Monday 30th September
I am typing this last blog entry at
Heathrow Airport under duress…the batteries in my mouse have died and so I’m
having to use the touch pad which I DETEST! I also doubt that I’ll be able to
add photos…I’ll see how I go…
This morning Andrew enjoyed his last
full English breakfast for a while and we did the grand finale pack up!
We then headed off to Henly-on-Thames to visit St. Mary the Virgins church
where John Jeffress married Mary Rolls on January 17th 1797 and
William Jeffress was baptized on 10th July 1799.
The church from the main street.
Inside the church…the altar where the
wedding and perhaps the baptism would have taken place.
Andrew at the door of the church.
This is as far back as we’ve been
able to trace Andrew’s family…a big thank you to Jenny Jeffress for all
the research she’s done and for organizing the Jeffress Family facebook page. I
don’t think this visit would have happened without you Jenny. It was incredible
to think that we were standing in the space where these events took place so
many years ago.
A small section of the church yard.
The church is beautiful and parts of
it date back to the 1300’s! We had a look in the church yard at some of the
tombstones just in case we could find a Jeffress to no avail…we did however
find Dusty Springfield’s grave.
Dusty Springfield’s Grave in the
church yard
It isn’t far from there to the lovely
little village of Bray where Heston Blumenthal has his restaurants…we had lunch
at The Crown at Bray and it was
sensational…a delicious finishing touch to our holiday.
...not one of his fine dining
restaurants but a very quaint pub…we lingered over lunch and still had time to
kill before we needed to take the car back so we looked at the map and saw that
Windsor was between Bray and Heathrow and had a wander around…beautiful…
It’s now about 9.15pm on Monday night
here & 6.15am on Tuesday morning in Australia…so that means it’s Andrew’s
birthday…not much of a birthday but he will enjoy celebrating his birthday at
our regular Thursday night dinner with the kids.
That’s all for now…we’ve had a
wonderful holiday and this blog will be a record of it that we can look back on every now and then...Thanks to all of you who have given us feedback, it's great to know that others have enjoyed the journey with us.
