The Sparks went to Washington...: Sudeley Castle

We are very determined that, after 2 years of doing a lot of "stuff" at weekends, we are not going to fall back into the old ways...get up, have a bacon sandwich and read the papers, do the so duku, go to Worcester, have a coffee, do some light shopping, buy a DVD, come home, open a bottle of wine, watch the DVD.... So in the spirit of investigating the bits of the countryside that we'd failed to visit in the 13 years of living here before, we headed off to Sudeley Castle yesterday.

Of course, we did have breakfast before we went...but not bacon butties...we went with the two other foods that we missed terribly in the UK...crusty bread and proper English Cheddar and lots of Lurpak too. Yummy!! Its good to spread your horizons and not get stuck in a rut...

We stopped in at the Audi dealer on the way to Sudeley. We'd seen a car there last week and Stephen wanted another quick look. There was a bit of nit-picking over a couple of minute scratches and the state of the rear tyres. I did some eye rolling to express my deep boredom, and we left the salesman with some homework to do on the price and the cost of the finance. He called halfway round our walk of the gardens at Sudeley and I'm pleased to say that it only took another small amount of negotiation before we bought the car. No more car shopping - yay!

I am ashamed to say that we drove down through some local towns and villages that I had never been to before. How could that be? I thought that I'd covered all the A-roads in the vicinity...we used to bomb around here in our little MX-5 for years, so how we managed to not drive through some of these places is a mystery!! We did manage to avoid the dirt-track pitfall of the satnav on the way to Winchcombe...it was determined to take us down the same single track roads that the satnav took us down in November. Luckily we spotted the mistake quickly this time!! Perhaps the car was just wanting to prove its off-roading pedigree...

Sudeley Castle was beautiful. They must employ an army of gardeners. Each hedge was precision clipped and there wasn't a weed in sight. It was lovely now, but I imagine that its totally stunning in summer when all the herbaceous plants are in bloom. The buildings are gorgeous too. And there is plenty of history attached to it. It was mentioned in the Doomsday Book. King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn visited there as did Elizabeth I and Lady Jane Grey. It was bestowed on Thomas Seymour, who rekindled his romance with Catherine Parr after the death of Henry VIII, and it is where she died and is buried.

In more recent times it is where Henry Dent-Brocklehurst (son of the owner) and Lili Maltese got married and where Liz Hurley outshone the bride by turning up in a dress slashed to the hip and a pair of sequined knickers! On further digging last night (Hello!) it was also where she married her hubby.

Pants were also on display yesterday. A mummy was bending down to take a photo of her little boy and in doing so flashed a lot of her pants to the world. She was wearing low-ride jeans and when she crouched down her grey thong shot up out the top...this was extreme builders bum and not something one would wish to see!!