  Day 9 & 10 – Malvern Hills & Morgan Car Hire Next day we set off out of the Cotswolds taking a quick stop at Broadway on our way to the Malvern Hills where Lou grew up.   We managed to check in early to our hotel, swap out of our jeans and get into shorts before walking up the hill (to get our 10,000 steps in!)      Several hours later we wandered back to the hotel, in need of a shower! We’re staying at The Abbey Malvern for the night which is really nice – quite an old hotel but a stark opposite to Torquay – has had lots of maintenance and renovating done! £120 for the night – including breakfast and parking (so almost half the price of Torquay) https://www.sarova-abbeyhotel.com   And as we had done our steps for the day – we went in search of beers; we found a hotel nearby which had set up picnic tables in their car park to make a semi beer garden – and when we saw the menu quickly decided to stay for dinner too! https://www.mulberrytree.co/ We also had a few take away coffees and lunch at the café next to the hotel; called Mac and Jacs which was brilliant! https://macandjacs.co.uk/  Next day we were off again – this time heading north of the Malvern Hills to a small town where we’d booked a ‘Secret Escapes’ accommodation and Morgan car hire experience back in 2020. https://www.secretescapes.com/the-court-house-shelsley-walsh-worcestershire/sale  Turns out the B&B is at the top of a racecourse which was hosting a ‘pre-war’ event this weekend!   Which was eventually called off due to the rain! Admittedly the ride to the B&B had been pretty wet too and I’d run inside for a shower and some clean clothes!  The B&B was stunning, and old Tudor house with massive rooms – we stayed in the Gold room and had an ensuite bathroom. We had dinner and drinks that evening at the B&B, dinner was an incredible 3 course feast and the hosts were very structured in their format for the booking:
 The bed was extremely comfortable and we passed out for the evening, waking up nice and early to the honking of the resident geese!  The Morgan hire was fantastic, we were given a small instruction on how to drive the cars and then set off with the onboard GPS taking us a pre-programmed route through the Malvern Hills & Cotswolds….or so we thought… It turns out that a road closure in the first town / first waypoint meant the in-car TomTom was unable to tick off it’s first stop – so rather than prompting us to U-turn or (automatically?) moving on to the next stop – it began an hour long loop back to try and hit the first town! And as a result we ended up WAY off track – nowhere near the Cotswolds or the Malvern hills!  Learning to drive someone else’s expensive sports car on narrow single track roads made for an anxious first hour! But once we managed to find a place to stop we decided to make up our own route and use our phone for GPS. We looped though Ledbury in the Malvern Hills, then selected went back to Greater Malvern where we’d stayed the night before and re-visited the café mentioned earlier – then wove through the Malvern Hills to return to the B&B at approx. 3:45 – right on time! Also we managed to dig our some warmer clothes from our backpacks as convertible driving is not always the warmest!  In hindsight; I’d probably have been more comfortable wearing my bike jacket and helmet as my hat has a tendency to try and blow off!   All in all it was a really fun day, and fun experience I’m happy to say I’ve done – but not sure I’d rush to do again without making some modifications!
Dress warm! Whilst I’m used to being cold on the bike; I was silly and assumed I’d be much warmer in the car – truth be told the windshield helps a bit but its still nowhere near as protected as in a fully enclosed car! Know how to use the GPS! I’m really good at adding waypoints, cancelling waypoints, searching for fuel along the route with my phone – not at all with their TomTom and much of our confusion could have been solved if we’d know how to re-route ourselves! The B&B was also a little more expensive than we’d anticipated, with food and drinks being mandatory but not included in the advertised price – that said the quality and size of the meals was incredible and much cheaper than a restaurant price! B&B & Morgan hire: £295 Dinner for two: £70 Drinks for two £30 Fuel for the car: £20 Total: £415
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |