A Magical voyage across the pond TRIP REPORT UPDATED 12/31 - Page 5 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Oh wow. That's beautiful! Late in the season or not, the flowers still look really pretty. What a relaxing retreat.
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We will definitely let you know if we make to your side of the pond one of these days Cheryl! I'm glad that you at least got to see the gardens and rest of the grounds. The views are just beautiful from that property!
That is certainly a large estate and beautiful gardens. You say you missed the peak by several weeks, WOW, what that must have looked like. It is great that it is a National Trust property. Can you imagine the cost to keep it up.
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Oh wow. That's beautiful! Late in the season or not, the flowers still look really pretty.
It was nice to see some of the flowers still out, but given how ours were doing at home, I was hoping for a little more... you'll see what I mean by ours in a couple of instalments time...
That is certainly a large estate and beautiful gardens. You say you missed the peak by several weeks, WOW, what that must have looked like.
I would imagine it was at its peak in probably July/August. Mind you, we did also have those stupidly hot temperatures this summer, so that may have affected how it looked....
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It is great that it is a National Trust property. Can you imagine the cost to keep it up.
Joining in and just getting started...Did Mari get any credit for that delay? I know after so many hours they have to give credit or a refund of some sort. If she didn't tell her to look into it.
Cheryl, I think the movie I’m remembering is Churchill’s Secret. It was on PBS here.
The grounds really are lovely, even if the gardens are in their waning days.
Joining in and just getting started...Did Mari get any credit for that delay? I know after so many hours they have to give credit or a refund of some sort. If she didn't tell her to look into it.
I told all of them to claim. Under European law, they have rights to refunds - I seem to recall it's €600 per person for delays of five hours or more. Mari and Raleigh aren't home yet - they've been visiting family - and should be home in a few days' time. I'm sure she'll deal with it then.
Wow the grounds are gorgeous!!!
At least you got to do a little something today.
That's how I felt. After Mari and Raleigh having such a terrible start to the day, I wanted us to do something to try and make the day a bit worthwhile....
Saturday 8 September – part five: where the National Trust started…
We headed into Winston Churchill’s former studio at a couple of minutes before 4:00pm and I’m glad we got there when we did, as it closed at 4:00pm. It was lovely to see a selection of his paintings. He was so talented and, as we all commented, not what you remember him for…
We made our way back through the grounds…
… and headed into the shop to explore, where I picked up the obligatory fridge magnet. When we left, we made our way to this beautiful vantage point…
This is Toys Hill. It’s more than 200 acres of woodland and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to its abundant wildlife and is recognised as a Grade I site of national importance for nature conservation.
This is where the idea of the National Trust first came from. I can see why! It’s all down to a woman called Olivia Gill, who was strongly influenced by the idea that good environments make better people. She campaigned to give ordinary people access to the countryside and the National Trust grew out of this campaign. It was through her generosity that the Trust acquired some of its first properties, including Toys Hill.
We then made our way home through a selection of picturesque villages on the way…
We were taking this diversion to show Mari the field full of Highland coos that we’d recently discovered. I would have taken some photos, but you needed to get out of the car to do that and, just as I was about to, another car arrived behind us, so I figured that wasn’t a good idea… They were beautiful, I can assure you….
We made it back and had about a half hour before we had to head out for dinner here…
I didn’t take any food photos, but I can tell you that my brie wedges and sea bream were amazing and no-one else had any complaints. In fact, Mari loved her seafood pie so much that what she couldn’t finish got boxed up for breakfast tomorrow. The only problem is we were all too stuffed to even think about dessert… rare I know!
On the way back, we stopped off at Tesco, our local superstore, to stock up on wine. Each person can bring two bottles of wine on board, so each couple got four bottles and we checked out. We headed back to the car with the wine and Mari and Raleigh weren’t following. We both ended up heading back into the store and found them chatting with the staff. They were having a ball!
Eventually, they dragged themselves away and we headed home. The second we got out of the car we could hear the thud, thud, thud of music and next door were having a party. I went up about 9:15pm, as I was beat and Mari and Raleigh weren’t far behind. Bless Mark, he sat downstairs until 10;30pm, then went next door and said something about the music and in fairness to them, it went off a few minutes’ later – thank goodness. :rolleeys2: It was the last thing we needed after the day we’d had….
The weather today was cloudy with temperatures in the high 60s. Today we walked 6.36 miles. The best thing today was seeing Mari and Raleigh again… eventually! The worst thing today was the horrendous delays to Mari and Raleigh’s flight. Today we tried picking up Mari and Raleigh from Gatwick Airport. And the result was it was a nightmare, thanks to their five hour delay! The most magical moment today was walking into that beautiful kitchen walled garden.
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What a relaxing retreat.
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When we left, we made our way to this beautiful vantage point… 
It’s all down to a woman called Olivia Gill, who was strongly influenced by the idea that good environments make better people. She campaigned to give ordinary people access to the countryside and the National Trust grew out of this campaign. It was through her generosity that the Trust acquired some of its first properties, including Toys Hill. 
They were beautiful, I can assure you…. 
We both ended up heading back into the store and found them chatting with the staff. 
They were having a ball! 
I went up about 9:15pm, as I was beat and Mari and Raleigh weren’t far behind. Bless Mark, he sat downstairs until 10;30pm, then went next door and said something about the music and in fairness to them, it went off a few minutes’ later – thank goodness. :rolleeys2: It was the last thing we needed after the day we’d had…. 
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