Our classes do not begin until Friday, April 6th. In the meantime, we have a little time to recover from jet lag. It would be nice to travel a bit in England but we also have no transportation. Thus, today, while Tara, Keaton and Regan continued their recovery (Keaton and Regan have fevers), Tanner and I made the jaunt on foot into Nuneaton, which lies about 2 miles from the King’s lodge.
By the time we made it into town we had walked up a bit of a hunger, so we stopped at the Riverside Cafe. We were greeted by three smiling faces who made our time there a joy. They served us up a bit of breakfast which included sausage, tomatoes, beans, an egg, toast, ham, and black pudding. For the unitiated and uninformed, which included me, black pudding is not American chocolate pudding or anything of the sort. No, black pudding is a “sausage” made of congealed blood, fat, and other such yummy ingredients that you can serve chilled or fried up hot. The black stuff on my plate was fried up hot and happened to be of the pork blood variety. I must say that I had to eat it without thinking about what it was. But, mixed in with the beans and tomatoes it was quite tasty.
The meal was great and the company was even better. We learned quite a bit about bus and train travel in England from the shop owners and where we could go to get things like a mattress pad for a lumpy bed. They also enjoyed hearing our southern drawl as much as we enjoyed their English accent. They were incredibly hospitable, sharing a Kit Kat candy bar with Tanner, and they even sent me home with some of the black pudding to share with the rest of the family. I literally walked out with something that looked like this in my backpack: Back at the King’s Lodge they told me I needn’t worry about labeling my booty because few would fight over it for breakfast. 🙂
It was a wonderfully sunny day of about 60 degrees for Tanner and me to enjoy our day into town. We probably walked about 5 miles together hand in hand, enjoyed several new sights, and learned a little bit more about English life.