Friday was spent down along the south coast, initially in Brighton for the morning, then the marina for lunch, Beachy Head for the afternoon, and a trip past the Long Man of Wilmington - a chalk figure along the steep slopes in East Sussex.

After the full day along the south coast, it was time to head up north for the weekend to the Cotswold - a range of hills in west-central England, sometimes called the "Heart of England". We left home early yesterday morning, and over into Warwick to start with. A small, country town on the river Avon, famous for its castle, Lord Leycester hospital and Tudor style buildings. With time constraints, we only saw Warwick castle from the outside, but spent some time around the town, and inside the Tudor House Inn.

From Warwick, we moved onto Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of the playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Stratford was great - focusing mainly on Henley Street (the street where Shakespeare's house is), as well as all the other sights around the town: RSC theatre, Avon riverbank, Nash's house, Anne Hathaway's cottage and the Holy Trinity Church. From Stratford, we stopped in at Banbury for a while, where we saw Banbury Cross (from the nursery rhyme) and had dinner at the most impressive Thai restaurant I've ever been into.

This morning, an early start off to Chipping Campden, a typical Cotswold town where the streets are lined with honey-coloured limestone buildings - built from the local Cotswold stone. A brief stop there, before heading onto Bourton-on-the-Water, known often as 'Venice of the Cotswolds' because of the bridge-spanned river that runs through the village. There was also the Model Railway which had me intrieged for a good part of our visit.

Our last stop for the afternoon was the university town of Oxford - the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Its made up of 39 independant colleges and dates back to the 12th century. The sites of our afternoon in Oxford included Christ Church Cathedral, the Museum of Oxford, the Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Camera, Exeter College Chapel and others around town.

There was just too much in Oxford alone to try and see all in one afternoon, but still got a pretty good idea of the town and the university. After grabbing dinner at the pub, we had a slow and painful drive back home in the London traffic.