One Wedding and a Plethora of Pubs

Phew! Made it back from Olde England and the biggest pub crawl we have ever undertaken. Daughter #2 successfully married - lasted a month already so it looks like a good un - and a wonderful time was had by one and all. 

Until the wedding announcement was sprung on us in June, we had had neither the intention or inclination to troll around the UK again. Ever. One slightly guilty regret over this stance was not having many Public House (pubs) pictures in an era when this singularly British institution is in seriously rapid decline. A serendipitous solution presented itself however, when Marian came across a list of about 200 pubs around the the British Isles that provided some level of camping facilities - what an opportunity! Thus it was that we spent the next month roaming the old country snapping pictures of hundreds of pubs while visiting numerous "must see" attractions that we never quite got around to in the near forty years that we lived there. Killing two birds with one stone is an apt aphorism for this episode, for kill us it nearly did! Net result? Another 20 or 30 blog posts behind, 3,000 more pictures to review and discard and, worst of all , heightened confusion precipitated by all that funny money and those multiple time changes.
A digression: When I started work in England in the '50s, I earned a whopping 1.75 GBP for my 44 hour week - that's 1.75 for the week not per hour. Today, that entire week's pay, before taxes, wouldn't come close to buying a cup of coffee.
With this realization, we decided some R&R was in order to get our heads straight and start some catch-up with the backlog. Accordingly, its off to Venice next week for a boat ride around the Mediterranean followed by a relaxing slow boat to Fort Lauderdale to be back in the USA in time for Thanksgiving. More anon...