UK Travel Planning

A Literary-Themed UK Adventure (Part 2) Pilgrimage, Reflection + A Romantic Cotswolds Escape

• Tracy Collins • Episode 177

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Following on from last week’s episode, we follow Lauren’s UK sabbatical as it shifts from a teen-led literary road trip to a soulful pilgrimage in  Pembrokeshire and a belated honeymoon through the Brecon Beacons and Cotswolds. From ancient holy wells and monastic islands to bookshop hunts and crowd-beating tips, this episode celebrates slow, meaningful travel across Britain.

• Why a pilgrimage and how to choose a route with the British Pilgrimage Trust
• Highlights of the Way of St David from Fishguard to St Davids
• Staying at St Non’s Retreat Centre as a peaceful home base
• Caldey Island stillness, monastic history, and handmade chocolate
• Brecon Beacons hikes with Tolkien links and sweeping views
• Hay-on-Wye bookshop discoveries and literary nostalgia
• Chipping Campden base and a 12-mile Cotswold Way walk
• Managing August crowds, parking, and small-group Cotswolds tours
• Off-the-beaten-path ideas like the Rollright Stones
• Final advice: pack light, walk slow, stay open

⭐️ Guest - Lauren Eanes
📝 Show Notes - Episode 177

🎧 Listen to next:

  • Episode #176 - A Literary-Themed UK Family Adventure (Part 1) – Planning a Trip with Teens with Lauren Eanes
  • Episode #52 – Exploring North Wales: An Introduction with Doug Collins
  • Episode #143 – Experience North Wales: Outdoor Adventures, Gastronomy, and Historical Wonders

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SPEAKER_02:

In last week's episode, guest Lauren Eanes shared the first part of her UK sabbatical, a literally focused itinerary around southern England with her husband and four kids. But that was only the beginning. In this episode, find out what happened when the kids flew home and Lauren embarked on stages two and three of her journey, including a pilgrimage along the Pembrokeshire coast and a postponed honeymoon escape to the Cotsworld.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the UK Travel Planning Podcast. Your host is the founder of the UK travel planning website, Tracy Collins. Each week, Tracy shares destination guides, travel tips and itinerary ideas, as well as interviews with a variety of guests who share their knowledge and experience of UK travel to help you plan your perfect UK vacation. Join us as we explore the UK from cosmopolitan cities to quaint villages, from historic castles to beautiful islands, from the picturesque countryside to seaside towns.

SPEAKER_02:

Hi and welcome to this week's episode of the UK Travel Panel Podcast. Now, last week, in episode 176, you heard from listener Lauren Eanes about the first stage of her sabbatical, a literary themed adventure through southern England with her husband and four children. Now, in this episode, we're going to pick up the story as Lauren's sabbatical takes a very different turn. So after waving the kids off at Heathrow, she and her husband embarked on the next chapters of their journey. Hi, Lauren. It's fantastic to have you on the podcast again this week, because you were on last week. Tell us all about your fantastic trip with the children. With your kids, not children, I shouldn't call them children, they're teenagers, they weren't like that, I know. And you saw a teenager clear one point and they were like, excuse me, children, with your teenagers last week, all about uh your uh literary tour of of England, which was amazing, and your trip over to Paris. But after that, the kids went home and you continued your trip around England and actually went to Wales as well. So, would you like to give us a brief introduction again for anybody who hasn't listened? But I know after that introduction they'll be going to be rewinding to listen to last week's for sure. But if anybody didn't listen, would you like to just give us a quick introduction about yourself again, please?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so my name is Lauren Eanes and I live in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I am a Lutheran pastor who was on sabbatical this past summer, and my family and I used that time to travel to the UK.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they you did, and you had a fantastic time uh with the kids doing all the uh literary stuff, which was amazing. Right. So now pick us up from when the the kids went home.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so um yeah, the the short answer of what happened next is we we took a train to Wales. Uh we waited until we knew their plane had taken off. Uh and and for those who are worried about our kids, my aunt was on the plane with them. Um I think they were like pretty seasoned travelers at that point. They could have handled it just fine on their own. Uh but yeah, it was kind of strange leaving them at the airport. Uh, and it was a big shift to go from traveling with four teenagers and corralling everyone and managing the schedule and the travel and everything to a much slower form of travel, doing a lot of walking uh with just adults.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so yeah, so the focus of your sabbatical changed. So uh I know you did now a pilgrimage walk at this point, and this is why you went into Wales. So, would you want to talk to us about why you did that walk and how you did you decide on the location of that pilgrimage?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so um let me just say a little bit about what a pilgrimage is, in case people are like, what is she even talking about? So a really short definition is just a walk with purpose. You know, it's a journey that's usually on foot along a path, often to a sacred place. And it's just an opportunity to get out of your ordinary daily life and walk with intention. And I really wanted to do that, um, to just um be open to new discoveries and insight and transformation that walking through the countryside can bring. Um I'd had some friends who'd done the Camino in Spain, uh the Camino de Santiago, and really gotten a lot out of that. And um, and I knew that there were a lot of old medieval pilgrimage walks in the UK. And so I thought while we were there, I wanted to take advantage of that. Uh so I went on the uh British Pilgrimage Trust website, uh, which is just, I think it's Britishpilgrimage.org. And I highly recommend anyone who wants to do a pilgrimage in Britain to start there. It's a really good website, wealth of information with a ton of different routes. And you can search by like the length of the walk you want to do, or the part of the country, or the type of pilgrimage that you want to do, which was kind of overwhelming because there's a lot of different options. So it was hard to decide. Like I just knew I wanted to do a pilgrimage, but from there I wasn't sure. And I was actually, I was in the library one day flipping through a book that had just these gorgeous photos of different places in the UK. And I saw a picture of the Pembrokeshire coast, and I was just captivated. I was like, where is this? I need to go there. And I looked at the map and I was like, oh, this is at like the tippy little corner of far coast of Wales. It's nowhere where we were planning to be traveling. So I thought, oh well, you know, I'll put that on the list for a future trip. But then I was a few days later, I was back on the pilgrimage, British Pilgrimage Trust page and looking for walks that were like five to seven days long. And the way of Saint David popped up. And so I'm reading about it, and the description says that part of the path followed the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's that beautiful place from that book. I knew nothing about Saint David at that point, had never heard of him before. It turns out he's the patron saint of Wales, so he's kind of important, but I didn't know anything. Um, but I started reading about his story and reading about the root itself, and it just grabbed me. I thought, this is what we need to do. Completely different. I had never been to Wales. And then I uh discovered that the feast day for Saint David, the day that that he celebrated in the church, is March 1st. And that is my father-in-law's birthday. So I thought, all right, well, that's a fun coincidence. Like I think this is it. This is what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that's fantastic. And of course, you and your husband were joined by both of your parents, both sets of parents for a week. So, how did that come about and what was it like to travel with them?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So as a pastor, my job takes me away from my family a lot. And so I knew I wanted my sabbatical time to involve and include as much family as possible. So, you know, we did the couple weeks with the kids, and then I invited my husband's parents and my dad to join us on this part of the adventure. I just thought it would be a meaningful thing for us to do together, uh, which it very much was. Um, and we traveled really well together and we bonded a lot, and it it just really brought us all a lot closer together.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I can imagine. I can imagine that was a really special thing to do as well, and fantastic memories as well, that you're gonna look back on about you know, doing that walk together. So tell us about walking the St. David's Way along that coast. What were the highlights or memorable moments?

SPEAKER_01:

How much time do you have? I could we could do like a five-hour long podcast and then I'd still be talking about it. So I'll try to, I'll try to um keep keep it uh timely here. But so the complete route was from we started like near Fishguard um and and walked to the city of St. David's. And so it was about 30 miles of walking that we did over four days. Um, we the route began at uh St. Gwendol's Church, which was founded in the sixth century. And right by the church is um a holy well that that predates Christianity. It was a well that that people were going to. It had purported healing powers for you know millennia, which is incredible. And it's it's a well that ancient pilgrims from the eighth century following the same path uh would have stopped at to wash their feet and take a break along the way. Uh so it just being in a place with such deep history and incredible continuity and connection with the past was so powerful. And just feeling that connection with people who have been walking the same path for hundreds of years, like seeing the Celtic cross carved into a stone from the eighth century that has been a marker and a waypost on this pilgrimage path for centuries. I mean, it's still there. It is so profound to feel that connection. Um yeah, it it that part of it was just incredible. And then there's just like the natural beauty of the place, these dramatic cliffs and the craggy hills and the sandy beaches and the little coves and rock pools and the beautiful little harbors. I I felt like I had to stop like every 50 feet and take a photo because the view had changed again and was just so beautiful again. So that was just incredible. We were really lucky with weather, too. Um, we really didn't have any rain at all. There were a couple of times of incredibly light drizzle, but very few. So beautiful days. We saw wildlife, we saw a young kestrel in his nest, we saw a seal pup that had just been born. Um, we were there in late July, so it was like really, really early for seal pupping season, which is more like September typically, but but we did see some, and that was just magical. Um, we learned about a lot of the endangered species, especially the birds. We saw a lot of chuff, um, which was heartening because that's a species that's been struggling, and so just that connection to the earth and nature was wonderful. Um, and we also just had a lot of fun. We stopped at the melantriguent wool mill and we watched them weave. And of course, then we purchased some souvenirs, which it's not cheap, but it was uh that was really cool. Um, we went to the blue lagoon and my crazy husband actually jumped off the ledge, you know, about 25 feet up in the air into that cold, cold, cold water, which was a highlight for him. It was a highlight for us too. We were standing there on the shore cheering him on. And nobody was tempted to join him. No, I was I was a little bit tempted, but not a lot. I I was happy to take the video. It was it was all right. Uh so and then, you know, the place that we ended up was the city of St. David's, um, which is the smallest city in the UK. Uh, and only really called a city because it has a cathedral. But it's just the a delightful little town. And the cathedral is magnificent, you know, again, a place of just deep, deep history and gorgeous art and architecture, and a real palpable sense of of spirituality. So yeah, everything about it was just magical.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, it does sound amazing. I have to say, I I was in uh on the island of Iona a few years ago, and uh and just seeing the the crosses there and that that then that sort of walk around the island, that that was also it's amazing. You kind of cannot I mean I grew up in the UK, so I have that kind of sense of you know having those thousands and thousands of years of history, but even still, it still is kind of like pretty awe-inspiring when you when you see something like that. Um now I know at the end you you stayed in St. Non's retreat and at St. Davis, is that right? So, how was that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, so there are different ways to do a pilgrimage, right? And so one is that you know, you take everything you need for the week and you put it in your pack and you walk seven or eight miles each day, and then you stop to sleep in a campground or a guest house or something, and then you get up the next day and you keep going. And we did it a little differently in that we had a home base that we returned to every night. Um, so we would, you know, do our walk and then we'd go back to the retreat center, and then the next day we'd go back to where we left off the day before. So we stayed at St. Nan's retreat center. It's a really special place. It's right on the coast, and so you just have these amazing views, and you just you walk into the guest house, and it's you just feel warmth and hospitality and peace. And it's right on the the Pembrokeshire Coast path and part of the pilgrimage route. So St. Non was the mother of Saint David, and on the grounds of the retreat center are the ruins of Saint Non's chapel, which they can't date with any certainty, but it's definitely one of the oldest buildings associated with Christianity in Wales. And it has this large stone with a Celtic cross engraved in it that they've dated to like the 7th or 8th century. And adjacent to that is another holy well, which again would have been one of the main stops of medieval pilgrims who would do this pilgrimage. So, again, it's just a place thick with history and and meaning. So it's cool to just be there. Um, and it was just a great place to stay too. The hosts are a delightful married couple, and they fed us delicious food for breakfast and dinner, and they gave us a packed lunch before we left each day. And the beds were comfortable and the showers were hot, and I can't recommend it highly enough. So, yeah, originally I had not wanted to do it the way we did. Like I wanted to just like walk and stop and then get up and keep going. But in the end, I was really glad that we had a home base to return to each night and kind of reflect on the day and be fed meals. And and then, you know, so only have to carry day packs and not have to carry like all the things was really nice. And there are things, you know, when you're doing a pilgrimage, you can also have it set up that like your bag is transported to your next stop. Um, but that all seemed too complicated. So this actually worked out really, really well.

SPEAKER_02:

I I like the sound of that. I'm not I'm not a massive fan of kind of walking anywhere, but if I was gonna do it, I like the way that you've done it. I'm kind of well known for that. But now, after this, where did you go? I think you went to you went to somewhere for a couple of days.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so we went to Caldi Islands, which you mentioned Iona. Caldy is another one of the UK's holy islands, like Iona and Bardsey, um, and Holy Island, um, Lindisfarne. So Caldy is is is a special place. It's we so when we were done with our pilgrimage, we went from St. David's to Tenby. And Caldy Island's about a mile off the coast of Tenby. And so it's actually really easy to do a day trip to Caldi. A lot of people who are on holiday in Tenby will just go over for a few hours and enjoy. Um, but you can also stay there, which is what we did, uh, again, at a retreat center called St. Philomena's, which again just had you know private, simple but very comfortable rooms and delicious meals were included. Um, and there are some wonderful walking trails on the island. And so we continued to do a lot of walking there. Um, and there's also, again, just some rich history. A Celtic monastery was founded on the island in the 6th century, which again, like like you said, like you're from the UK, so you're kind of used to having old things around you. Being from the US, like this is really old. And so it's just pretty powerful to see that and experience that. Um, one of the things they have in the old priory, it's called the Caldi Stone. And it's this big stone they've dated to the sixth century that has inscriptions in both Latin and in Ogum, which is like an ancient script that originated in Ireland. So it's just fascinating. Um, and Caldi also has woodlands to walk through. They have red squirrels on the island, which is fun. There's a beautiful, yeah, there's a beautiful sandy beach. Um so it's just a place apart to relax and and have rest and and peace. Oh, and the monks have a chocolate factory. This is there's a uh a um uh sisterian monastery now on the island, and the way that they help to fund their ministry is through making chocolate and the dark chocolate in particular, phenomenal. So if you go to Caldi, if you do nothing else, get some chocolate.

SPEAKER_02:

Sounds good. So now did your parents go with you as well to the island? They did. So how how was that after the walk-in to have those few days of kind of I guess chilling out and relaxing?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it was just it was wonderful. You know, life, everyday life is so busy. And to be able to just step away from the busyness and just be and just be together, you know. I mean, that's something that I'll really treasure forever.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. So now after that, your parents did they go back to the states or did they continue a bit of travel around the UK?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they went back to the states. They had done some traveling before they met up with us uh in various places in the UK. And so they at that point their journey was done.

SPEAKER_02:

Now, I know you continued on, and um, I was so pleased to find out that you stopped on at Hey on Y, which is you had to, with your love of literary love, you had to have stopped there. So, how did you find Hey? Did you enjoy it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so so this sort of began the the third part of our adventure, um, which was a bit of a belated honeymoon. Uh, my husband and I got married in 2019, and we had planned on doing a honeymoon to the Cotswolds in 2020. And we all know what happened then. So we thought, okay, well, we need to do our honeymoon. So that's that's what we did after we left Tenbu, we we rented a car and we drove through the Brecon Beacons, and I was very determined to get to Heionwai before we went over to the Cotswolds. And um, I mean, it was great just getting there, driving, observing the landscape and and how it changed from the coast was really cool. And yeah, Heianwai did not disappoint. It we only had a few hours there, unfortunately, um, which is nowhere near enough time to explore all the bookstores, but we we did our best to get through as many as we could. Um, and we did our best to not buy too many books because we knew we had to transport them home. Um, but yeah, we we got an early edition Jennings book, and I got a copy of um E. H. Shepherd's Drawn from Memory, which is sort of about his growing up in London. Um, we got an like an old but but really good condition Dickens. Um, so yeah, it it the books we got connected to the travels that we had done a few weeks earlier, and um, and I got a few books on Celtic spirituality because I wanted to continue to explore that after having lived it for a week. So yeah. Love Hay on Why, would love to go back, would love to go for the festival that they do each year. Ugh, that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_02:

It it really is full of bookshops. You kind of say that to people, but then you actually go and it's oh, there's just so many amazing bookshops in Hay. So if you if you like books, that's the place to go. But uh you also did a bit of, was it did you do a little bit of hiking before you went to Hay on Why? I'm guessing you did. So um what yeah. Was that a bit different, I guess, from doing the coastal hike?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So we um we hiked in the Brecken Beacons. We we went to Taliban on Usk, which part of why we went there is that it's said that that area inspired Tolkien. The Black Mountains really inspired him for his writing in Lord of the Rings. Um so that was fun to do that hike. We did a circular trail that took us along the canal there, and then up a hill and over a ridge. So we got beautiful views of the Usk Valley and the Black Mountains, and then we went back down to the valley and the Taliban Reservoir, which was beautiful. So there's just a variety of scenery all along the way, and that was that was great. It was like five or six miles. It wasn't a super long hike, but it gave us a good taste of a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, that's great. So you I I love the fact you've you've got such a lot of variety in your trip, you really have. Um, and so now you head to the cotswold. So let's let's have a chat about how that went. So I think you headed to were you staying in Chip and Camden?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so that was our home base, and that was a great base for exploring the Cotswolds. It's big enough that it's got like great pubs and great shops, but it wasn't too overrun with tourists while we were there. It was just a great little market town with a lot of character and a great place to use as our home base.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh no, I agree. I like I I do also like uh Chipmunk Camden. Unfortunately, some of the um Cotswold's uh towns and villages are becoming a bit of a victim of their own success, so they're getting extremely busy. But I think Chipmont Camden was a was a a good a good choice. And obviously it's the start or the end, whichever we're looking at, I think it's probably the start of the Cotswold Way. So yeah, did you do a bit of walking on the Cotswold Way as well?

SPEAKER_01:

We we did a bit, we did a lot, actually, in one day. We we walked about 12 miles. Oh wow, which was kind of kind of crazy. That was our longest uh walking day, but but and by that point, right, it had been a month. And when we were traveling with the kids, I mean we were doing, you know, 15,000, 20,000 steps a day in cities and things, and then we, you know, we're doing seven or nine miles of hiking. So by this point, we built up some some good muscles in our legs, and we uh we ended up, we took the bus down to Stanton and then walked the Cotswold way back up to Chipping Camden. And so yeah, it was it was it was long, but every step was worth it. It was really great. I loved that day. Um, Stanton has the most, I mean it's just a little teeny village, but it has the most incredible little church that is definitely worth stopping in if, like me, you're into old churches. Um, I think by that point my husband was a little tired of old churches, but I was like, we're stopping at the church. Um so that was great. And then, you know, the Costwold Wade, like the path is really clearly marked, and the scenery is varied and interesting. Um, and you get to Broadway about halfway through the walk, and that was an excellent time to stop at a tea shop and have a cream tea. We were ready for that. Yeah. Um, and we walked up to the Broadway Tower with the beautiful views from there. And so, yeah, then when we arrived back in Shipping Camden, they have the marker that says, like, yeah, this is the terminus of the Cotswold Way, either the beginning or the end, depending on which direction you're doing it. Um, so even though we'd only walked like a little more than a tenth of the Cotswold Way, we still took our picture. Like, here we are at the end, because it had been a long walk. We felt good about that.

SPEAKER_02:

I'll tell you a little secret here, Lauren. I've walked about five meters of it and I've still got a picture of myself at the end of that.

SPEAKER_01:

I think that counts. I think that counts. You were on the Cotswold Way.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly, exactly. So so now you you went to visit lots of the other. So you you've mentioned Broadway, it's great. You went to Broadway, you went to Broadway Tower, you went to Stanton, you've stayed in in uh Chip and Camden. So what other towns and villages did you go and visit? Because there's some wonderful market towns as well, like uh Morton and Stowe. And oh, so tell me where you went, what did you love?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so we we did spend one day just driving around and and checking out little little towns like that. And we did, we went to Burton on the Water and Stowe in the World and Morton and Marsh. Um, I'm sad to say I didn't love these three towns only because they were so crowded. And I really I can't complain. Like we were two of the tourists making it crowded, right? Um, but but yeah, like you said, they're kind of a victim of their own success. And and my guess is that other times of the year the towns would be more enjoyable and more manageable. And and we knew going in early August, it was gonna be busy. But I was surprised by just how busy it was. I I really was. Um, and that that really did damper the experience. Um so yeah, I think like my advice for people would be don't go in August. But but if like us, that's the only time you have. Um, we really did. I I really liked Stow in the Wald. It didn't make me feel quite as claustrophobic and surrounded by people. And we did enjoy the some of the shops there. And and Burton on the Water, we just kind of on a whim decided to go into the motoring museum. Oh, it's so good. Oh my gosh, it's so good. Neither of us are really big, like car people, but we loved that museum. It is just a feast for the eyes. There are interesting cars, there's so much interesting memorabilia. It was great. That was definitely a highlight. And it wasn't very crowded at all. So even though you stepped out of the museum and you're there are mobs of people, there weren't a lot of people in the museum. It was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I'm so glad you mentioned that because I also Doug and I love the Motion Museum in in Bournemouth of the Water. Now, Borton again has become a bit of a victim of its own success in that it it it doesn't matter, to be honest, it doesn't seem to matter whatever time of year. And I've stayed there in January as well, which I think really low season. Still quite busy. Um, obviously, in the summer it gets like the last time I stayed there, I think was June. And of course, that everybody's got their feet in the river and having a little paddle, and um, yeah, and a lot of students also seem to kind of descend on on bought on the water. So it yeah, that is becoming really busy. The last few times I've actually stayed in just outside Burford, and I've also stayed in Stowe. We really love Stowe because that that's just something I love walking off at the church, and I don't know how many photos I've had taken of that that that church door. Yeah, I don't know. I must I must have about a hundred photos. You've got to have a photo of the church door. Um so but but it is becoming that way. And um did you go to Bibery and the slaughters, or did you did you manage to get to them?

SPEAKER_01:

We didn't. By that point, we we were just kind of burned out. We we had planned to go to the slaughters, but there were just so many cars on the road, and we were like, we're it's it probably was gonna there were gonna be more people there than we wanted there to be. And so we were like, we just need to, we just need to go back. And that was our last day before we were flying out, and so we're like, oh, we should probably go back and eat some food and pack our bags and all that.

SPEAKER_02:

No, actually, I I am actually gonna share a tip as well that um if it because I'm sure there's lots of people listening kind of going, oh, I really want to do this, but it I I don't fancy the A, the amount of crowds there are, but also the parking situation, uh, which is why we work with Go Cotswolds. Then are there a small group to that do um company that do to uh family run that do so you can basically go out with them and they do the parking, you don't have to worry about the parking and they tell you where you're going and you can go and see some of the smaller faces. So um because because you said the Cotswold is becoming a kind of bit of a bottleneck with the amount of cars and stuff on the road, and parking at places like Biberry can be incredibly difficult, um, which is why I kind of say if you if you if you want to go and see those places and you don't want to be doing the drive and doing that, then that that's a good option. So that's worth considering next time, Lauren. Yeah, no, it it definitely would be. For sure. Um yeah, so I just want to put that out there because I know I don't want to put people off going to the the cottswells because they are beautiful, um, but you do have to kind of Oh, kind of sometimes fight the crowds and trying to get parking can be but can be a bit of a problem. But have you got any kind of advice apart from not going in August? Did you manage to get parked okay? And was that all that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

We did. Um I think probably um Burton on the water was the most crowded and hardest to find parking, but we we did. Um stow we parked at the um is it a Tesco? They have a big Tesco, I think, that had that you're allowed to park there and and walk into town. And that was super easy. Yeah, Morton and Marsh, we had trouble finding parking. Burton, they have a big parking lot um that that we were able to find a spot. That was so parking wasn't terrible. There, there were places to park and and walk into town. Yeah, I mean, I think just as long as you're mentally prepared for the crowds, then you know, you can you can manage it. There's definitely it's definitely still worth going. Um, well, we also went to the Roll Wright Stones. Oh yeah, and that that was interesting, uh, and and not super crowded. You know, there are a couple other people there, but um, but not too many. And so I think, you know, we wanted to like hit the towns that that everyone talks about. And I I think I wish we had spent more time going a little more off the beaten track, um, and and seeing some of the places that aren't as popular, but equally beautiful and fascinating.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And there's some there's some there are there's just so much to see in the Costwells, and it's a huge area, that's another thing as well. Like you were in the kind of northern part, they it that they just stretch all the way down to Bath. So you've got a massive area uh that you can explore. So just another reason to go back, Lauren. Yes, absolutely. Now, okay, so this is so you've you've this how long is this you've been traveling? A month now? So this is this is a long trip. So, how did this kind of second and third part of the trip? How was it different? How did it feel different from traveling earlier when you had all the kids with you? I guess a bit more relaxed.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, obviously the dynamics and the pace were completely different. Um, yeah, it really was like having three trips in one, you know, the trip with the kids, exploring authors and and books. There was time with our parents on pilgrimage with a lot of time of deep reflection and self-discovery and just being in touch with our spirit. And then there was our belated honeymoon and the Brecken Beacons and the Cotswolds. And each of them were just really distinct, and each was really special.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh it sounds like honestly, you just had the best sabbatical. When is the next one that you can do? Do you have to wait a few years or can you do it next year?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's like at least seven years before I can do another one. So yeah. But that doesn't mean, I mean, I definitely have some some you know, frequent flyer points, you know, airline points and credit card points and stuff. So I am really hoping to do a shorter trip uh sooner than seven years.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I well, I'm sure you will, and it I'm sure it'll be it'll be great fun, uh, whatever you do. And we've we've already had a little bit of chat about Beatrix Potter, so you never know that uh you might have a bit of a Beatrix Potter theme going on. Now, if you know how I end the podcast, I always ask the same question at the end of every episode. So if someone was wanting to include a pilgrimage or a countryside walk into their UK trip, what would be your one tip for them?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I think it would just be like just do it. You you will not regret it. You know, walking forces you to slow down. Um, it just makes you so much more aware of where you are and where you're going and who and what is around you. And just getting away from crowded cities and being connected with the earth. I mean, it was just so life-giving and restorative. And it it gave me time and space to just reflect on lots of different things, to not have to rush onto the next thing on the to-do list, but just to walk and and breathe and listen. It all just really, really fed my soul. Um, and the UK countryside is so beautiful. The extensive network of public footpaths is such an incredible gift. Like the US has nothing like it. It's it's amazing. And so having the freedom to just step out into an unfamiliar place and discover what you find along the way was such a gift. So yeah, I guess other than just do it, my advice would be, you know, just pack light, both literally and figuratively. Um, embrace the unexpected, notice the little things, and stay open to whatever the journey may bring.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, that sounds fantastic. That's wonderful advice. Wonderful advice for life, actually, Lauren.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, thank you so much for joining me again this week to talk us through your trip report. Um, you had a fantastic time. I I can hear that. I know when I spoke to you last week as well, and this week you can really I can feel, I mean, I know you're thousands of literally thousands of kilometers away from me because you're in the States and I'm in Australia. But I can honestly just looking at your face, I can I can feel the joy irradiating from you for this trip. So it's just been fabulous to talk to you. And thank you so much for sharing it with our listeners as well. Just lovely. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, thank you. It has been super fun to relive it with you. So thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks again to Lauren for joining me to share stages two and three of her sabbatical. If you missed part one of Lauren's story, be sure to go back and listen to last week's episode. You'll find all the links and resources mentioned today in the show notes at uktravelplanning.com forward slash episode 177. A huge thank you to this week's podcast sponsors, Melissa, Vanetta, and Shannon, for supporting the show, amongst others. If you'd like to sponsor the podcast and receive your own shout out, you'll find the link in the show notes. And don't forget, if you'd like to share your own UK travel story or ask a question, you can leave me a voice message via Speakpipe. The link is also in the show notes. But that's it for this week, and until next week from me, happy UK Travel Planning. Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the UK Travel Planning Podcast. As always, show notes can be found at uktravelplanning.com. If you've enjoyed the show, why not leave us feedback via text or a review on your favourite podcast app? We love to hear from you, and you never know, you may receive a shout out in a future episode. But as always, that just leaves me to say until next week, happy UK travel planning!