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Published: June 14th 2017
Geo: 51.4286, -1.85394
We set off after breakfast (early morning highlights where the kids seeing squirrels in the park and seeing horses trotting past our hotel window). We tried to explain to the kids that the depression in the corner of the park where we park the car was a bomb crater from 1940, but they were uninterested - I guess it is all ancient history to them!
Drove off down the M4 - K had a turn at driving - to Marlborough, which is a lovely Georgian town. On the drive we played a game "how many things over 100 years old can you see?". I know that some of the sights that the kids counted were dubious, but they got to over 100, and Steven and Georgia saw a deer! At Marlborough, we stopped for a wander through the markets and stretched our legs - bought great cheeses at 50p per round of Camembert!
Then off towards the little town of Avebury, passing lots and lots of thatched cottages and pretty villages. On the way, we paused to look at the barrows - ancient burial mounds from 5000 years ago. G found it unnerving, but the boys had a wonderful time running
up and down the small hills - showing no respect to the long dead at all! as we were leaving, a traveller came up and starting talking, explaining that he was a hippy vegan Druid. Tom was very impressed - he'd read about Druids in Asterix comics, so we had photos shaking hands with John the Druid. John recommended that we stop at the Long Barrow, something that Steven and I had never done. We drove to Silsbury Hill, an enormous burial mound - mindblowing when you think that they did it all with deer antlers and cattle shoulder blades - no serious earthmoving machines then! We walked to the Long Barrow at West Kennett (the rain held off for us!) and were all amazed at being able to enter the small (5m by 1m) man made cave, 5000 years old. instead of being round (like a teletubby hill), the Long Barrow is kind of rectangular, probably about 20 m long. - makes you think that there is more there to be excavated. we really know so little about these people, and why they built these monuments.
At Avebury, the weather was even closer to closing in - it was spitting
rain, but we still got out to walk amongst the standing stones that encircle the village. I cannot imagine what people were thinking, building their village in the middle of a stone circle! The village itself is very old (though age is relative when you are talking about 5000 year old stones!) as the church has been a place of Christian worship for 1000 years. Steven and the boys were very impressed when they found a treasure chest labelled 1362, and opened it to find kids colouring in pages and spare mass sheets! A lovely old man in the graveyard was tending his wife and mother's graves and chatted to us about how we come from the lucky country (he was there in 1945 with the English Navy returning soldiers after the war) - I was just taken because he called us the intelligentsia!
We sat down outside an old pub at Avebury, eating our bread and cheese from the markets and drinking cider (and lemonades) when the rain just poured down! A mad dash for the car - the weather by this time was very overcast and very chilly. We drove towards Stonehenge, but made the most delightful discovery on
the way! As we passed over the Kennet & Avon Canal at Honeystreet, Pewsey, I could see canal boats, so we stopped. As we couldn't turn around, we followed a little sign to the Barge Inn (there is always a pub!) - we were delighted to find a beautiful old Inn, with lovely canal boats moored on the canal boats and....right there on the hills facing us - a White horse! I'd known we were in the area where the horses were, and had explained that there were ancient carvings in the chalk hills. But without looking for them, there one was! It made my day! I've since found out that this area is also famous for crop circles...my mum would be in seventh heaven!
Off to Stonehenge - by this time, the wind was just cruel, and the sun had no warmth in it, but the Henge is still impressive. I really don't know what Rita & Elio thought of it, and I don't know that the kids really appreciate how ancient and how unnerving that such accurate and enormous building works were undertaken by people that we consider were so primitive. But Matthew loved the audio guide (just pressing
random numbers!) and Georgia listened intently to everything on the guide - Tom enjoyed stretching his legs by running around and around the field and scaring the sheep!
Then we drove down to Salisbury and its cathedral - thank God for the GPS, which takes us down little roads that always lead to our destination. The cathedral spire can be seen for miles, still the highest spire in England, and built 800 years ago. Steven and I have read Ken Follet's "Pillars of the Earth" about the building of Salisbury Cathedral, since we were last here, and I can't wait to read it again now! It is a most beautiful building, both inside and out, and everyone was very interested by the tombs of knights from the 13th century. The reflections of the stained glass windows in a modern baptismal font was just lovely. We missed seeing the Chapter House, where an original copy of the Magna Carta is kept, and I missed out from buying a paperweight bas-relief, copied from the original using stones removed during recent renovations, because we were there at the very end of the day.
Then we went to a chop house called The Haunch
of Venison, next to the Poultry Cross. What's a poultry cross? An ornate stone covered market place, where poultry was sold in the 1600s. What's a chop house? Chop houses were the original 16th century gastropubs - a venerable British commercial institution dating back to the origins of modern trading. Chop houses have long been meeting places where business people dined and conducted their affairs over hearty plates of traditionally cooked meats, frequently grilled, and washed down with well-kept local beers or fine wines. OK, its clear that I stole this from Wikipedia! All we knew was that the chop house was a wonderful timbered building from 1350, and the menu looked great and it had a roaring fire! Steven was wonderful and drove us all safely back to Windsor, as the kids (and some adults!) slept. Daylight saving (summer time) begins in the morning.
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Isabelle P
non-member comment
Georgia, about the airport park I don't think it is fair. I hope you are having a good time, Issy p.s I really miss you.