Day 5 was a day that involved almost every method of transportation to make happen! This was a surprise day that Jacob had planned for us. I had no idea where we were going and the plan was just to follow along to see where we ended up. We had to take a train to Paddington Station to take a train on Great Western Railway, the UK version of Amtrak. We had such great luck our whole time with public transportation until our first train was delayed. Poor Jacob was freaking out the whole time because we were missing our connecting train to get where we needed to go. Finally, after the delay, we got to Paddington Station and took a later train on the Great Western Railway to get where we needed to go. We were supposed to meet up with some friends who would join us on our adventure. They took our original train to the secret destination and we planned to meet up with them when we finally arrived.

Truthfully, I loved every minute of being on the train that took us further out of the city and into the country. I learned later that Jacob was trying to squeeze in a day of going to Bath for a day but we just didn’t have the time. Once again, we had to transfer trains and it took us another hour further out of London making me even more confused where we were going. We then met up with our friends and a private driver picked us up from the train station to take us to our destination. Sounds fancy but there are no Ubers or taxis in the small country town so Jacob arranged for a driver months in advance.
A short drive and we arrived at Stourhead…

As a group, we started to tour the grounds and when we turned a corner, we came to the Temple of Apollo. Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books and movies that Jacob and I watched together early on in our relationship. I thought the surprise was that he took me to a filming location of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie.

However, when we walked around the Temple of Apollo I saw the doors open with a table covered in white tablecloth. A bucket of champagne on ice and red rose petals on the table. The breath literally left my body and I knew what was happening but I could not believe it. Jacob then got on one knee and asked the question I had been wanting to say yes to for a very long time…

Our friends joined us on this day trip because our friend Bekah is a professional photographer so Jacob had paid her ahead of time to capture the moment. I immediately started to cry tears of joy and could barely hear the words Jacob was saying as he was asking me to marry him because I was so overcome with emotions. We had talked about marriage for a long time and the pandemic pushed our timeline back. We decided to wait for the world to open back up to make our engagement and wedding special.

A BIG thank you to the staff at Stourhead for making our special day even more special. Jacob had been exchanging emails with them for months leading up to this day and the staff went above and beyond to make sure every detail was perfect. We had a guide walk around the estate with us to let us into blocked-off areas to take photos and keep other guests on the other side of lawn to make sure we could have the estate to ourselves.

To make our day more special, Jacob ordered a reprint of the 1894 edition of Pride and Prejudice to gift me to celebrate our special day. I’ve been collecting Jane Austen books for more than a decade now and I am so happy to add this one to our collection.

After we walked around the grounds of the Stourhead National Trust, we met up with our driver to go back to the train station. A few hours later, we got to Paddington Station and this time we could actually walk around it. I was in awe of the public transportation in England and it is so easy to navigate. Couldn’t leave without saying hello to Paddington Bear!

It had been a long day so the four of us went to dinner at Wagamama and I learned that Jacob had planned ahead to schedule our engagement celebration dinner for the next night knowing we would be a lot to fit into one day. The day started off with train delays, pouring rain midday and I wouldn’t change a thing! I’m so happy we got to experience this day with our friends and we are engaged!

Jacob had one last surprise for us planned. We had checked out of our hotel that morning and left our luggage at the front desk. What I didn’t know is that he had booked us a suite at the Royal Horseguards Hotel right on the River Thames.