Bradford-on-Avon
6/10/2025 - 6/17/2025
After a pretty miserable overnight flight from Boston listening to a SCREAMING toddler the entire night, we arrived at London Gatwick airport. Luckily, Gatwick is smaller and easier to navigate than Heathrow since we were tired and not up to a lot of challenges!
After we got our rental car (quick and easy at Hertz), I plastered our “Student Driver” magnets on the sides while Grady attempted getting in the wrong door of the car! Once we got Grady situated on the driver’s side, we were on our way to Bradford-on-Avon. While the drive wasn’t difficult, it was long and boring. What should have been about 2.5 hours was over 3 due to multiple traffic delays. And the scenery was boring. It basically looked like a dull Midwest route. Not a castle to be seen! But we managed to complete the exhausting journey with no damage to our relationship!
Bradford-on-Avon was the first base of our yearlong adventure. We stayed for a week. In a nutshell, it is an incredibly charming small town with traditional stone buildings and stressfully narrow streets. There are several good restaurants, some award winning tea houses, and a few good pubs… but not much else. We chose it as a base because it is central to several other towns/sights we were interested in seeing and much cheaper than staying in Bath. I probably wouldn’t recommend staying here if you have limited time and want to be walking-distance to attractions, but it was perfect for us since we have the luxury of time. We also need to be a bit more budget conscious since we will be paying for lodging for the next 365 days!
We did tea at a tea house next to our apartment in a building from 1502. It took a bit to convince Grady to do this, but I was pretty determined. After all, we are in England and next to an award winning 1502 tea house. It seemed like a very English thing to do! He agreed – and he admits that he very much enjoyed it!
We spent a day wondering all the nooks and crannies of the town and found some seriously old churches (one from the year 1001). We also found a cool little area along a canal with locks. There were quite a few boats living there and/or going through the locks. We sat for a few hours watching the boats, reading, and drinking wine. It was so peaceful! But what we failed to do was take a picture! If we ever come back, we are renting one of those boats!
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