OUR GRAND EUROPEAN ADVENTURE

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Nicola and I headed off the next day for Heathrow airport where we picked up a hire car and drove down to Salisbury to see the magnificent cathedral which houses one of the last remaining copies of the original Magna Carta. From there we drove to Stonehenge to have a look at a strange bunch of rocks which probably don't need any introduction. Some people have said that when you go to Stonehenge, there's still a sense of the spiritual there but I didn't feel it. To be honest, it's between two major highways and the traffic noise is quite loud - not a very spiritual setting but perhaps it's different if you visit early in the morning before the traffic. Off to our lovely hotel at Limpley Stoke, just outside of Bath - a really beautiful old manor in a beautiful rural village setting, it was the perfect place for us to base ourselves.

I had been doing some family history research and found that my mother's family had lived in Tetbury and Malmesbury in the Cotswolds for a few centuries so we decided to look around there. We started off at Lacock village (quite pretty but nothing particularly special) then on to see the partially fallen down cathedral at Malmesbury. The Greyhound Inn in Tetbury used to be owned by my relatives a few hundred years ago and the son of that relative was a member of St Saviours church so we went and had a look. I had read that Bourton on Water was one of the prettiest towns in the Cotswolds and I would have to agree but it was very touristy. On the way to bourton on Water, we came across the Chedworth roman villa archeological site which was probably one of the highlights of our trip for me and well worth the visit. From Bourton on Water we went to Stow on the Wold, another town that was touted as being "pretty" but I didn't think it was however Upper and Lower Slaughter (gotta love the English place names) were both worth the visit. We drove to Winchcombe in the hopes of seeing Sudely castle but unfortunately we got there right on 5pm when it was closing.

We decided to have a "go slow" day and not drive too far so we took a look at the Westbury white horse nearby then visited Stourhead Gardens as one of our favourite scenes from Pride and Prejudice was filmed there. I loved walking around the gardens and seeing bluebells growing in the wild. We headed off to Glastonbury tor (touted as being the possible site of King Arthur's Isle of Avalon as the sea was much higher there 1000 years ago). We started walking up the tor but got halfway up and came across a beautiful field of wildflowers. It was just so pretty that we sat down and drank it all in.

The next day was spent in Bath. We went for a tour of the Roman baths

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