Shrewsbury

Saturday, January 29

It was very cold today.  Everything has frost.  The temperature is -6C .   We left Shrewsbury and drove to Snowdonia National Park in Northern Wales.  We noticed one farm had bison.  I wasn’t fast enough with my camera to get a picture.   windshield shots of the countryside.   Good car snack.  Pretty lake just beyond Capel Curig.

We had an interesting day.  We went to “the potteries”.  Wayne wanted to see a pottery factory and I wanted bargains.  NUVI had both Spode and Wedgwood.  We chose Spode and found out it had been closed for 5 years.  Next we tried Wedgewood.  It was a huge complex.  We toured the museum which depicted the founding of the company and the people who ran it over the years, the innovations in manufacture and the artists (mostly women) who decorated the pottery. Then we had lunch and toured the craft room.  Each station had a craftsman who demonstrated part of the process.  They were angry because the company has been taken over by Americans and while they are highly skilled, their jobs have gone to Indonesia.  Then we went through the store (no bargains there!)  Then we browsed the “seconds” and again, couldn’t afford those either.  We were both disappointed.    We decided to drive as far as Shrewsbury and spend the night there. Shrewsbury is old and the downtown is beautiful.   More bad luck.  We couldn’t find a hotel room, except at a Travel Lodge at a road stop on the motorway.  We had dinner at Burger King and picked up breakfast food at the mini-mart.  No pictures!

Friday, January 28

We were able to do an endowment session in the Preston Temple and we were the witness couple.  We were impressed with the campus.  There is a large family history center, a mission training center and housing for long-distance patrons.  We enjoyed our session and talking with a few of the workers.  It is one of the smaller temples and has the same floor plan.  It is built of marble with stained glass.  It sits right on the motorway.   They complained of the lack of patronage (seems universal).  Their shift was so small that we had no one to show us where to go and ended up wandering around quite a bit.

Back in England (there was a sign but we couldn’t stop) we took pictures of Ulswater Lake  in the Lake District.  It was overcast all day and made photography difficult.  Many lakes and all very beautiful.  Lake Windemere is famous because of its beauty.  We loved seeing the rock walls that separated the fields of sheep.  We stayed the night at the Hartwood Hotel just down the road from the Preston Temple.

Brampton

Getting around Glasgow is confusing and we probably couldn’t do it using just the map.  I wanted to see Hadrian’s Wall and we were very close to it.  We programmed NUVI to take us to Brampton, which was a pretty good sized town (bold print on the map) and we figured we would be able to find it from there.  We have trusted NUVI on this trip because we know the satellite in the sky can see a bigger picture than we can.  To get to Brampton, NUVI said to go south.  I thought we should have been going east, but we decided to trust NUVI.  We had faith that even when we were confused she would get us to where we wanted to go.  NUVI led us astray!  We went south about 25 miles and then she took us on smaller, narrower roads until we were on a dirt road and reached Brampton.  I think the population must have been about 20.  I never did get to see Hadrian’s Wall because we didn’t have time to retrace our steps.  But we did get to see a very small village.  I learned later that NUVI gives you every Brampton in her data base to choose from and I didn’t scroll down to see if there were any more Bramptons than the one I saw on the screen.  Is there a lesson here?  We have faith that NUVI will take us to where we want to go, but we have to do our part.  We also can’t trust in the arm of flesh.  The Holy Ghost would never lead us astray.

When we looked at Loch Lomond first thing in the morning, we had to brave the cold and go out on the deck of our room to see the sun rise.  It was spectacular.  We had a nice breakfast and then hit the road again.