Mittens 2024: Chipping Campden, England, 26/07 - 02/08

[AGA]

Read my mind!  I literally have a reminder in my calendar for today to pursue this topic.

The house is available Fridays to Fridays, at £2,750 per week (~£300pp with the current numbers).  At first impressions, they seem to be available from Friday 26th July to Friday 30th August, which is all the dates my family could do anyway.  Is everyone still open if we said 26th July - 2nd August, for instance?

@Creamy @Disco @Matt Frith @Privateer Puddin' @scotch @Snarky

[Snarky]

That looks ideal for me, so I'm a yes.

[Creamy]

It should be ok for me. I may arrive on Saturday.

[Matt Frith]

Hey, sorry for the late reply! Those dates sound great for me! Count me in

[Disco]

Those days should work fine for me

[AGA]

That only leaves @scotch and @Privateer Puddin' to confirm!

[Miez]

Sorry for a verrrrrry late reply - I won't be able to do this year, but if there's an Mittens '25 in the works: count me in!
Have a great time all!

[AGA]

I've been struggling to pin down scotch, but I've booked the venue now either way.

Mittens 2024 (aka Mittens 2020, resurrected!) will be in Chipping Campden, England, from Friday 26th July - Friday 2nd August!

I'll send a PM to attendees with further detail.

[cat]

I wish you all a wonderful Mittens ♥️♥️♥️

[Stupot]

Have a great time everyone. Pics please.

[Rik_Vargard]

Hey, you guys better share that Adventure with us who can't be there, yeah? 
So yes: Pics please. 

[AGA]

Most of us are safely home now, although I think Disco may still have a day or two before he gets back.

It was I believe the smallest Mittens to date - with seven full-time attendees, one of whom was a four-year-old child - but we made the most of the time, with loads of activities crammed into one week.  Group photo is below!

[Snarky]

Yeah, it was a small Mittens, but in some ways that made it more relaxed; it was easier than usual to coordinate activities and outings. And we did a lot:

- Broadway Tower (Gothic folly—in fact, look up "folly" on Wikipedia and it's the first photo) and the bunker for a nuclear observation post
- Oxford, with colleges and museums
- The Rollright Stones (standing stones from the stone age, including a stone ring)
- Warwick Castle, with a bunch of exhibits and shows, including a jousting/trick riding-based recreation of the Wars of the Roses, the firing of a trebuchet, and a very cool falconry/birds of prey show with birds flying around and between the heads of the audience
- Stratford-upon-Avon, with visits to various Shakespeare-related sites
- Chipping Campden itself, a very picturesque Cotswolds town with many attractive houses, including a couple of churches, a museum of arts and crafts (C.C. was a center for the movement from the turn of the century, attracting a lot of artists and craftsmen because of its country beauty, which they helped preserve), and a silversmith studio—we also made a good attempt at visiting every pub in town for lunch/dinner, but fell short (and never got to have the whitebait)
- A few walks in the surrounding area (esp. Matt)

The Mittens House was pretty cool; charming in that old English way (and also infuriating in some of the same ways). I never found out exactly when it was built, but it must be a couple of hundred years old, at least. Wooden floors and stairs (above the ground level) that were completely uneven and creaked loudly whenever you moved. Weird plumbing details. An AGA (no relation) gas oven that couldn't be turned off and made the kitchen stiflingly hot (apparently this is some kind of status symbol?). Overall though it was cozy and comfortable, centrally located in the town and with a nice little back garden.

It was great to see everyone again, along with a couple of new participants: Creamy and the first second-generation Mitteneer. And having a child along turned out to be no real problem at all; I did sometimes worry whether he enjoyed the experience, but he usually seemed pretty keen once we got going.

[Snarky]

Just came across this fascinatingly bizarre and gruesome story, which quite frankly I think Chipping Campden should feature more prominently in its tourism info: https://mulberryhall.medium.com/odd-this-day-76b6031f25b4