Travel home
We didn't travel home immediately, but spent another three weeks travelling around the UK. We did lots of touristy things - a ride on the North York Moors Railway, visited York, Edinburgh, the Scottish Highlands, and went through a submarine at Portsmouth (seeing inside a submarine was a bucket list item for Mary). We spent a week in the midlands where Mary's mother and father had grown up. We solemnly visited the graves of her father and grandfather, and searched for the grave of her grandmother. We then spent a few days near Bath. Graham's ancestors were living in the village of Pennsylvania near Cold Ashton according to the census of 1851. We stayed in a B&B that we think was the place they were living.
'Visiting Mary's grandfather's grave, Steeple Ashton church'
'Footpath from Cold Ashton that Graham's ancestors had walked'
During our flight home we had a stopover in a flash seaside hotel in Brunei. We intended to do some sightseeing as we hadn't been there before. Mary went to sleep as soon as we got to the room at about 11am, woke for a couple of hours for dinner, then slept through until it was time for breakfast. It was a very comfortable room and bed. Graham spent an enjoyable afternoon wandering around the hotel environs seeing lots of birds and butterflies.
And then it was back to reality – jobs, housework, shopping, mowing the lawn. But the glowing memories of the C2C are never far away from our consciousness.