Revenge of the rental car...and other tales from England and Wales.

Scenery from northern Wales
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Three months had flown by and before I knew it, my mom was flying over to Edinburgh to meet me for the last leg of my trip.  Our plan was to rent a car and embark on a mini-roadtrip through England's Lake District and Cotswolds region as well as the Snowdonia National Park in northern Wales, before finally ending up in London.  The only catch...this time, I was driving.  ;)  Let the adventures begin.

We were off.  Our first stop on our way south was to see Hadrian's Wall, which the Romans built between England and Scotland.  We hadn't given too much thought to how we would find the wall - we sillily thought there would be signs telling us how to get there.  First lesson of English roadtripping...the signs blow.  So we were pretty much left to our own devices.  And unfortunately for us, the English countryside is absolutely littered with old stone walls, and finding the right old stone wall among the eight million others can be a little challenging.  But, after hours of driving in a circle, we think we found it.  Score one for the Haufs.

A field of lavendar in the Cotswolds
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Fresh from our victory over Hadrian's wall, we headed on confidently to the Lake District...where we tragically hit our first hiccup of the trip.  Or should I say, hit the first rock of our trip.  As in rock in the road.  And although we saw some amazing, breathtaking sights on our roadtrip, there is nothing so memorable as seeing your rental car's hubcap roll on past your car while you're still in it driving down the road.  I may not know much about cars, but even I can tell that's a bad sign.  Somehow a rock had walked right in front of my car, and I totally nailed the sucker.  Got a flat tire and busted up the wheel rim (did I mention the rental was a Mercedes Benz...first and last time I drive one I think).  To make matters more interesting, we were on a rural mountain road in the middle of nowhere when the rock decided to attack us.  Luckily, a very nice lady stopped to help and between us all we managed to get the donut on without too much bloodshed.  There were a few more hiccups on getting a replacement car, but finally we got a new car, and were back on the road.

Our offending wheel
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The second rental car was much better behaved than the first and managed not to drive itself into any miscellaneous rocks for the rest of the trip.  It also helped that we did a little less driving and took a few more scenic railroad trips...I figured my mom would enjoy the scenery more when her fingers weren't gripping the dashboard in panic.  We finally ditched the rental car and headed to London for our last few days.  We crammed a ton of sight-seeing in, and a few days later, boarded our plane exhausted, perhaps a little delirious, but happy to have seen all the sights.

And now I'm back states' side.  Its hard to believe that three months is already gone....feels like I just left.  I had an amazing time and enjoyed every minute of my trip.  I could easily do it all again and go away for another three months!  So I count myself lucky and blessed to have had the time away, and now I'm happy to be back home and see friends and family again.  Hope you enjoyed the blog...I enjoyed writing it!