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Published: April 4th 2009
Greenwich
Timing is everythingHaving decided that we had enough of Olde London Towne, Ali and I hired a car and took off down to the country, but not before a quick trip to Greenwich to stand on the prime meridian and sychronise my watch.
We headed down about 2 hours South West of the city to a lovely little town named Wimborne Minster, which is situated about 25 mins north of Bournemouth and Poole, two towns on the English south coast.
We were staying in Wimborne with Tilly and her family - for those of you who don't know Tilly she met Ali's sister Steph while traveling and stayed with us for a short while in Melbourne and with Ali's parents in Canberra.
After being frontloaded with a mass of local information from Tilly's family, we headed out to see the sights and surrounding countryside. We were heading up towards Stonehenge and decided to stop in a nice old town named Salisbury (I couldn't navigate through it and we had to stop for directions). We randomly chose a pub (based on who had the cheapest soup of the day) and ended up in The Haunch of Venison, Salisbury's oldest pub. While
waiting for our meals Ali discovered that this pub was actually in the tourist guide and that it is famous for having a resident ghost and a mummified hand in the wall (allegedly from a card game gone sour).
Back on the road towards Stonehenge we saw a sign to 'Old Sarum' and dropped in. Old Sarum is the sight where each King's castle and palace was since William the Conquerer. Before that it was an important Roman fort and before that a place of Druid worship. All the earth around it has been excavated to create massive earthwork defences and moats. Unfortunately none of the buildings or fortifications still stand as the stone was taken away to be used elsewhere some time ago, but the building's layout and foundations still stand.
We finally made it to Stonehenge, which can easily be seen from the side of the road. However it is all fenced off so you can't see it very close up. Some of the tourists chose not to pay the entry fee and took photos from the side of the road. It was quite a remarkable site, but clearly not all that exciting to the locals
who drive past it every day.
The following day Tilly took us on a walking tour of the Wimborne area. We saw some very nice old houses with thatched roofs and lots of picturesque scenery which we took lots of photos of. We stopped off at a quaint little pub called 'The Vines' which is the smallest pub we have ever been to, seating only about 3 people inside.
The rest of the trip consisted of lots of eating and drinking cider. We saw a few more castles and old buildings and visited many towns including Sherborne and Athelhampton. We've uploaded plenty of photos for you to see so we won't go on about all these places.
The highlight of the trip would be the homecooked meal that Tilly's mum cooked on our last night. And after all the cream teas we've had and numerous snacks we're feeling a little out of form!
We're back in London now and preparing ourselves for Spain by trying to run off all the additional calories we consumed during the week (and hopefully going to the theatre tonight to see a show).
So until we get to Spain, hasta
Excited about milk
As we were stumbling home from the pub one night we came across these old fashioned milk bottles outside a home. Ah the memories from back in the day! luego amigos!
Adios.
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