As we spent a couple quiet days getting to know our ward, Oberon, we laid out our plans for trips throughout the countryside. The parameters were that we couldn’t leave too early, nor could we return too late; after all, we were being hosted here in England gratis except for the care of the kitty and we take that kind of thing seriously. Besides, hanging out with a kitten for a while is not exactly a burden. So, what sorts of trouble can we get up to during a modest day trip? How about hunting down graffiti in the byways of Bristol?

The city of Bristol is only about 40 minutes by car from our home base, which made it perfect for having a little breakfast first at our new favorite joint, Belle’s Kitchen. (By the by, almost all the websites for local businesses around here look as clean as this one. Not saying it’s cutting edge, but I can’t think of somewhere I’ve lived where every business has taken the time to address their presence online.) One order of pancakes and eggs benedict later we were on the road. Navigating the city was tricky; as per usual in Europe there clearly was never an initiative to eminent domain their way to orderly, gridded streets. It was only a quick bout of WTFAW (“where the #*$& are we?”) before we got on the far side of the downtown nonsense and landed at our first spot. Our first spot, mind you, was basically in the middle of nowhere. A mix of midsize apartment blocks and el basico retail concerns marked this a working class neighborhood of little interest to tourists. Except.

A few years ago we watched a documentary or, more accurately, a “documentary” about the street artist Banksy. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” defies simple explanation and would spawn its own post if not its own blog; suffice to say that Banksy figured in the film although to what extent is unclear. (We deliberately didn’t offer a link to information about this film, and its not just avoiding spoilers. In fact, we recommend you don’t just wiki up an answer. Wikipedia prints what it can verify and much about this movie is hard or impossible to nail down.) Anyway, Lisa had already been an admirer of Banksy’s work and John got on the bandwagon after that. Turns out, the Bristol area is a hub for his work, and we decided a fun way to give our meander some structure would be to hunt down some of his work. And so we found ourselves in a short connecting street to find “Rose on a Mousetrap” pictured above. The frame was put up later by local residents to preserve the work; as far as we can tell Banksy is content for the world to carry on with his work as it sees fit; when he’s done, he’s done.

We didn’t even need the car to find another one just above a cafe. Once we scouted this out, as well as a pretty elaborate garden of graffiti that exists in the neighborhood (like the cover image of this post) it was back to our car to find some parking in a central location. That achieved we began hoofing it to a mix of graffiti’d and non-graffiti’d locations, starting with St. Peter’s Church. St. Peter’s has been a derelict building since the 40s, a victim of German bombing raids. It has been maintained (but not restored) as a monument to the citizenry who made it through those times. A park has grown up around it, and the garden spaces around the church have been put back to use. It really is a lovely space. These monuments tend to go two ways, at least if they are, in our opinion, effective. One is to be overwhelmingly beautiful and austere, almost imposing a sense of solemnity on to the visitor; picture the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. The other way is to become woven into the communal space, allowing life to come right up to the edges so that the memorial can be observed on a regular basis with the underlying message “we made it through this, see?”

Our next stretch was the street markets of Bristol, which are a robust permanent edifice not unlike Pike Place Market in Seattle; substitute Cornish pasties for throwing salmon and you’ve got the vibe pretty close. There are some stalls set up on sidewalks of course, but most of the markets are inside large buildings that if they weren’t built for the purpose sure do seem like it. It’s all craftspeople, cooks, rock collectors and so on. A hodge podge of merchandise (usually some variant of fair trade) is sprinkled throughout. It’s a fun way to kick around and it gets you out of the weather.

It’s a good town to just wander. It seems like there was a vibrant street art community long before Banksy came along, he’s just the most famous son of the movement. The city still embraces this kind of art – no, they don’t let “plain” graffiti run wild (unlike, say, Naples) but there’s enough of a stain of respectability on the craft for it to be included in public decor on a grand scale. We could be on our way to something more established like St. John’s in the Wall – a medieval church, the last standing example of four originals that were built into the walls of Bristol so that you knew, coming or going, just how pious a city Bristol was – and still have to pause and enjoy where the work was tucked into the urban fabric. This particular example was espied on the way from St. John’s to Bristol Cathedral, which anchors a beautiful public space for all kinds of activities. On the day we were there, even with inclement weather hovering around the edges constantly, you still had picnickers, dog walkers, and perambulating families taking their ease on the grounds. It’s funny, we go to a fair number of churches and cathedrals even though neither of us is particularly of the faith, just because that tends to be where “the good stuff” is. Sometimes the good stuff is art; sometimes it’s architecture. And sometimes, like in Bristol, it’s a tent pole for civic life.

We didn’t need our pedometers to tell us that we’d been wandering far and wide that day, and in a feat of amazing planning on John’s part (heh) we came to a close about as far from where we parked as was possible. Woo! Fortunately we had thought to scout out a spot for dinner near to the car, so at least there was French bistro food waiting for us at the end of the walk. Sated, we popped back to Dursley to renew our servitude to our lord and master, Oberon.

We began our last minute-ish excursion to southern England at 3:30AM. E-frickin-gad. This allowed us to get cleaned up and repack the few things we’d used while being in a sleepy state and still get down to breakfast just as it opened at 4AM; one of the benefits of a hotel that caters to airport commuters, they know why people stay there. This requires no explanation if you’ve been in Portugal for awhile, but breakfast was mostly pastries. I swear these people; we love ’em, but would someone please show them a sausage patty or something? Then followed one of the biggest surprises we’ve had in travel in quite some time. Cliffhanger!

Not much of one, though. The big surprise was that we had a perfectly smooth travel experience, from checking in with Ryanair in Porto to collecting our bags and finding the shuttle bus in Bristol. Everything was smooth, no weird delays or ridiculous extra steps in the boarding process. Heck, we even had gangways(!) although, to be fair, since we were boarding from the back of the plane we actually went down the stairs and walked across the tarmac to get to the back steps on the plane. Still, we’ll take it! Heck, we even had our “leave the middle seat empty and maybe nobody will take it” strategy paid off for once. Score! And so it was that we made our way to the train station in central Bristol, from whence we would scoot out to where our car rental spot was.

This is where the shockingly smooth portion of the travel ended, although it wasn’t really a nightmare or anything. We mis-read which side of a minor highway the agency was on, so we walked 5-10 minutes in the wrong direction, turned around, got to the crosswalk and then got to the right side of the highway. Then there was the vaguely industrial-park vibe to where the rental agency was – it was Hertz, but I think most of their trade was long term van rentals. Put it this way, we were the only people who even vaguely looked like tourists in there, and rolling our bags along just completed the picture. Nevertheless they were lovely folks there and we were gone in no time with our hybrid (woo!) Toyota Yaris thingy. An hour or so later and we were in the driveway of our new, temporary, home in Dursley. I don’t think we’ll be sharing any pictures of this place, because I see way too many social media posts from clever dicks who can figure out where you are from almost no evidence and, well, it’s not our house. No reason to scream “the owners of this home are gone for a month!” to the internet.

So, we settled into our new digs for August. It is charmingly, well, normal. Suburban bordering on rural – not sure how locals would describe it, but we’re in a classic developed residential area (winding streets, a lot of houses that look almost identical), and we’re 5 minutes from cafes and shops, but we can also look in 3 directions and see sheep farms and rolling hills. Anyway. We met Oberon (Obie for short), the resident cat. Like most cats, after an initial “who are you what’s going on I want nothing to do with you” it became clear to him that we were the source of food, water, and the stick with the jingly ribbon on it and now we’re on the “ok” list. You can tell that we don’t play with the toys properly, but any port in a storm as they say and he grudgingly gives in.

The next several days have been us slowly figuring out what our rhythm for this trip actual will be. This was mildly complicated by the fact that we had talked past each other a little; this is what we call it when we’ve had what seemed like a thorough conversation about something only to find out that we still thought we heard something different from what we were told. Once we figured out the pace that we actually wanted to move at and were in agreement on, it locked in nicely. Granted, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

We said we were looking forward to this because the weather reminded us of Seattle in April or May. Well, yeah. As if to hold up a sign that says “be careful what you wish for” our first trip out, to Lacock Abbey where there is (we are told) a lovely garden, was rained out. Like, we haven’t forgotten how to be in rain, but it was coming down hard enough that we watched visitors who were dressed for rain walking out of the place in large clusters. Literally, we pulled into the car park and John turns to Lisa and says “we’re going home, right?” and she says “yep, we’re going home.” So, another hour or so through the English countryside.

It hasn’t been all bad, though. We had a lovely sojourn to Painswick Rococo Garden which, aside from its normal loveliness, does a “fairy walk” during the summer where they sprinkle little wicker-esque fey folk all throughout the gardens. It really is a charming touch and sends you hunting around all the nooks and crannies. It is privately held as opposed to being part of the National Trust; this isn’t a bad thing per se, but the Trust-managed properties have a certain spit-and-polish to them that the private sites often do not, although that can lead to charming quirks as well. Like, well, wicker fey.

Tomorrow we begin a new phase of the trip, journeying farther afield than we’ve been going, with planned trips to Bristol and Cardiff as well as a southern jaunt to Avebury and Stonehenge. Knock on wood!

If you’ve been following along with us on a regular basis you’ll remember a very recent post about some changes, small ones, in one we’re putting on the Ramble and how we’re going about doing things re: travel in our lives. We (ok, mostly Lisa) spent some time explaining how we’d wanted to use house/pet-sitting as a way to instigate travel with some budget relief. Well. For any of you that are fans of “The Secret”, vision boards, or just plain magic, our hats are off to you. About three weeks ago we (ok, mostly Lisa) set up a new profile on a website that focuses specifically on the United Kingdom and matching home-havers (renters can do it too, I think) with people willing to watch those homes. Within a couple of days(!) we had multiple solicitations for homesits. The second-most promising one was a week on the western coast of the UK but it was, frankly, so last minute that we’d be canceling dinner dates and other meetups and it just seemed too rushed. The most promising one, however, gave us a little more time to prepare; and so prepare we have.

By now you may already have a couple of questions, starting with “what’s a Dursley?” Other than a familial name in those kid magician books, it is a charming little… hommlet? village? let’s go with “town” for now… in the southwest of England. A very nice couple of mixed English and American extraction are leaving old England for New England to visit family for a few weeks and they want someone(s) to look after their 8 month old kitten. Yes that’s right, the mission should we choose to accept it is to play with a kitten. Spoiler alert: we accepted. [Editor alert: clearly they didn’t have grammar check on their typewriters or that Mission: Impossible line never would have made it past draft form.] And so it is that later this very day we are hopping a ride with Orlando (if you know you know) to a hotel adjacent to the Porto Airport so as to catch a flight in the morning to Bristol.

Oh yes, Bristol. One of the things about housesitting is that it can actually be very competitive if you have a yen to visit any of the world’s hotspots. People in London have no trouble finding housesitters, in fact they are usually spoiled for choice. The websites that cater to these arrangements have become popular enough that you can see dozens of application fall in for sexy locales. However, if you’re less picky and/or actually want to see more of the world than just the capital cities, it turns out it isn’t all that hard to make the arrangements. To be clear, there are no global attractions of note in Dursley; a search for “things to do in Dursley” comes up with a number of interesting things starting at about a 30 minute drive from town. That said, if you give yourself a driving radius of about 90 minutes you get things like Stonehenge, Oxford University, and Cirencester (home of the amazing Chedworth roman villa). So yeah, we don’t just walk out our door and trip over UNESCO world heritage sites, but neither do we have to work all that hard to see them. And before it sounds like we’re dismissing Dursley, the town itself is lovely, and quiet and… oh, right! The average temperature in August runs about 15-20 degrees cooler (Fahrenheit) compared to where we live in Braga. Oo, and it’s rainy, too! To a couple of Seattle transplants it sounds just divine.

Today is, as the title says, Day 0. As of this writing we don’t actually know the first thing, first hand, about where we’re going. What we know is that the people seem nice, there’s a kitten named Obie (short for Oberon, in case we weren’t sure if these were our kind of people) who doesn’t know that they are waiting for us, and that against a terrible first impression from a year and a half ago (time flies!) we are once again putting our fate in Ryanair’s hands starting tomorrow morning. For now, it’s a slightly anxiety-inducing day of waiting for things to get started. We are packed, we have no plans because we treated this as a travel day, and so we watch the hands glide across the clock-face. (“You still have clocks?” Shut up.) This will be a whole different kind of adventure for the next three weeks, so let’s discover it together, shall we?