There is nothing like Hovis

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If you grew up in England during the 70's and 80's like I did then you would remember Britain's favourite advert.. Hovis. Ridley's Scotts famous advert set around the 1930's with the young boy pushing his bike up a cobbled steep street with a basket of bread, the street lined with quaint old homes then having dropped off his bread riding back down again with his legs splayed, was filmed in Gold Hill Shaftesbury. All the years I lived in England I had never been and the Hovis advert was part of my childhood so I just had to visit.

We first stopped in Reading to visit Go Outdoors and Decathlon to buy some things before heading over to Shaftesbury in Dorset. Go Outdoors cost us a 100 pounds more than we planned as we had a parking ticket, I can honestly say we were angry to find this ticket on our windscreen and all we did is have an inch of tire outside the white line of the parking bay. Forced by the fact that we had to park between cars and give them room, they just don't give you enough space. This was one overpriced ticket and one way or another we were not going to pay it.

We arrived at Shaftesbury early afternoon, the only place that could fit Matilda was the Tesco Superstore which was in a good spot as it was close to Gold Hill. We needed to shop anyway, but first we wanted to visit the street. Shaftesbury is a pleasant town, like an old market town. Gold Hill is exactly as it appears in the advert and we were surprised to find no one on it so I could get a few good photos without people spoiling it. The little museum was open for another half an hour and was free so had a quick look around it. Vaughan said there was a old abbey to look at or what was left of it, mainly foundations. We paid the 3 pounds and had a look around, it had some interesting history especially about King Edward the Martyr who was a young King buried here having been murdered by his stepmother at Corf Castle near Swanage.

Having seen what we wanted to see we wondered back to Tesco did our shopping and headed to our Britstop pub for the night "The Bennett Arms" in Semley just over the border in Wiltshire. The pub was right in the village which had a lovely church, which we visited before having a nice meal and couple of drinks in the pub.

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