Our Fourth Day in England

Sunday, April 2nd

The only close grocery store that we have found so far is a small 7-11 type place a block away.  Even after the big trip to Tesco yesterday, Nancy still needed some of the basics - like salt and pepper, catsup and a wine bottle opener.  So, we looked in the phone book and found a grocery store within six blocks, in a direction we hadn't explored before - straight up.  There is a hill (cliff) across the road to the north of us that is covered with houses.  The indicated address for the store was at the top of this hill - do you suppose that's why it's called "Clifton"? So, we climbed the mountain (boy, are we going to be in great shape - if we live) and sure enough - behind the houses on the ridge was a very nice shopping area know as Clifton Village.  We snooped around a bit and decided we definitely needed to come back on a day that the shops would be open.  We didn't find the grocery store we had started out for, but we did find an open store in about the same location called Tesco Express.  Tesco Express is a scaled-down version of the store we had shopped yesterday.  Nancy was able to find most of what was on her list.  Getting home with a full load of groceries was easy.  We walked to the edge and just sorta fell over.  Once home we resolved to take the rest of the day off.  I went down to the local convenience store and bought one of the London papers, the Sunday Telegraph.  The newspaper had several stories on how they and other papers had spoofed the reading public with "April Fools" day's articles - some of which were quite elaborate.

A view across the river from Rownham Mead showing the racing powerboats in the foreground.

Rownham Mead is a riverfront development -  you can't see the water from our unit. We finally went to see the water - can't be more than 100 yards from our door.  As we approached the water we heard the whine of small gas engines and found that they were racing radio controlled model powerboats right in front of us.  The boats were about 30-36 inches long and moving at an impressive rate of speed around a marked course a couple of hundred yards long.  The wind was blowing at a considerable clip so the boats were going fine downwind but on the upwind leg, if they went too fast, they would flip.  The race committee boat was quite busy rescuing capsized boats. Many of the boat owners were also racing to rescue their boats before they hit the lee shore. The races went on for several hours, but with the wind blowing and the temperature in the low fifties, we gave up and came home.  I have to admire the tenacity to the race participants for sticking it out.  When we got home, we really just relaxed the rest of the day.  Nancy did a load of clothes and learned that there is no dryer and spread all of the load around the flat to dry.  The washing machine is a front-load one and the items came out almost dry.  When we turned the heat on, it didn't take too long for them to dry.  So, about every 30 minutes or so, everything was turned over to dry them evenly

There is a small "finger" bay to the west of apartment complex.  Our unit is to the left and obviously behind

Same finger bay slightly different angle.  I'll get a picture from across the river later

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