one

I was told by my parents on my birthday in May 2000 that for my 21st they were sending me to England. I have had this dream to go to England since I was 17 years old and now it was about to happen. I had a lot of expectations of the place, but the country blew me far beyond my expectations! Here is an account of my trip there!

I left Cape Town International Airport on Wednesday the 16th of August 2000 with a lot of excitement. The Captain however made my heart stop for a minute or two because he told us that we were going to New York instead of England. He cleared that one up very quickly though. I was on my way to England for 6 weeks!!!

I was able to see all the big sites in London from the plane as we had to circle around for a while. I landed at Heathrow at some ungodly hour in the morning. I was lucky in that my boyfriends dad was there to pick me up from the airport, or I would have had to catch a bus. I was taken to a small town called South Cerney. It is about 1 hour 45 minutes to the west of London by car down the M4. When I got to South Cerney I relaxed for a while.

South Cerney is in the middle of the Cotswold Water Park. The Cotswold Water Park is an area of 30 square miles. It has a lot of recreational activities including lakeside walks, fishing, nature reserves, horse riding, a beach, boat hire, surfing, biking, wind surfing and water-skiing.

Later in the day feeling a little refreshed I was taken to Swindon. It took about ten minutes to get there. Swindon was a small market town and piggerey until 1841 when it became the main the main place for train engineering works. The railway works closed down in the mid 1980s.

I went to the Brunel Centre which is a huge shopping mall with lots of shops etc. I met up with Shayne who took me to McDonalds for lunch. The food was awful After that I went to Shaynes house where I spent the night.

Shaynes Mom, Jenny, took me to the Outlet Village which is a � mile walk from the Brunel Centre the following morning. The Outlet Village is a lot of factory shops that sell things a lot cheaper than at the shops. I bought a couple of things. Jenny went home and I was left to do my own thing. I did what I do best! I went shopping in the Brunel Centre and then went to a 24 hour Tesco to see what they had. On the way I found a phone card to phone home. In the evening we went to Shaynes parents place to spend the weekend. We caught a bus that took forever to get to South Cerney. It was a long warm and rainy day!

Go to next page

Go back to contents page

Go back to home page