On to Nottingham...

The run to Nottingham is very pretty and we stopped at Banbury for coffee, and realised we were in the town (area) of the famed nursery rhyme, and there is a statue of a lady on a horse in the town centre. Twyford is another pretty town, and it is this sort of experience that you savour, because if you just zoomed up the A's or the M's Freeways, you'd miss it. It does make for a slower and perhaps longer day. but you're seeing stuff.

Like impossibly cute villages with impossible pretty gardens, and patchwork countryside, and about 10 billion daffodils, EVERYWHERE!!!!! They appear along roadside and verges, and in town squares, and gardens and fields. A lot of the early blossom is still clinging on, but the others are coming and we've seen the start of crab apples flowering.

Looking up the hill

We found our way to the hotel we'd booked, (and sorry we did, but that's another tale), and after we'd got our room, triple glazed against the freeway noise, and it works, but you can't have the windows open and get fresh air! As it was still early, we thought we'd check out the Stapleford cemetery, where the headstone for my great-grandfather remains. We had excellent directions from a man on-line before we came away, and he is with the local crematorium/cemetery trust, and has been very helpful.

It did take a few tries to locate the entrance to the cemetery, (the street signs are either not evident, or non-existent or appear about 5 metres into the street you're looking for) 

Anyway, once found, we parked behind the imposing entrance 'gate', and walked up to where we thought it should be.

 And there it was, and I was a little overwhelmed by the moment, realising that this was the resting place of Aaron and Elizabeth Bezear, and two of their children Harry and Annie. They were the deceased older siblings of my grandfather George Wray Bezear and his brother Walter. It is a lovely spot, if not a little austere and 'cold', but it was really nice to be able to be there with them.

 

The gateway/arch