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Friday 4 April 2008 Heading towards London from the Welsh border, we chose Bath as our midday 'rest' stop. It ended up not being much of a rest because we arrived in town just as the two hour free walking tour run by the tourist office began. We rushed to find parking and then joined the tour only slightly late.
It was a very interesting tour with a very charismatic guide. We viewed the old mineral baths, The circus, and the path famous for its romantic strolling scenes in Jane Austin's novels. As we hurried back to the car we enjoyed some delicious monster-sized Cornish pasties for lunch which completed our not-so-restful rest stop in Bath.
Continuing towards London we got stuck in traffic on the M4 near Heathrow - so close yet so so far! Closer to the city the traffic thinned and we easily made it to Euston & Carolyn's in London before dark. We devoured some pizza for dinner before an early bed time in preparation for an early start the next day.
Saturday 5 April 2008 After some rushed packing in the morning, Euston & Carolyn joined us on a road trip
to England's south coast.
The traffic heading south became horrendous near Salisbury so we exited the motorway and wandered the back farm roads for the rest of the way to Salisbury. On the way to Stonehenge we decided to stop off at the less-known Woodhenge. We worked out that it was less-known for a reason - it was less interesting. It was basically the 'practice stonehenge', they made it out of wood first in case they made a mistake. The wood is now gone as it rotted and was stollen a long time ago so now there are concrete markers where the wood used to be. It appeared that more pot-smoking teenagers than tourists frequented Woodhenge. Disappointed, we left to search for Stonehenge.
We drove past more strange artificial hills supposedly built by druids, along more back farm roads and then found Stonehenge. It was a very interesting sight but we decided the tour was overrated and overpriced so we peeked through the fence for free instead.
Our lunch stop at the Milestone Cafe was a great find because they had a fantastic antiques store full of quirky relics.
Continuing south as far as we could
go, we arrived at the coast in the town of Weymouth. In order to make the most of the remaining daylight we delayed checking into our B&B and explored the town instead. The beach was nice but as pebbly as most of the British beaches we had seen. The esplanade was also nice to see.
We parked out the back of the Beachcomber B&B and tried to enter the building through an obvious entrance but were grunted at by the manager and told to enter through the front which entailed dragging our luggage all the way around the block. At the front door we were then welcomed by his pleasant wife who showed us our rooms which were quite comfortable - even if dazzlingly floral!
After briefly settling in we went for a nice long walk west along the seafront, the beach, the ports and all the way up to Nothe Fort - which we dubbed "No, the fort!" and made up all kinds of stories to entertain us as we climbed the hill about the 'history' of why it would be called that. We also visited the adjoining "No, the Gardens!". Its amazing how entertaining punctuation can
Windowless buildings
- remnants of the old tax system be.
It was at this point we started feeling a little peckish so we began looking for somewhere to satisfy the appetites we had worked up on our walk. We wandered for 2.5 hours being rejected by restaurant after restaurant because they were all booked out and finally climbed the hill again to have dinner at Nothe Tavern - dubbed "No, the Tavern!". After a nice meal, we retired to our B&B, exhausted.
Sunday 6 April 2008 Our B&B certainly redeemed itself at breakfast time with a delicious cooked feast and friendly service. Our breakfast, however, was interrupted by a freak snowfall AT THE BEACH! We heard later that the snowfall had been quite heavy further north and it wan't just our breakfast that was interrupted - trains, flights, it was apparently chaos in London.
After checking out of the B&B, we drove to the nearby town of Dorchester and left Euston & Carolyn in town while we visited Barbara's great uncle Ben. Sheila was out at bowls so we didn't get to meet her but we very much enjoyed the morning tea and conversation with Ben, he was quite a character.
Afterwards, we joined
Euston & Carolyn in Dorchester to view some interesting Roman ruins before continuing our scenic drive through Dorset. Along the way we stopped at a couple of beaches in Poole and then continued back up north to old London town.
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