DAY 10: The Famous Isle of Purbeck

No long drives today, for which we are all truly thankful. We are also very thankful for the Yates family, who so generously loaned us their summer house for a few days. Turns out we are not really backpack travelers, after all, as we get to stay in homes instead of hostels. The house is charming, hundreds of years old and yet, tastefully modernized and very comfortable. It also has all those quirky features of old houses, like the location of the bathroom/chapel which made me giggle each morning.

Everyone is thrilled with the place, except Christopher who complains that it is too big and he feels lonely. It is not that the house is so big, but more that he has gotten used to sleeping in train compartments and ships’ cabins, with his whole nuclear family within arm’s reach. Seriously, what kind of long-term psychological problems are our kids going to suffer because of this trip?

We have only one real day here, and though there is SO much nearby that we would like to see. We choose to make our pilgrimage to Brownsea Island to visit the birthplace of Scouting. We take photos of the boys next to the Robert Baden-Powell commemorative stone (he’s buried, of course, at Westminster Abbey) and load up on Scout patches. A walk across the island seeking the rare Red Squirrel, the model for Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin and now extinct on the English “mainland,” and other fauna and that is our day. The evening is spent doing laundry and preparing for our big day tomorrow, boarding our beautiful ship and heading for the US at last.