Cotswold

The trip to the Cotswold’s took place way back in 2011 (close to 8 full years ago) when I was living in London. To this day, this road trip holds some of my most fond memories living in Europe. It wasn’t a particular event or anything. Instead, it was just the feeling of being overwhelmingly fulfilled at the experience, of seeing, of feeling that I was… in a way, free.

I was lucky to have moved to London and I was even more lucky to get to know a few good, welcoming friends. When the idea came up to take a weekend road trip to the Cotswolds and visit Oxford, I was not going to refuse. At this point, I wasn’t too familiar with the UK outside of London so it was meant to be a chance at seeing the world outside of the bustling city. What I saw was an incredibly beautiful and simple, countryside. Some of my favorite photos that I have ever taken were taken during this trip.

The lady in many of these photos was someone I met through Flickr - knowing that I was also from Vancouver and moving to London, she reached out and I am so glad she did. She was a budding photographer who clearly saw the world from a unique lens and her vision has now culminated in her being an amazingly well respected and gifted photographer - Nadia Hung. She now shoots weddings, maternity shoots and her work has been recognized and published multiple times. Her website is https://www.nadiahungphotography.com/. Visit her when you get the chance. I’m just glad I got to know her before she got famous :)

Fields, field and more fields

Some of my favorite memories of roadtripping in Europe was being able to stop on the side of the road whenever you saw something you wanted a picture of. We saw plenty of great fields during our drive to Oxford and in spite of some “Do Not Trespass” signs, we dove right in and took as many photos as we could - as fast as we could. No regrets here. I still dream of the green wheat field every so often. I remember the wind blowing through the field, making the wheat bow in unison. It was a sight that I had seen in pictures before and longed to see in person. I’m just grateful that we found this. We also found a yellow flower field as well which we had loads of fun in. After taking some silly pictures of one another here, we were back on the road.

Oxford

When we arrived at Oxford, we did some exploring. The architecture was impressive. I loved the light that we saw that day, filling the room and its extremely high, beautifully decorated ceilings. We also stumbled upon a bit of a surprise - we found the room that Harry Potter’s cafeteria scenes were filmed! It was a pleasant surprise, though, the room was not nearly as grand and as big in scale as the movie made it look. Goes to show you the magic of post processing and CG.

Overall

My memory of the UK is not about London. It’s about exploring Europe and the UK countryside. Cotswold was my first exposure and I still day dream about it from time to time today.