Robyn writes: After all of the trauma of the Saturday navigation (there are times I could throw that phone out of the window!) we slept in - it was about quarter to nine when we woke up. Peering up and out of the window of our basement flat, we could see another beautiful blue sky above us and the weather on the BBC confirmed that we could expect a warm day, so we decided to visit the little village of Avebury - this is all either National Trust or English Heritage so we figured we couldn't lose!
It was about a 45 minute drive there mostly along the A4 and some surprisingly good roads (one or two hair-raising narrow hedge-lined roads and tiny village streets, but that's par for the course in England!). The first part of the trip was made more interesting by the fact that the sat nav app in the phone ("Portia") seems to usually take a good 10 to 15 minutes before she decides to come on board with the trip, so our usual method is to start driving and hope she shows up sooner rather than later...yesterday getting out of Bath entailed us navigating out of the city ourself with the aid of a tiny map in the atlas and the (thankfully well marked) A4 signs before she finally deigned to show up when we were well out of town! Some of the villages we passed through were absolutely picture-postcard perfection - the village of Box was about the prettiest we've seen so far. When we got to Avebury we found the parking area (free to National Trust members - yay!) and made our way to the village.
As it was lunch time by this stage, we had a lovely lunch at the National Trust cafe there - soup of the day (Potato and leek this time) and of course the obligatory cuppa before exploring the old Avebury Manor Farm where it's based. We decided to do the manor house tour first and bought our tickets for the 2 o'clock stone circle tour.
The manor was just lovely - it was built in the mid 1500s on land which had belonged to an abbey (which of course disappeared in the Dissolution). Unlike lots of other heritage buildings, however, this one hasn't remained in one family and has been a "renter" for a lot of its history. Recently, it was the subject of a program by the BBC in which they did up each room in one particular period of the house's history and according to how it was used by the owners at the time. There was some authentic period furniture but a lot of the furnishings were reproduction, and the idea is that you are encouraged to touch things, sit on the chairs, get into bed, etc! There was a 1930s living room, 1600s dining room, Tudor bedroom, Queen Anne Bedroom, 1912 kitchen...all with things to touch and try out! (Didn't get into the bed - the toddlers present were having a fun time with that.) The gardens of the manor were quite spectacular, with lots of topiary, hedges, a huge kitchen garden and orchard. Out in the farm area was the original dovecote and a huge barn which now houses the museum. It was all really interesting and we happily spent several hours (including gazing in vain into the pond looking for the giant newts which allegedly reside there) before lining up for our 2 o'clock tour.
Avebury, like the more famous Stonehenge, has standing stone circles built by prehistoric Britons (though these are just the single stones, no lintels). It actually had 2 huge stone circles, and the present little village sits in the middle of these. Over the 5 thousand years since they were started, many stones have disappeared completely and some are actually buried under the ground. During the 1930s the manor owner was passionately interested in archaeology and he raised and re-set many of the fallen stones and cleared the huge ditches which surround the henge. Mick, our tour guide, was really interesting in the way he explained it and it was a really good way to understand the landscape. (Otherwise I'm afraid they really do just look like stones in the ground!)
Lex at the mouth of the barrow and standing on top of it! The hill you can see behind him is also a prehistoric construction - it's huge and was man-made. Imagine building
that with only antler-horn picks as a tool.....
The white horse on the side of a hill nearby
After the tour, we decided to visit another prehistoric landmark - the Kennet long barrow, a stone age burial chamber built of rocks. It was only a short drive away from Avebury, then we had to walk to the top of a hill. Only the southern part is now accessible, but it was amazing to think how long ago it was built. On the way back to Bath we stopped to take pictures of the Cherwell White Horse - a huge picture of a white horse carved into the side of a hill. There are several of these dotted around the south-east where chalk is found (including a rather risque one of a naked man!)
When we got back to Bath, we went out in search of a place to get onto the internet (being in a basement flat, we can't get on here) and found that Wagamama has free wi-fi, so we went in for some Japanese nibbles (horribly expensive) and a glass of beer and wine. At least we were able to send off a quick email or two and the day before's blog, but internet access is a bit of a problem here. Then it was home for tea (The Co-op's Japanese reheatable Chicken Yakitori and curry) and flop in a heap!
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