Final thoughts about the trip

We're home now and this is my second day back at work.  Arriving late on Saturday we were pretty tired puppies.  Our flight had been changed so the new seats were at the very back of the plane for the long trip and we had been changed to middle seating instead of the side.  Our inflight system for the movies/music was not working and so it made for a very long flight.  But a safe trip with nothing worse than Jim picking up a cold somewhere along the way. 
Sunday was spent catching up with laundry, mail, shopping, putting away, etc.  The usual stuff.  And then back to work for both of us.  I'm so glad that I took my ipad and was able to at least keep up with the work email from afar, as I had deleted all the junk stuff and just had important stuff in my inbox.  Saved me a lot of time weeding through it all.
Everyone asked about the trip and if it was fun.  So my qualified answer was "mostly", because it was not a truly relaxing trip with the driving aspect.  And of course, the initial hassle about the car switch meant that we lost about a day and it threw off our plans.  We didn't see half of what we intended to see, no go to half of the towns we intended to visit.  We didn't get to see Salisbury or the great cathedral there. Owlpen manor was closed, Sudley castle was closed.  We had windy, cold, rainy weather for about 4 days.  And I was always worried about possibly having to pay for damage to the car which we didn't cause.  So all of those things led to much more worry and upset on my part. 
The Cotswolds were lovely, but we would never do it the same way again.  We would pick a central location and go out from there each day.  We would travel to surrounding towns back and forth via public bus (not tour bus).  We would take smaller suitcases and find somewhere to do laundry.  Hauling two big suitcases and two carry-ons, plus our small over the shoulder bags was just too much to wrestle with, especially moving every night.
But on the positive side:  we met lovely people along the way.  The English people were friendly, helpful, smiling, and cheerful.  We saw lots of great stuff in London: The British Museum, the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, The Greenwich Observatory, the Maritime Museum.  We saw cathedrals and small churches, gardens, quaint villages, marvelous pubs, rolling hills and beautiful vistas.  We spent 24/7 together and didn't fuss or fight.  We ate wonderfully well every day. 
So defintely a qualified "yes" to whether the trip was wonderful.  Not a relaxing vacation but an interesting one.