A few weeks ago I posted the first part of our trip to the United Kingdom, but as I mentioned there, the main reason that we first planned the trip was to meet Anita’s Grandma and have a look around Colchester, the place her father grew up in. So after an amazing week in London doing all the touristy bits and pieces, we packed our backpacks and headed north east to Colchester.
It was a pretty quick trip on the National Express to Colchester Town station after which we made our way to our hotel. We booked a few nights at The Rose & Crown “The oldest hotel in the oldest recorded town in England” which was a wonderfully old Tudor style building that looked like it could fall over at any moment. It had a pretty awesome little pub on the bottom floor and once settled in we popped down for a few pints before heading off to Gran’s.
With communication lines being a bit delayed due to us not knowing she had a working phone, we turned up a little unannounced, apart from our letter a month or so earlier, and gave her a bit of a fright, she wasn’t quite sure exactly who we were at first, she thought that I was there to read the gas meter! Once we got over the initial shock we had a lovely cup of tea and a good chat, she was a little overwhelmed still but we managed a few shortbread biccies and headed back to the hotel, we had planned to catch up again the next day with Anita’s uncle and Auntie as well.
The next day we took a bit of a tour around the Colchester Castle museum which used to be a Roman Keep back in AD60 when the Roman’s had control of the United Kingdom. Since then it’s been through quite a few hands, it was used as a prison for a while, and is now a history museum for the area. It was nice wandering around and learning a bit about the area, a bit of education on holiday is always welcome, just not any homework!
We spent the most of the next day and night touring around various parts of Colchester with Anita’s Uncle, Auntie and Gran and checked out the Wimpy (a burger joint I remembered from back in Rotorua, New Zealand when I was a kid) for a bite to eat.
It was a really awesome experience and something that no-one could ever take away from us, an important chapter in Anita’s life and i’m just glad that I could be there to share the moments with her.
Off to Paris next!
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