Day 2 - Even more tiring but even more Awesome

We started our day with a very nice breakfast and then headed out to find Mad Max and almost made Max mad but his name was John. Okay I will back up. Our day was to be spent on a Mad Max full day bus tour going to Stonehenge, Avebury, Lacock and Castle Combe and we were supposed to meet at 8:45. We had lots of time to get there and I never like going the same way twice so we got lost. We arrived a bit late but fortunately our driver (John not Max) got stuck in traffic and was later than us.

John is the first person that we have met who is actually from Bath. He was very gregarious, informative and funny. His ongoing banter made for a fun walk through the pre history and medieval periods in the area. Here he talks about the barber surgeon who was found crushed beneath a stone.


Our first stop was Stonehenge. It is very thought provoking and kind of eerie but the hoards of tourists which included a huge coach filled with Dutch teenagers made it hard to really concentrate on the spirituality of the circles. It was a perfect day to be there with the massive stones rising into the storm cloud filled sky.


Next stop was Avebury. The stone circle here is 16 times as big as Stonehenge with two non overlapping circles inside it. These are not as well known as Stonehenge because they were never squared off by masons and there is no apparent alignment with the sun. This meant that there were almost no tourists except the 16 of us.















Did you know that there are 729 Red Lion Inns in England. The one above was the first that we saw. Note the very cool thatched roof. England has a law that designates buildings with these roofs as protected and they must be repaired and not changed. It costs approximately £40,000 to repair one...ouch!

From Avebury we headed to Lacock. We had a very good lunch at The George Inn. Debbie had lamb stew and a half pint of ale while I had pork medalions in a mushroom wine sauce and a pint of ale. After lunch we wandered around Lacock which is a medieval town. The Harry Potter scene where he was invited onto the Quidich team was filmed in the cloisters of the abbey here.



















After Locock we headed to Castle Combe. This very small
town was voted the prettiest village in Britain in 1962. It is still very pretty and very small.















All in between he spoke of chalk horses, Solsbury Hill (home of and inspiration for the song by Peter Gabriel), army tanks and how he would drive in one and other local facts. It was a fantastic tour.


Afterwards we were exhausted but not very hungry so we trudged up the hill to our B&B. We found our favourite little restaurant (The Circus Cafe and Restaurant) but we were too late for tea and they were setting up for dinner. After some very effective pleading by Debbie they agreed to serve us tea provided we ate it outside in the cold. We are Canadians eh, so we had another great cream tea.






After tea we walked a couple of blocks in each direction to check out The Royal Crescent and The Circus and then again trudged, this time up 40 stairs to our room.












The above image shows a little of the cafe on the right and our B&B is the door with the yellow sign beside it. Our room is at the very top between the chimneys.

This brings me to working on the blog and Debbie.......... you guessed it. She is sound asleep. After all it is 1:00 AM at home.

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Location:Near Bath