Pipe Aston, England

Robin’s aunt, Claire, and her husband, Roy, live on a small farm in a little village called Pipe Aston near Ludlow. They had graciously agreed to host an engagement party for us to introduce Kevin to the rest of Robin’s English family. For the party, we also put together a map including a quiz and photo match game of our travels thus far. We counted up all of the travel legs of our trip; it took us 55 buses/autos, 23 flights, 16 trains and 11 boats to get to England for the party :-)

The little farm is surrounded by other farmer’s fields and other open space in the Shropshire Hills. It has 26 chickens, two geese, two ponies, two dogs, and a buncha bunnies!! The ‘right to pass’ law in England gave us way to explore the whole countryside with the Oakley and Tiggy!

The geese (Christmas and Easter) would follow us around the farm, and the ponies (Ringo and Robby), were kind enough to let the kids go for rides (but only after the kids suited up for battle with bullet-prof vests, hats, and boots).

Even though they speak English in England, we always had a laugh at translations and misunderstandings. For example, Robin’s parents ordered two kegs of beer from the local brewery and since the English serve beer much warmer than we do, we were discussing how to keep them cold. . . well, that turned out to be the least of our problems! We soon found out that since the English also serve beer with out as much carbonation as we do, a ‘keg’ is actually much like a boxed wine with only 18 pints each. Luckily, English pints are larger!