The Hunt for the Perfect Bed and Breakfast

Today I'm waiting on reponses from a number of B&Bs near Salisbury England as follows:

The Lodge Farmhouse in Salisbury
The Old Post House between Salisbury and Stonehenge
The Spire House in Salisbury
Hindon Inn, 3 miles from Tisbury (Tisbury is where my ancestors, the Burtons, lived)
Websters Guest House near Salisbury
Cathedral View in Salisbury
Dinton five miles from Tisbury (I like the looks of this one)
Little Hazels right in Tisbury. (Also looks neat)

What is the perfect B&B? Well, the place should have good reviews from other travelers. It should have some form of internet available, wireless preferred. It should be able to provide what's called in Europe an "en-suite" bathroom. We always look for a double bed rather than twins. From there we look at pictures of the outside and inside of the place. Beautiful gardens are a plus, of course. Homey, but not too frilly, accomodations please us more. Nobody allows smoking any more, thank goodness. But we also look for a "no pets" rule. Since I'm allergic to cats, we don't want to find out after we arrive that their favorite pet uses our bed for naps when no one is in residence. Lastly, we consider the price. This trip we set my goal to pay no more than 30 English Pounds per person per night, about $120.00 US, and have so far been pretty successful.

The dates I'm trying to line up are the 15th, 16th, and 17th of September. Our target area is Salisbury, about 100 miles from London. So far this morning I have received responses from two of the facilities. The Lodge offered to rent the desired room for only 25 pounds per night AND they have internet, though not wireless. Websters responded with an agreeement to rent for 30 pounds, but made no mention of the internet, not usually a good sign. Because my ancestors, the Burtons, lived in Tisbury (about thirteen miles from Salisbury), my preference is to stay in that town.

Ancestry.com tells me that the Burtons were farmers so I'm hoping to gain some knowledge as to where their farm might have been in the mid 1800s. My dad's mom, Gwendolyn Burton, was actually raised by the Peacock family when her own parents died at an early age. If I'm lucky, I hope to find the cemetery in Tisbury where her parents will be buried. Of course, the purpose of this trip is to locate all the towns where my various family members lived before immigrating to America. There were the Browns in Scotland, the Davis family in Wales, and the Burtons in England, as well as a host of matrilineal names, including Peacock, Rhydderch, Jeffry, and Owens.

At this point I have already lined up a B&B in Edinburgh for our first few nights. After that, we're going to drive south to the little town of Hexham, which lies a scant few miles from the town of Corbridge, Northumberland, where the Brown family lived in the 1850s. Corbridge lies very near Hadrian's Wall which, as you probably remember, was built by the Romans to keep the wild Scotsmen out of Roman territory. After Hexham/Corbridge we are driving in the direction of Liverpool to the town of Llanberis. No ancestors lived in this area, but the town is located in Northern Wales, reportedly a truly beautiful area. Also, it's about half way in between Northumbria and southern Wales, where the Davis family toiled as iron workers in the mid nineteenth century. We'll just be seeing the sights for a few days in Llanberis before driving south to continue our quest for ancestors. Once in southern Wales, we'll be staying near the town of Merthyr Tydfil, where my great, great grandfather Davis was born. And from there, we're off to Tisbury and the Burtons.

So that's it for now. Stay tuned for more on the upcoming Davis sojourn to the UK.