I'm back from a great vacation

Well our vacation in the UK is over. snif snif... I guess we have to come back someday. It was great fun and we saw and did some fantastic things.
Hiking on Dartmoor and seeing the wild ponies on the other side of a tor. Such a beautiful place.
Seeing Stonehenge, awe inspiring.
Driving around Cornwall and Wales with the ocean cliffs on one side and the hedgerows on the other. Sleeping at a campground in Tewksbury close to Tewksbury abbey. Staying at another canpground beside Castle Howard (the house shown in the film Brideshead Revisted) and realising people still live there. Visiting numerous castles, abbeys, and churches that date back almost 1000 years (I'm rabid amateur historian. I'm facinated by piles of old stones ;o). Visiting neolithique sites such as a flint mine or a copper mine that date back 4000-5000 years (first industrial revolution?). The Batttle of Hastings, Dover Castle, The city of York (just loved it), Stratford on Avon and old William Shakespeare, the British Museum and it goes on and on. There is so much history in that one small island, it is amazing.
The weather was superbe, we only really had 3 days of rain in 5 weeks. The British meterological service said that it was the warmest and sunniest July since they have records. Must have known we were coming.
Was there something we didn't like as much... well to tell the truth London was disappointing. There are some fantastic things to see but we felt that the wild cat developement was ruining what would have otherwise been a very beautiful city. There were beautiful little Wren churches surrounded by huge, ugly, cement and glass buildings. Some of them were truly ugly, like the Modern Tate (looks like what Dartmoor prison should look like), the glass pineapple etc. For once I think that Prince Charles was right and that the developpers are killing the soul of the city. London should have taken a page from Paris and forced the developement outside the city. Oh well that's my gripe for the day. (As you can see I'm not a great fan of big cities)
But we did have loads of fun and we met some really extraordinarily nice people, like the taxi driver in Liverpool, who when we asked him for directions to drive to a certain road, told us to follow him and led us to the address that we needed to go. There were many other people who took the time to explain things when we had questions, who were patient with us when we were lost and searching, and chatted with us when they noticed that we were Canadians. We'll always keep a fond memory of the people of the UK.