, we lock up the house and walk to the local cafe for lunch and then to the Co-op for groceries. We are able to relax into our housesit and make salads for dinner and watch my favorite Antiques Road Trip show!
Wednesday. 17. Our moving day from Bitton to Milton Keynes. 20 minute bus ride to Bath; a train to London; a walk between stations to change trains; a train to Milton Keynes. We arrive around 2 in the afternoon to the town everyone (yes, everyone) asked us why would we choose to come here? Well, we are here. It looks like a business park with big glassed buildings. We walk uphill from the train station, pulling our wheeled luggage and each carrying a backpack. We go in the direction of our hotel and stop at a Wetherspoons to get a snack and to sit until our check in time. We get to our hotel about a half mile from the train station and check in. It is smaller than a cruise ship cabin! But it is comfortable enough for one night. We find a place for dinner and a mall to walk in that is massive! Probably a mile long! We also check out where we might find breakfast and where to catch a bus to get close to our housesit that begins tomorrow on Thursday by 11am.
Tuesday. 16. We go to Wells today. A 2+ mile walk to Keynsham, then a 1 hour and 20 minute country bus ride to Wells. Our return will be about the same only going to Bath rather than Keynsham. We arrive the quaint and Medieval looking town of Wells with a handful of other tourists. We have a cappuccino and enjoy the old street. We walk around reading information boards and enjoying the old buildings including a Bishop’s Palace with a wall and a moat; a cathedral; a street with medieval houses; cobbled streets, and more. We eat a cheap and not very good Pub lunch! And then catch the bus back to our place.
Monday. 15. Darrell makes french toast with fresh fruit and dark coffee (always) for breakfast. I get some laundry washed and hanging on the laundry drying rack. I want to go back to Bath Soft Cheese one more time, but even though it’s only about 1 ½ miles from us, it’s not easy to get there as there is an absence of a direct footpath for much of it. We decided that the food is worth the longer walk and we walk the long way through the fields and part way on the bike path and then back up the field to the restaurant. Basically we walked 3 miles to get to the cafe! It was cooler today and the food is so good! We enjoyed our lunch and then walked the 3 miles back a different way. We saw an Antiques Road Show on tv two nights ago at a town called Wells that has 11th and 13th century buildings still in use. We looked it up and it is an hour and 20 minute bus ride through the country from Keynsham. So we plan our trip for Tuesday.
Sunday. 14. Not having a car, we have chosen this slow travel. Today we travel to Bristol for worship. We walk 2 miles to Keynsham to get a bus to the Bristol Temple Meads train station. From here we walk mostly uphill about a mile to get to the church of Christ for our 2nd Sunday with this group. The group is very different this week as most of them have gone to participate in a weeklong summer kids camp. There are people who we talked to last week and we talk again. There are some people who are new to us and we get acquainted. After church we have planned to eat lunch at a restaurant and then get on the Hop On-Hop Off Bus (a tourist bus in many cities around the world that takes a circuit and gives informative commentary in your chosen language). It turns out so hot and we are so sweaty and uncomfortable that we get lunch near the train station and get the train back to Keynsham soon after that. We get back to our place, cool down and recover.
Nomad Notes. This is the week of the cellular data company search, load and get started on our phones. Friday above. Our phones have e-sim cards and this is a bit of a trick to get the sim cards directed correctly as the card isn’t physical to remove or insert.
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