The British like to count things

Like steps, and not just in places like St. Pauls, where it's interesting. In the British Museum every staircase is marked with how many steps it takes to reach various levels. I keep wondering if there's a legal reason why they're doing this, like some obsessive version of the ADA. But there there are many signs along the motorway saying exactly how many yards of hard shoulders are coming up on the motorways. Do I really need to know that it ends in 140 years? What am I going to do with that information?

We headed out from Minehead expecting a relatively straightforward ride to see cottages and gardens in the Midlands. But something got in our way. Literally. We were driving along and suddenly the whole line of cars in front of us stopped. Then started. Then stopped again. And again, and again, and again. Finally, we saw what was going on; there was a wide load in front of us, a truck carrying a prefab house. It was on a two lane road and every time they reached a narrow spot in the road, it would stop and let all the cars pass in the other direction before moving on.

This would be okay for a mile or two, but it went on for well over a half hour, during which we traveled a total of 7 miles. Yep, 14 miles an hour averaged for a half hour. It was incredibly frustrating. A couple of times I went off onto side roads to try to run around it, but never succeeded. It was brutal. Finally it pulled over and we got to pass. There must have been 200 cars behind in a line at that point. It's hard to imagine that's legal. In California if you have 5 people behind you on a mountain road you have to pull over. Five. Considering how into counting they are, how is 200 okay?

Once clear, we stopped in a couple of pretty little towns to look at cottages. There are still a bunch of cottages with thatched roofs, which are very cool looking. And not just the roofs, the cottages themselves are old and the some of the foundations have settled in funny ways leaving the whole house looking kind of chock-a-block.

Then we went to another garden, a somewhat larger but not huge place called Kiftsgate. Very pretty. It's hot here, but not like the US northeast. Hot is 80 and muggy. Tomorrow is actually supposed to be mid to upper 80's which is very unusual. At least tonight's hotel has AC, though it's taken it about 7 hours (and the sun going down) to cool the room off.

We're staying in a town called Chipping Campden. The names are just wonderfully silly. Chipping comes from some old word for market, and it's always referred to as a market town, which people say like you know what it means even though it's meaningless in current times. Apparently they sold a lot of wool here, and there are plenty of sheep (not like in the hotel, just on the farms). There's a very pretty market hall that was built in the early 17th century. The town itself is very pretty by any measure. We had dinner at a nice pub/restaurant and then came back to the room. Here are some pictures. I'm tired and don't want to write any more for now. Maybe in the morning.