We had a late start today because we decided to do a load of laundry and it took seven thousand hours to dry. After I finish writing this post I’m going to google “do British dryers actually dry clothes or just heat them up and spin them around” because I think it might be the latter. Eventually we called it and drove off with damp clothes splayed out on every surface of the car.

Our first stop was our second attempt at Old Sarum, which was closed by the time we got to it yesterday. Old Sarum is the ruins of an old Norman castle. We talked a big game of bringing Millie to a Castle, but when we got there she was greeted with yet another pile of old rocks and asked incredulously, “so… where’s the castle?”

We thought it was cool though. My favorite part was seeing what used to be the deep moat that surrounded the castle. Classic fairytale stuff.

From there we went to get some food in downtown Salisbury. We had been told by our American friends in Lewes that groceries were cheaper here but we didn’t believe them since almost everything else seems to cost more. But we were shocked to walk away from the store with two giant bags of organic fruit, nuts, snacks, cereal, and milk for just £40. We sat on a bench and had scotch eggs and strawberries for lunch. I’m not exaggerating when I say these were the best strawberries I’ve ever had.

Then we got back in the car and drove to the coast. As usual, Millie slept the whole time. We arrived at our hotel and they couldn’t find our reservation, which made sense because I had booked it for next year. Luckily they had a room available and we were able to check in.

We chose to come to Lyme Regis because it’s known as the Jurassic Coast— a place where some of England’s earliest and most complete fossils were found. We walked down to the beach to see if we could find any fossils. Before we knew it, Millie was in her underwear and playing in the waves.

We walked along the coast hoping for fossils but didn’t see any. It didn’t matter much to us. The weather was perfect and the scenery felt almost like Kauai. It certainly felt Jurassic.

We walked back to town to find dinner. We settled in at a seaside pub where I had an excellent fish pie and we played many rounds of hangman, mostly with Millie’s favorite words, like this one: FART.