Every Ash Cloud has a Silver Lining

One of our last major trips that was planned was an incredible tour of Norway that would have included a visit to Oslo and a tour of the Norwegian Fjords, where we'd have seen the likes of this:

Instead of seeing this, we learned how to spell Eyjafjallajökull.

Eyjafjallajökull is a volcano in Iceland that had a minor eruption on April 14th, 2 days before we were scheduled to leave for Norway. You may have heard about this in the news, as it disrupted air travel throughout Europe for a week. When a volcano erupts, it spits microscopic pieces of molten rock, which then solidify in the air and form a giant cloud of ash. The winds were against us, pushing that ash cloud south over the UK and much of Europe. The problem is that if an airplane flies through one of these clouds, there is a risk that the engines will suck in the ash, that the heat from the engine will melt the ash, and that it will then goo up the engine and cause a failure. Apparently this happened to a plane a few decades ago. As such, all planes were grounded, and our trip to Norway was cancelled.

We'd both taken vacation for a couple of days, so we decided to make the most of the loss and try to have some fun around London.

Friday, April 16th

We were originally supposed to be leaving in the morning, and at the beginning of the day we actually still had some hope that the flight ban would be lifted and we'd be able to leave for Norway on a later flight (the airlines cancelled flights on a rolling 6-8 hour cycle for 6 straight days, so you always had some level of hope). When it was clear that we weren't getting out of town on Friday, we decided to go to the Imperial War Museum.

This museum gives history to the British wars of the last few centuries. We focused on the World Wars, and the documents, memorabilia, etc were very interesting. One of the highlights was the WWI exhibit where they recreated a trench. The coolest stuff in the museum, though, was in the lobby - the tanks, planes and other vehicles of the British military.

After leaving the museum, we headed back home to see if luck was on our side and if we'd be able to take a Saturday flight to Norway. When we got home and found that flights were cancelled through Saturday morning, we finally gave up on the trip altogether and cancelled the hotels, tours, etc that we'd had booked and started thinking in earnest about how we could salvage the weekend. Then we had an epiphany - sleep in a castle.

Staying overnight in a castle was on our to-do list from Day One, but we hadn't had too many opportunities. We had actually booked a room at a castle for one night in Ireland, but it was going to cost $700, and I just couldn't open the wallet that far for one night's sleep. Luckily, we were able to find a castle - Thornbury Castle - near Bristol (in the west) that had last minute availability at a much more reasonable price, so we jumped on it, booked the room for Saturday night, and started diligently planning a quick getaway.

Saturday, April 17th

We got up early on Saturday and headed to the Heathrow to pick up a rental car for the weekend, and were on our way by mid-morning. We had a nice drive through the country. We arrived at the hotel by early afternoon and got checked in. The place was awesome.

This is the only Tudor castle in England that has been converted into a hotel, and it is definitely not something where they built a big castle a few years ago to be a hotel. This was the real deal. Okay, technically it is a Tudor Country House meant to resemble an old style castle, but that just means that it wasn't built as a fortress, but was built as a home. Heck, it looks like a castle and was built in the early 1500s, so it definitely counts in our books.

Also of interest to history fans (or just fans of The Tudors series from Showtime), this was built as a residence for the Duke of Buckingham, a guy who was a cousin of King Henry VIII. Things didn't turn out too well for him, though. He wasn't a fan of the king and tried to start a revolt, which led to his beheading, and to the king taking ownership of the castle. Henry actually spent just over a week here with wife #2, Anne Boleyn.

Our room was nice and cozy, like you'd expect a castle to be. Stone walls, tapestries, a big fireplace. All the things you'd expect in a castle. Oh, and it was at the top of a winding stone staircase. It was awesome - such a great experience. So while we probably would have preferred to be spending the day touring around Oslo, this was a perfect alternative, and I'm so glad we were able to do it.

We spent the afternoon walking around the castle and castle grounds, which was fun. They had a nice garden and even a small vineyard. We then headed out into the the small town of Thornbury- walking along a country path that went through some small woods along a creek, and then into a park, and we visited the small church that sits right next to the castle. We went back to the hotel to enjoy a nice afternoon tea in one of the sitting rooms and plan out our evening. We threw around a few ideas like heading into Bristol (turns out there isn't much to do there) or going out to a nice dinner (turns out those restaurants are all back in London), and we finally concluded that the best thing would be to just stay in the castle. We ran out to a local grocery store to buy some dinner supplies and just spent the evening relaxing.

Sunday, April 18th

We didn't really have anything planned for the day, so we slept in as late as possible and then headed out. Since we had the whole day and nothing much to do other than go back home, we decided to head that way but to make a slight detour to Oxford. We'd liked it so much the first time we visited with Eric and Anne that we thought it would be fun to re-visit since we had a few spare hours, and it wasn't terribly far out of the way.

First, though we had to make a quick stop in Stapleton, UK.

My family name comes from the UK. Nobody in our family has ever done a big genealogy, so I'm not sure exactly where we come from, but for sake of argument we'll just say it was here. Actually, there are a couple of towns in the UK called Stapleton, and I couldn't say which (if any) my ancestors hail from, but it was fun to go through one and see my name all over everything.

We got to Oxford in the afternoon. We didn't make it in time for the guided tour that we'd loved so much on the last visit, so we just decided to walk around a little ourselves. We didn't do anything of note, really - just walked around and took in the architecture and atmosphere of the town.

After spending a couple of hours wandering the streets, we had to pack it up and head home. We dropped the car back at the airport and were back at home at a reasonable time.

So, we ended up having a pretty awesome weekend, regardless of the volcano erupting. While we'd have loved to go to Norway, not making that trip gives us a good reason to return later on, and we definitely made the best of an unfortunate situation.