50 things I’ll miss about England

With only 12 days left on our tour in England, I’ve been thinking a lot about all the things I’ll miss when we go back to the States…

• rainbows
• free medical care via the NHS
• sheep
• fields divided by hedgerows and stone walls
• chicken and mushroom pie at Puddingface
• sticky toffee pudding
• dogs in pubs
• long walks along rural roads
• antique fairs
• Bargain Hunt
• 300+ year old cottages, stately homes, and everything in between
• passing horses on the road
• the multitude of English accents (and Welsh, and Irish, and Scottish)
• English gardens (not mine specifically, but in general)
• not being rushed through dinner when eating out
• bacon rolls
• chip and pin cards
• rest areas on the motorways
• British humor
• fortnightly auctions
• postcodes
• Stella
• British potatoes (new potatoes, jacket potatoes, chips, mash, you name it)
• pedestrianized town centres
• the preservation of old properties (rarely is a building torn down–it is repurposed)
• the way Brits sniff when anything less than 150 years old is billed as antique
• courteous drivers
• high vis clothing
• endless miles of public footpaths
• tomato and basil soup
• Treasure Trails
• canal boats
• rainy Sunday afternoons
• our conservatory
• the expectation that you will stop work for tea breaks, morning and afternoon
• the reserved but friendly nature of the natives
• leaving the door wide open while unloading groceries from the car (bugs come in through the screenless windows anyway, so what’s a few more through the door?)
• no cell phone use while driving
• BBC period dramas Downton Abbey, The Paradise, and Call the Midwife
• Monday night church bell practice
• the alternating smells of roasting coffee beans, bread, burning coal, and manure that waft by our house
• finding fossils every time I pull weeds
• bright yellow rapeseed fields
• wood pigeons singing down my chimney
• the fact that the entire country looks like a picture postcard
• gurgling radiators
• Wellies
• charity shops
• B&Bs
• mushrooms on every menu