Day 1 Rutland County and Parking (Sept 16)

I have to admit, my obsession with England has always pretty much centered around London. Being the capital of England and with the most people, it's easy to see how London gets so much of the attention.

 For this trip, I was planning to use some rewards points I had saved up and a condo exchange. When searching for a condo exchange I found out that there really wasn't any inventory in London so I decided to look for a place in the countryside and use my rewards points for my London hotel. I was able to find a place in Rutland County, which is in the East Midlands area, about 2 hours north of London. The hotel is called Barnsdale Hall Hotel and it is a former hunting lodge set on the shore of Rutland Water which is a manmade reservoir that not only serves as the county's drinking water reserve, but as a recreational area.

Front of the Barnsdale Hall Hotel

staircase to our room

hotel lobby

Rutland County is the smallest historic county in London and the fourth smallest overall in the UK. The only towns in Rutland are Oakham and Uppingham. Our hotel was about 3 miles from Oakham. 

We started off our morning exploring Oakham. One of the first thing we noticed was how interesting parking and driving would be in a small town. I have two words...NARROW ROADS! It's probably because these villages/towns are so old and were around way before cars that they really aren't very accomodating to cars and parking. There are really no two lane roads, only one lane roads disguising themselves an one lane roads. Lots of yielding to cars when the road was too narrow for two cars to pass.

You expect two lanes of travel on this road?

Parking is very tricky in these towns/villages as well. There just isn't much of it. So many areas are for "permit parking" only for the residents that it makes it hard to find a space (see future blog post for more about that, lol). If you find a parallel parking space, you just whip into it, never minding the direction of travel. Oh and if there is not enough room, just park on the sidewalk like everyone else! If you can't find parking on the street, you can always look for a "car park" and pay for a space.

UK car park

Let's talk about the roundabouts...if you have never driven in a roundabout in England you are missing out! What an adventure. Actually they aren't so bad once you figure out the system. And when you are moving 66 million people around a country, you need the efficiency of a roundabout. To tell the truth, by the end of the week I was actually liking the roundabouts :)

The dreaded roundabout

Once we found a place to park it was time to start exploring Oakham...