DAY FORTY-ONE: KESWICK TO CHIPPING CAMPDEN

What is Chipping-Campden?  Is it the surname of a particularly twee and entitled Member of Parliament?  Is it a way to prepare beef inexpensively, slopped onto a plate by a hard-looking middle-aged woman in a hair net as inmates shuffle past?  Is it a medical condition named after the two researchers who discovered that it was not merely a collection of symptoms but in fact an actual condition?

No, no and no.

Doesn't get more charming than this. 

Chipping-Campden is a place... and maybe also a state of being?  We've only been here a few hours, so it's too early to tell, but it could be.  What we can tell so far is that Chipping-Campden (the third P is silent) is without argument the most charming English village we've seen so for on our trip.  

Forget English; it's the most charming village we've seen, bar none, since arriving in the U.K. 41 days ago.  Competition has been fierce -- nice effort, Dingle; good work, Lerwick; solid contribution Grasmere -- but Chipping-Campden, despite its vaguely squirmy name, stands out.

This is maximum Disney England -- the 17th-century village center, the thatched roofs, the ancient graveyard, the rolling hills, the wheat fields (no kidding: wheat fields.  "I don't think I've ever walked through a wheat field," Sandra Bullock said an hour ago, WHILE WE WERE WALKING THROUGH A FREAKING WHEATFIELD)  If Walt made Main Street to resemble the Kansas of his youth, he made Fantasyland, on purpose or not, to resemble Chipping-Campden.  Frankly, it's hard to describe and the pictures I took, which I will sprinkle liberally throughout this short post ("Keep it short," -- S. Bullock) lose almost everything in translation.

I

Not kidding: super charming. 

t doesn't hurt that Chipping-Campden was largely unpopulated today, or that it's 62 degrees, partly cloudy and sunny: perfect fall weather in the middle of August.  Tomorrow our plan is to "do the Cotswalds" -- my wife, like my grandparents, doesn't visit places; she "does" them -- on our way to Bath, but I'm having a hard time imagining that any part of the Cotswalds is more enchanting than the place we're sitting in right now.

Which is fortunate, because getting to Chipping-Campden can be a chore, especially when your voyage begins in Keswick, 240 miles (again with the miles; what's that kilometers, England?) away.  

I'm exaggerating.  Today's drive wasn't bad, save for the first five minutes when I couldn't find my sunglasses, accused Sandra Bullock of losing them and then, after pulling off of the 1.5 lane road out of Keswick, turned out to be sitting on them.  It was just long.  Grueling.  45 minutes of charming Lake District towns we saw yesterday, a comical misstep in one that led to me carefully piloting our unimported in the U.S. Volvo V40 down a street with I swear six inches of clearance on either side.  If you're visiting England (or Ireland) and renting a car, buy the full coverage.  It's a rip-off, sure, but the piece of mind you'll feel while counting the millimeters between your side mirrors and Mrs. MacDonald's flower boxes is worth it.

Of course we'd planned to stop somewhere for lunch.  I chose a place called Stone, population 12,000.  Pop quiz:

Q)  How many cities named Stone are there in England?
A)   According to the Volvo V40's nav, six.

Today's lunch is my shame. 

The ten minutes I spent in the car, idling, trying to figure out which Stone I meant while Sandra Bullock checked out of our Keswick hotel, convinced me that lunch today would be whatever they had in the hot shelf at a gas station minimart, though I didn't share this information with my co-pilot until we were well on our way to Chipping-Campden, zooming down the M6, shuddering in vague panic every time we saw the signs warning us of "serious delays" ahead.  

Somehow we avoided all of the "serious delays" but none of the violent rain squalls.  They came fast and furious, dropping buckets of water on us every 15 minutes or so, then disappearing, the sky glowing with brilliant sunlight (sunglasses on).  15 minutes later, they returned (sunglasses off, wipers on high).  Rinse, repeat.

We left the highway with about 20 miles remaining on the trip and drove though what was, well, the sort of scenery I really love when I see it in Pennsylvania:  hills, farms, fields, small towns with weathered brick row houses.  "I feel like we're in Easton, driving to the Hampton Inn," remarked an unimpressed Sandra Bullock.  "I mean, this is nice, but I sure hope it's better than this."

Rest easy, dear reader; it is.

The challenge of five white knuckle hours behind the wheel is trifling when the reward is

Had enough yet?  I haven't.  

Chipping-Campden, no kidding.  The stiff neck one might acquire by gripping the wheel way too tightly is also worth it, and in this case Chipping-Campden offers a few spa options as well.  Chipping-Campden has these things, you see, because Chipping-Campden is the Carmel of England, max Disney version.  If Carmel was a place where Geppetto felt his life could only be complete if he built himself a son out of wood, except here he might built Pinocchio out of gold.  There are mansions.  Country homes.  In fact, legend (and Rick Steves) says that celebrities like Madonna and Elizabeth Hurley have summer homes here, probably with names so pretentious that they'll melt your eardrums if said out loud, but no matter.  Good judgement, Madge and Liz.  

See, all the houses have names, from the mansions all the way down to the little limestone row houses in the village center, names like "Abbotsbury," "Four Rick Row" and "Molly's Cottage."  As if they weren't cute enough without names.  Chipping-Campden is relentless.  

Sandra Bullock ponders a sheep.

We have only 18 hours to enjoy/lose ourselves in Chipping-Campden, and even though time stands still here that's not a lot of minutes.  So we got here, dropped our stuff in our (eccentric) hotel room and began walking up High Street with a purpose: to do a quick hike to Broad Campden.  In Chipping-Campden, though, plans have a way of dissolving.  They get overwhelmed by charm.  Five minutes of hiking through the village and my wife and I were in a daze, wandering dumbstruck as block after block of fairy tale come to life eased past.

When we finally did break free of town, our little walk to Broad Campden became five miles long and included walking through rolling hills, getting up-close and personal with some sheep, visiting an ancient graveyard and church, seeing an old quaker meeting house and a part in the middle of a wheat field (which Sandra Bullock is now telling me was probably not wheat but was in fact something else) where I  just stopped walking, letting my intrepid wife walk on until I said, "Hey, wait a second.  I don't want to move yet."  I'm pretty close to beautiful scenery overload but today showed me there's always room for a little more. 

Here are today's numbers, and enjoy the pictures.  Imagine that the reality is 100 times more intense:

26 -- number of rain squalls recorded between 10 AM and 2 PM while driving on the M6 today, including two that made visibility impossible.

104 -- number of times I put on and took off my sunglasses during the same time period.

42,000 -- miles on the 1978 MGB roadster with the for sale sign on it, parked on High Street in Chipping-Campden, that made me break my stride.

13,272 -- steps, which is pretty good when you consider that we had about 2,000 when we got out of the car, three hours ago.

17 -- length, in hours, of the flight from Perth, Australia, to whatever airport is nearest to here, per the woman who told us that her sister had just made the flight with her three-year-old and her four-month-old, both of whom behaved fabulously.

600 -- claimed estimated age of the Noel Arms Inn, our lodging for the evening, which may or may not be true, since the hallway outside our room was obviously remodeled in 1754.

It's hard-core countdown time.  Three more full days and then we fly out.  Tomorrow:  we try (in vain, I predict) to find somewhere in the Cotswalds that is more enchanting than Chipping-Campden.  Then we drive to Bath.