Down in the Valley – England, Kendal

One of the things that is stretching Chloe the most about this trip is all the decisions that have to be made. Each night as we come back to our home away from home (so far a new place every night) we have to decide what the new day will hold and how the Lord might be leading us in it. We usually have numerous options and for Chloe all those options are almost a bit overwhelming. I am trying to help her with them, but not make all the decisions for her as this is her trip. All that to say, we are both getting the opportunity for growth in our areas of weakness!

Chloe made the decision that we would make a push for the valley of Kent. Our dear sweet Kendall girl is named after this valley, as her name implies, “Ruler of the valley of Kent”. So, off we went toward Kendal, England. To do this we needed to be on the 7:55a train. These trains usually leave one minute prior to their time so we needed to be able to walk the two miles to the train and be there by 7:54a to make it. We both had a really “hard” night sleeping on a sheet over a piece of plywood, so sleep did not come easily nor often for either of us. At 6a my alarm woke us up. I took a shower and then it was Chloe’s turn. While she was in the shower the fire alarm went off and woke up the whole house. Most of these young adults had not gone to bed until getting in from the pubs between 1-3a, so they looked pretty frazzled. The fire alarm fortunately was not going off in our room, but downstairs in the main lobby. After about 40mins of noise we had a young lady with baby come into our room saying, “Finally, I found you!”. She was talking about our smoke alarm. Turns out it is a bit touchy. No one told us that you have to open all the windows when taking a shower! The steam from our showers set off the alarm. Oops.

The rain had been coming down steadily all night, so again we were praying that we would have an open window in the rain to make it to the train. As we walked out of the B&B the rain stopped and we had a beautiful walk to the train. We made the train, praying for a seat en-route. We found two non-reserved seats! This is a miracle, because every other seat was reserved and we saw numerous people standing. We changed trains in Edinburgh and got on an even more packed train. This one’s final stop was an airport three hours away, so there was luggage and people standing everywhere. We found to fold out seats by the toilet and an incredibly fun Scottish family (grandparents and a newly married couple with an eight year old girl) joined us. They were on their way to Florida for a two week trip to Disneyworld. They had packed everything for this trip so their was luggage everywhere. They had an ice suitcase, a drinks suitcase, a games suitcase, and on and on and on. They set Chloe up with an orange juice on the rocks and then the games began. British trivia was the game of choice for this leg of the trip and the laughter was flowing freely. Chloe and I were a team and did well, to the point they called us the dark horse as we won one of the two games we played with them. The hours flew by as we were flying down the track on the express train. With our win we departed for another train exchange and quickly found ourselves in Kendal, England after six hours of train travel.

In Kendal, we did something we look very forward too, dropping off our backpacks. Life seems much easier without those things weighing you down. Feeling much lighter we hiked up the hill to Kendal Castle to enjoy the ruins overlooking the valley of Kent with the river of Kent running through it. The castle was great as it is the first one we have been too that has not been renovated, so it was more of what we have been looking for in that old castle charm. From the castle we made our way over to Kendal Market. While walking down the hill we saw a young boy flying through the trees. I told Chloe we had to go check that out. Turns out there was a playground in the town with a zip line! We both took turns riding the zip line and going through the lower elements course. The outdoor market is only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so we missed that bustling opportunity. What we found was an indoor mall, which is not really our thing so we did not stay longer. Instead we started working our way through the shops along the street. Here we met Ms. Isabel. She was delightful and fell in love everything about Chloe. Isabel is a retired teacher with a son who travels the world living in London. We talked about family and travel and just had a wonderful time interacting with her. It was fun to see her shock in our answers to her questions. Large families are a rarity here and one that travels as much as we have is not normal. We left as firm friends with hugs and kisses and a gift idea for one of our on.

Getting back to the hotel we decided to eat in for the night and finish off Mommy’s Magical Muffins. Her blueberry muffins are magical as they taste wonderful and go a long way to satisfying hunger. We also got our first opportunity to try to video chat with the family. Chloe was bouncing off the walls seeing and hearing everyone. We could see and hear them, but they were only able to see a picture of us and read our typing. It was still needful and went a long way to refreshing my little Chloe Anne.

We still are up in the air as to one the new day will hold. Both of us had a hard time making the decision to get on the train for another 4.5hrs, which would be a 45min car ride. So, if we can get another night at the hotel we may just stay in Kendal to see more of the Lake District.

Chloe’s Take:
Miss you very much. We went to Kendal Castle and it was so exciting. I loved it! We also finished Mommies Magical Muffins today (YUMMY). We went to Kendal Market and did not see anything we wanted. We prayed that God would do His will and he did. We met Ms. Isabel, a very nice lady who owns a shop. She said I wonderful manners and that daddy was an awesome daddy to take me to this place. We stayed a while talking with her and then we left. She was very very nice and God has done so many miracles. He is so miraculous. Good night.