The Engebretsens in England: “The Most Beautiful Village in England” and a Vacuum

Welcome to Bibury!

I may have mentioned this before, but one of the very nice things about living in England is that you can get to a lot of really cool places with just a relatively short drive, especially for us because we live almost smack dab in the middle of the country. We can plan a lot of weekend trips to see castles, estates, cute villages, or simply the countryside, leaving Friday after the girls are done with school or first thing Saturday morning and be back by Sunday night. The only thing we have to watch out for is the weather. It’s unpredictable here, but I’ve already learned that if they have rain listed in the forecast, it will rain. Last weekend we were planning on such a trip to see the beautiful Wye River valley in Wales, but by late in the week, the weather forecast was not looking good, so we decided to ditch that plan and stay closer to home for the weekend. No sense wasting money on a hotel room if you’ll just be stuck in it all weekend because of the weather.

Rain, in fact, was forecast for most of England that Saturday, and sure enough, by midmorning, it was coming down steadily and continued to do so for the entire day. So what did we do on that rainy weekend day here in England? We FINALLY got a vacuum cleaner! We had ordered it this time AND been told it was physically in the store, so we were sure to get it. And get it we did. We picked it up, stocked up at the grocery store and were home by early afternoon.

A lovely lemon cupcake.

When we got home, I headed to the kitchen (my favorite rainy day activity) where I boiled some chicken and made some homemade chicken broth for the dish I was cooking up for dinner (I cannot find canned chicken broth here and I’m not a big fan of bouillon), and I whipped up some Death by Lemon cupcakes from scratch (had some lemon curd in the fridge to use up). Meanwhile, Eric wasted no time getting the vacuum going. The vacuums here are much smaller and lighter than those in the US, which is really nice for dragging it up and down the stairs. But, I bet you are wondering, do they work as well? And the answer is – yes, it appears so. Eric had to clean it out five times on Saturday, and that was after only vacuuming the upstairs. Seems like it works pretty well to me. But it did leave us wondering - is it normal to fill up the vacuum cleaner five times while simply vacuuming a few bedrooms and one small hallway? I’m thinking maybe the people who previously lived in this house had trouble buying a vacuum too!

Sunday was a much nicer day, so we jumped in the car and made the two-hour trip south to the little village of Bibury. Eric had found some pictures of the village of Bibury on my UK Pinterest page and when he looked it up online, it was described as “the most beautiful village in England.” Good grief, with a label like that, how could we not go. Well, we still have A LOT of England to see, so I don’t feel qualified to give it “the most beautiful village” status quite yet, but what I can say is that IT IS PRETTY DARN CUTE! We strolled around the entire village and some surrounding sheep fields and woods and I think the pictures below speak for themselves. There’s really not much else to do in Bibury but stroll, but it was perfect! It’s just been left to sit down in this beautiful river valley being as cute as it can be without a bunch of stores or other touristy type attractions popping up around it. Ok, there was a trout pond which seems a bit touristy at first, but given the river that runs right through this quant village, it sort of makes sense – and it was also the cutest little trout pond I’ve ever seen.

Without further ado, pictures from “the most beautiful village in England.”