Tewkesbury Abbey

An enjoyable day trip from Stow is the short drive over to Tewkesbury in county of Gloucestershire. The church of St Mary the Virgin (better known as Tewkesbury Abbey) is the second largest parish church in the country and a former Benedictine monastery. It is totally incredible and there is no way the photos can begin do it justice.

We arrived around noon and our first stop was the Abbey Cafe. Completely run by volunteers, the Cafe serves up home cooked food at fabulous prices. The money, of course, goes toward the upkeep of the abbey. Ronnie and I both had the Fall vegetable soup with grainy rolls, 2 pots of tea and 2 desserts of English shortbread and apricot flapjacks - and our total bill was only 10 pounds! There were lots of people in our, ahem, age range eating there with folks grabbing tables as quickly as they emptied.

For more on the abbey and its history, click here.
And here.

All in all, it was a great day. We were able to find a drugstore and get our flu shots before boarding a cruise ship next weekend to spend 17 days in close quarters with 3,000 other passengers. We also found a barbershop for Ronnie get his hair cut and still had time to browse several book stores, one in which he landed a used copy of a Dr. Who book for a pound! :)