Despite it being the middle of April we were still rather too early to enjoy Batsford Arboretum at it's best. There were a few magnolia trees blossoming, but mostly it was trees without leaves, which wasn't really quite what we were expecting. Still, we managed to spend quite a while walking up and down the (quite hilly) paths. The Arboretum advertises itself as having 56 acres of blah blah blah, but it turns out that 43 acres of that is inaccessible deer park, and we managed to pretty much cover the place in a hour and half and we sat down for about 15 minutes.... still, it was nice enough.
While we were sitting down there was a super-cute little dog which walked past us and behaved very oddly. We wondered if it didn't like our sunglasses or something but the owner assured us it was just anti-social.
After lunch we drove on to Bourton on the Water, which we haven't visited in quite a long time. We're not entirely sure how long, but definitely quite a while.
We drove through the village and parked at one end in the main car park, just past Birdland (now Birdland and Dinosaur Adventure apparently, for reasons that are not entirely evident: besides money, obviously). From here we walked back through the village until we came across the model village, which we visited last time we were here. The model village itself is okay, but doesn't really take that long to look at... however, there was an additional exhibition, which costs another £1 to access, which allows you entry to a very small room where they have various model exhibits set into the walls. Most of these were very good, but they really needed to be set all at eye level and in a bigger space as it was rather difficult to get a good view of most of them.
From here we walked through the village to the Motor Museum which my Mum told me about not too long ago. Well, like a lot of these kind of places, it was good in principle, but the curator needs to clear out some of the crap. For instance they had a 1970's Volvo, but you could barely see it because it was blocked in behind a Land Rover camper van thing. Too much space is given over to unnecessary shite, like thirty Box Brownie cameras that have nothing to do with motoring (or toys, because apparently this is a motoring and toys museum), and why is thirty very similar cameras better than one? I don't know, but it seems to me that this is kind of place where people ring up the owner and offer them a load of junk they don't know what to do with and the owner doesn't know how to say no.
And so the collection grows, which is a shame because they do have a fairly decent collection of cars here. The petrol pumps and garage signs complement the collection, the cameras, scary dolls and chickens(!) do not.
The 'Gift Shop' was the usual themeless collection of junk, there were of course some car themed items, but also fudge (naturally) and jewellery (for no good reason). And so we left, pondering our next move. We had planned to stick around and visit a restaurant in Chipping Camden on the way home (although I didn't really think we would) and we decided to stop in at Dial House for a drink to mull it over.
We could tell it was a bit posh because the menu outside didn't have any pound signs on it... you know, Medallions of Artichoke - 5, that sort of thing. Inside the bar area wasn't that spectacular and Rose's chair creaked like it was about to collapse, but it was okay and the landlady was nice enough (Google images suggests the rooms and restaurant look much better). We had a couple of Cokes and decided we couldn't be arsed to hang around long enough to eat in Chipping Camden, when we left... and only when we left I noticed the enormous Carrot Cake in the corner. Well, I was slightly gutted, to say the least, but it probably wouldn't be as good as Richoux's (or Asda's, actually).
We walked back through the village and spied a jewellers which had a couple of second hand Breitling Colts for sale and a TAG Heuer Link going for £995. I thought about trying the Link on, but it looked a little on the small side, and the bezel looked a bit too thick for my liking so I left it. We had a pretty decent journey back and got home around 6:30pm, just in time to put dinner on.
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