Another belated holiday write-up, but only a month late, this time
Yesterday I posted 8 months late about a short holiday we had in Jersey last October. By that standard, today's post is barely late at all, since it's about a holiday we had in early May, in the Wye Valley.
Yes, early May. That time when it rained virtually every day - remember the Coronation? - before turning to non-stop sun the day after we came home.
We had our cottage from the Friday, but Pellinor had to drive up to Birmingham after work on Wednesday, for a conference there all day Thursday, so we decided to incorporate that into the holiday. Well, my holiday, anyway, if not his.
So I hitched a lift with him up to Birmingham on Wednesday night, and headed off for a wander on Thursday morning. I might have spent the day in Birmingham, but the museum and art gallery was closed for a big refurbishment, so instead I went to Gloucester.
The cathedral was very proud of its Great East Window, especially the "golfer" who appears in the midst of row that otherwise consists of the heraldry of the great and the good. Apparently the entire window was disassembled for safety at the start of the war. When they went to put it back in 1945, they realised that all the identifying labels had fallen off and they had no idea how to reassemble the thing. So they popped out to a newsagent where they found a picture postcard of the window - apparently the only picture of it in existence - and went from there.
I'm not normally a big fan of modern stained glass, but there were some lovely examples. I particularly liked these ones, one a memorial to the local poet and composer Ivor Gurney, and one to the composer Gerald Finzi. A very helpful information board explained each panel, and how they related to the subjects' lives and works. I found it all quite moving.
A cloister.
When it came to Comical Lions, the holiday offered poor pickings, so I had to make do with the scant two I was presented with, one from the cathedral and one - later in the day - from the museum:
Glassy lion:
Roman stone lion:
But I did find some Comical Kings!
After the cathedral, I followed signs to the folk museum, housed in a very impressive half-timbered building. I went in. Nobody there, although I could hear voices and the sound of crockery from somewhere in the back of the building. I walked tentatively into a dimly-lit room with a few half-full cabinets full of odd things. Then a man walked in, wearing a sweatshirt with a logo on. "Hello!" I said, assuming he worked there. But, "Do you work here?" he asked me. It turned out that he and his colleague were workmen who were supposed to do... something in the building, but didn't know quite what, and couldn't find anyone to tell them.
They went off, still searching. I went into the next room, and up some very creaky stairs into a very creaky upstairs room - still dimly-lit, with one or two dusty cabinets with one or two things in. An open door led to an office, where a cardigan was on the back of an office chair and a computer was on, but person was there none.
The floor creaked abominably under my feet with every step.
"Oh, here's someone at last!" said a voice. It was the lost workmen again. "Sorry, just me again," I said.
Another creak. Another empty cabinet. Distant crockery echoing from dark, hidden chambers.
I turned and fled.
In a window outside they were advertising for poeple to fight the Chthonian menace and the "eldritch horrors that lurk in Gloucester." This was allegedly not happening until July 1 but I felt quite strongly that even in early May, the folk museum held quite eldritch horrors enough for my sanity to cope with.
So onto the much less horrific National Waterways Museum, which was nice enough, but rather disappointingly light on actual content, and a much shorter visit than I expected. (Although I was amused by the visiting school class, when the teacher halted them in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, to give them a very long lecture on Polite Behaviour, along with a digression on the Poor Standards of Today and How My Generation Was Taught Better, entirely ignoring the fact that by doing so, she forced me to stand and wait for a good few minutes to get through said door. Most of the children thanked me for waiting. She didn't.)
So that left me time to pop into the City Museum for a while, then wander around the docks for bit, where I delighted a local by stopping to read a notice about a newly installed sea bin that was collecting rubbish. I know he was delighted, since I later overheard him excitedly telling another local that "a lady was just reading it!"
Then to the hotel, to wait for Pellinor to arrive from Birmingham, then dinner.
On Friday, we went to the Forest of Dean, where we walked for a while in the woods near Soudley Ponds, then went to the Dean Heritage Centre. It was all very interested and packed with information. The weather altnernated between sunshine and heavy showers, which kept curtailing our attempts to explore the grounds, but we did find a Gruffalo. Quite a lot of Gruffali, in fact, but here's just one.
And a strange creature that LOOKED a little bit like a squirrel, but wasn't red, so couldn't have been one. (I'm not really joking, actually. Whenever I'm on the mainland and see a squirrel out of the corner of my eye, my first thought is always "What on earth is THAT?")
From there, we went to Monmouth, where we sat for a good hour in a traffic jam on the edge of town, but did eventually manage to get to Waitrose to lay in some supplies. And then to our cottage, in Symonds Yat... um... West? The Wye is VERY confusing, with its constant meanders, and my sense of direction got completely shot. It's not helped by the fact that the Wales/England border does very strange things, making it so you can start in England and head broadly eastish, then suddenly find yourself being welcomed to Wales.
Well, suffice it to say that the cottage was on the river, approached by tiny little roads that claimed to be unsuitable for motor vehicles, and then went on to get even smaller.
It was the white one, near the top right of the picture - here shown with added hand ferry.
And the view from the cottage, here. Anyone who's watched the Netflix Show Sex Education will recognise the red house, a key filming location.
Sadly, it was mostly too cold and/or wet to sit outside on the nice sunny terrace during the week - although I did manage two al fresco breakfasts - but fortunately there was a great view from inside, too, with a constant sound of bird song, and LOADS of birds coming to the bird table. We spent many of our evenings inside doing jigsaws, to a backdrop of lovely view.
On the Saturday, we went to Winchcombe to visit my parents. My Mum wanted to watch the coronation, but my Dad didn't, so we thought it would be nice to keep her company. So we did. :-)
On Sunday the weather was lovely, so we went for a long walk, starting by following one from a leaflet, called Head For The Hillforts! (I don't think it had the exclamation mark, but it should have.) So head for the hillforts we did, heading up a hill called The Doward, through a veritable sea of wild garlic and bluebells.
There was a cave. King Arthur's Cave, no less.
It was all very scenic, but I didn't actually take many pictures. The gorge was too wooded and steep to photograph well, and the distant vistas were too big. But it was all nice - except for the stressful bit when we couldn't find any way to cross the Big Road, and had to add in quite a detour. After finally crossing the road, we headed south to Monmouth, then back along the river and up to Symonds Yat, famous viewpoint.
I'm SURE it didn't look like this when we used to visit when I was young. I clearly remember seeing both sides of the meander at the same time! But it's quite obvious that I really couldn't have, with the rock and the river being where they are. Just shows you can't trust memory.
As we stood looking down at Symond's Yat West (or East?) and our cottage, 4 sinister helicopters flew in single file a long way below us, near the bottom of the gorge. Apaches, according to Pellinor. "They weren't like any helicopter I've ever seen!" we overheard someone say on her phone, a little later. "I DO hope they were British." Then, half way down the path, they went past again, this time 5 of them. (Presumably one of them had popped to the toilet and missed the start of the jaunt.) I tried to photograph them through the trees.
I failed.
Passing the Pub On The Other Side Of The River (Symonds Yat... East?) we saw an empty table, so paused for a drink or two, then caught the hand-ferry home.
Monday was wet, so we Went Underground. First was Hopewell Colliery in the Forest, which was great! The Forest of Dean has the ancient tradition of Free Mining, protected by ancient law. The freeminers - local men - have exclusive rights to all forest minerals, and have used this power to see off various threats and encroachments over the years. The trip down the mine was led by a genuine freeminer, and was absolutely fascinating. A retired miner from the north-east was on the tour, and was encouraged to chip in with his own mining memories, which only added to the interest.
We only just managed to get in, though. Our cottage had very patchy mobile phone reception, so when we'd booked our tickets the night before on the wifi, Pellinor had had to leg it out of the door and up the hill to try to receive the authorisation code from the bank. He thought he'd managed it in time, but apparently not, since we weren't on the list, although he could see that we'd tried to book. With a bit of rummaging around pockets and the foot well of the car, we JUST managed to come up with enough cash to pay our way. (No cards accepted.) Well, it was minus 3p, but the miner graciously allowed to let that go.
And then to Clearwell Caves, which were mostly iron workings, with occasional added Creatures:
This cave was particularly nice, with various prehistoric creatures in lights rippling across the water.
On Tuesday, we headed into Wales and climbed Sugar Loaf. This is an iconic hill for me. When I was young, driving over Cleeve Hill between Winchcombe and Cheltenham, we always looked for Sugar Loaf. If you couldn't even see The Malverns, visibility was officially Bad. If you could see Sugar Loaf - and you usually couldn't - it was officially Very Good and had to be exclaimed about.
We walked it some years ago, and got spectacularly mired down in bracken and uncrossable streams, due to misreading the dotted line denoting the edge of National Trust land as the dotted line denoting a footpath. This has only added to its iconic nature, so climbing Sugar Loaf was pretty much non negotiable, no matter what the weather.
As it turned out, the weather was okay, with rumours of rain elsewhere, but no rain actually falling on us. Mountain vistas often look between with patchy clouds, I think, than in clear blue skies.
But thunder was forecast, so were careful not to wander too far away, and kept the walk fairly short. This gave us time to go to Raglan Castle on the way back. It was lovely and sunny when we arrived.
5 minutes later, the thunder started, and the downpour. So instead of exploring the castle, we spent most of the visit sheltering under a bridge by the moat, watching fork lightning - some of it less than quarter of a mile away - and listening to the thunder. As we left, we thanked the staff for laying on such a good audio-visual recreation of the Civil War siege.
For most of the time we were there, there was still sun on Sugar Loaf (though not, admittedly, in this picture.)
On Wednesday we walked along the river to Goodrich Castle, where my parents met us. We pottered around the castle, climbed a tower - up an amazingly narrow spiral staircase - and had lunch.
Taken from the same place as the castle picture, but looking the other way:
Then my parents left, and Pellinor and I walked home the long way round, taking in several other meanders, a zombie-filled factory (or so it looked to me), Welsh Bicknor Youth Hostel, The Black Bridge (an old railway bridge where we tried to play Pooh Sticks in the swollen river with blades of grass and tiny mushrooms; it didn't really work) and a never-ending field of sheep. It kept raining in short bursts, but only lightly - the sort of thing when you put up with it for a while, before finally deciding to put your coat on... only for the rain to stop and you get Too Hot and have to take it off again. And so on and so on, rinse (literally!) and repeat.
Eventually, though, our luck ran out and we got caught in a veritable downpour, enough to soak us to the skin about an hour from home. But we'd pretty much dried out again by the time we got to the Pub On Our Side Of The River (5 minutes from home), so we stopped for a drink or two, and even managed - briefly - to sit outside!
On Thursday, the weather looked more promising, so we decided to stay local and just stroll around the environs. So we walked down (or up?) the river to the Biblins rope bridge (not as scary as it sounds, but wobbly enough that one half expects someone to pop up and ask "WHAT... is your quest?") then back along the other side, to the Pub On The Other Side Of The River, for an unexpectedly large "light bite" and rhubarb cider! RHUBARB CIDER! I don't normally hold with Not Apple Cider, but last year discovered the delights of rhubarb cider, so was quite overjoyed to find there. (Although possibly less overjoyed than I'd have been had I found it somewhat earlier than the last day of our stay, when we were booked into a different - and rhubarbciderless - pub for our evening meal.)
Then, on impulse, we hopped onto a pleasure boat for a river cruise, with was relaxing and fun. The man behind us saw a kingfisher, but I didn't. And then up to Symonds Yat again, just because it was there, then back over the rope bridge and home. It was a lovely day, even though - or perhaps because? - we didn't Do Anything. (Or take any interesting pictures, either, it seems.)
In the evening, we had dinner in the Pub On Our Side Of The River, having booked a window seat with a view. As a result, the meal was enlivened by constant passing canoeists and kayakers, including an unruly group of children. Actually, it was enlivened even more by the running commentary on said canoeists and kayakers from the people on the table next to us. It started to pour with rain while we were there, and Someone hadn't bothered to take a coat, but home was only a few minutes away.
On the Friday, we packed up and left, and went to Tintern Abbey, had a nice lunch in a nearby tea room (home of the largest tea cake known to man), then headed back east into England, to Lacock.
Tintern:
Lacock was... odd. I've been before, and still have the guidebook, so could see that less than half the rooms were open. Half the photography exhibition seemed to be closed - working on a new temporary display, I think - and the grounds were less extensive than I remember. It's all very nice, of course... but had I actually paid to go in - it cost £18! - I think I'd have been rather fed up. We usually take HOURS in historic places, but finished this one in not much more than two. I'm sure it filled a whole day last time. I think the number of rooms open depends on volunteer availability, but the price remains the same, no matter how much - or how little - you can see.
Nice cloisters, though (even though the old guidebook reveals that half of these were closed, too.)
A mermaid corbel, with a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand, with a comb and a glass in her hand.
Gandalf in the Great Hall.
And a goat. In 1919, a visiting student put a sugar lump on its nose. The owner of the house was so amused she left it there, and it's been regularly replaced ever since.
We stayed for the night in the pub right in the middle of the village, which was nice, then on the Saturday headed to Devizes, for the museum (very interesting, and full of Stonehenge stuff) and the lock flight (also interesting, but impossible to photograph from the ground.) Pellinor saw a kingfisher, but I didn't.
And then home. And if anyone's still reading this, I'll be amazed!
Yes, early May. That time when it rained virtually every day - remember the Coronation? - before turning to non-stop sun the day after we came home.
We had our cottage from the Friday, but Pellinor had to drive up to Birmingham after work on Wednesday, for a conference there all day Thursday, so we decided to incorporate that into the holiday. Well, my holiday, anyway, if not his.
So I hitched a lift with him up to Birmingham on Wednesday night, and headed off for a wander on Thursday morning. I might have spent the day in Birmingham, but the museum and art gallery was closed for a big refurbishment, so instead I went to Gloucester.
The cathedral was very proud of its Great East Window, especially the "golfer" who appears in the midst of row that otherwise consists of the heraldry of the great and the good. Apparently the entire window was disassembled for safety at the start of the war. When they went to put it back in 1945, they realised that all the identifying labels had fallen off and they had no idea how to reassemble the thing. So they popped out to a newsagent where they found a picture postcard of the window - apparently the only picture of it in existence - and went from there.
I'm not normally a big fan of modern stained glass, but there were some lovely examples. I particularly liked these ones, one a memorial to the local poet and composer Ivor Gurney, and one to the composer Gerald Finzi. A very helpful information board explained each panel, and how they related to the subjects' lives and works. I found it all quite moving.
A cloister.
When it came to Comical Lions, the holiday offered poor pickings, so I had to make do with the scant two I was presented with, one from the cathedral and one - later in the day - from the museum:
Glassy lion:
Roman stone lion:
But I did find some Comical Kings!
After the cathedral, I followed signs to the folk museum, housed in a very impressive half-timbered building. I went in. Nobody there, although I could hear voices and the sound of crockery from somewhere in the back of the building. I walked tentatively into a dimly-lit room with a few half-full cabinets full of odd things. Then a man walked in, wearing a sweatshirt with a logo on. "Hello!" I said, assuming he worked there. But, "Do you work here?" he asked me. It turned out that he and his colleague were workmen who were supposed to do... something in the building, but didn't know quite what, and couldn't find anyone to tell them.
They went off, still searching. I went into the next room, and up some very creaky stairs into a very creaky upstairs room - still dimly-lit, with one or two dusty cabinets with one or two things in. An open door led to an office, where a cardigan was on the back of an office chair and a computer was on, but person was there none.
The floor creaked abominably under my feet with every step.
"Oh, here's someone at last!" said a voice. It was the lost workmen again. "Sorry, just me again," I said.
Another creak. Another empty cabinet. Distant crockery echoing from dark, hidden chambers.
I turned and fled.
In a window outside they were advertising for poeple to fight the Chthonian menace and the "eldritch horrors that lurk in Gloucester." This was allegedly not happening until July 1 but I felt quite strongly that even in early May, the folk museum held quite eldritch horrors enough for my sanity to cope with.
So onto the much less horrific National Waterways Museum, which was nice enough, but rather disappointingly light on actual content, and a much shorter visit than I expected. (Although I was amused by the visiting school class, when the teacher halted them in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, to give them a very long lecture on Polite Behaviour, along with a digression on the Poor Standards of Today and How My Generation Was Taught Better, entirely ignoring the fact that by doing so, she forced me to stand and wait for a good few minutes to get through said door. Most of the children thanked me for waiting. She didn't.)
So that left me time to pop into the City Museum for a while, then wander around the docks for bit, where I delighted a local by stopping to read a notice about a newly installed sea bin that was collecting rubbish. I know he was delighted, since I later overheard him excitedly telling another local that "a lady was just reading it!"
Then to the hotel, to wait for Pellinor to arrive from Birmingham, then dinner.
On Friday, we went to the Forest of Dean, where we walked for a while in the woods near Soudley Ponds, then went to the Dean Heritage Centre. It was all very interested and packed with information. The weather altnernated between sunshine and heavy showers, which kept curtailing our attempts to explore the grounds, but we did find a Gruffalo. Quite a lot of Gruffali, in fact, but here's just one.
And a strange creature that LOOKED a little bit like a squirrel, but wasn't red, so couldn't have been one. (I'm not really joking, actually. Whenever I'm on the mainland and see a squirrel out of the corner of my eye, my first thought is always "What on earth is THAT?")
From there, we went to Monmouth, where we sat for a good hour in a traffic jam on the edge of town, but did eventually manage to get to Waitrose to lay in some supplies. And then to our cottage, in Symonds Yat... um... West? The Wye is VERY confusing, with its constant meanders, and my sense of direction got completely shot. It's not helped by the fact that the Wales/England border does very strange things, making it so you can start in England and head broadly eastish, then suddenly find yourself being welcomed to Wales.
Well, suffice it to say that the cottage was on the river, approached by tiny little roads that claimed to be unsuitable for motor vehicles, and then went on to get even smaller.
It was the white one, near the top right of the picture - here shown with added hand ferry.
And the view from the cottage, here. Anyone who's watched the Netflix Show Sex Education will recognise the red house, a key filming location.
Sadly, it was mostly too cold and/or wet to sit outside on the nice sunny terrace during the week - although I did manage two al fresco breakfasts - but fortunately there was a great view from inside, too, with a constant sound of bird song, and LOADS of birds coming to the bird table. We spent many of our evenings inside doing jigsaws, to a backdrop of lovely view.
On the Saturday, we went to Winchcombe to visit my parents. My Mum wanted to watch the coronation, but my Dad didn't, so we thought it would be nice to keep her company. So we did. :-)
On Sunday the weather was lovely, so we went for a long walk, starting by following one from a leaflet, called Head For The Hillforts! (I don't think it had the exclamation mark, but it should have.) So head for the hillforts we did, heading up a hill called The Doward, through a veritable sea of wild garlic and bluebells.
There was a cave. King Arthur's Cave, no less.
It was all very scenic, but I didn't actually take many pictures. The gorge was too wooded and steep to photograph well, and the distant vistas were too big. But it was all nice - except for the stressful bit when we couldn't find any way to cross the Big Road, and had to add in quite a detour. After finally crossing the road, we headed south to Monmouth, then back along the river and up to Symonds Yat, famous viewpoint.
I'm SURE it didn't look like this when we used to visit when I was young. I clearly remember seeing both sides of the meander at the same time! But it's quite obvious that I really couldn't have, with the rock and the river being where they are. Just shows you can't trust memory.
As we stood looking down at Symond's Yat West (or East?) and our cottage, 4 sinister helicopters flew in single file a long way below us, near the bottom of the gorge. Apaches, according to Pellinor. "They weren't like any helicopter I've ever seen!" we overheard someone say on her phone, a little later. "I DO hope they were British." Then, half way down the path, they went past again, this time 5 of them. (Presumably one of them had popped to the toilet and missed the start of the jaunt.) I tried to photograph them through the trees.
I failed.
Passing the Pub On The Other Side Of The River (Symonds Yat... East?) we saw an empty table, so paused for a drink or two, then caught the hand-ferry home.
Monday was wet, so we Went Underground. First was Hopewell Colliery in the Forest, which was great! The Forest of Dean has the ancient tradition of Free Mining, protected by ancient law. The freeminers - local men - have exclusive rights to all forest minerals, and have used this power to see off various threats and encroachments over the years. The trip down the mine was led by a genuine freeminer, and was absolutely fascinating. A retired miner from the north-east was on the tour, and was encouraged to chip in with his own mining memories, which only added to the interest.
We only just managed to get in, though. Our cottage had very patchy mobile phone reception, so when we'd booked our tickets the night before on the wifi, Pellinor had had to leg it out of the door and up the hill to try to receive the authorisation code from the bank. He thought he'd managed it in time, but apparently not, since we weren't on the list, although he could see that we'd tried to book. With a bit of rummaging around pockets and the foot well of the car, we JUST managed to come up with enough cash to pay our way. (No cards accepted.) Well, it was minus 3p, but the miner graciously allowed to let that go.
And then to Clearwell Caves, which were mostly iron workings, with occasional added Creatures:
This cave was particularly nice, with various prehistoric creatures in lights rippling across the water.
On Tuesday, we headed into Wales and climbed Sugar Loaf. This is an iconic hill for me. When I was young, driving over Cleeve Hill between Winchcombe and Cheltenham, we always looked for Sugar Loaf. If you couldn't even see The Malverns, visibility was officially Bad. If you could see Sugar Loaf - and you usually couldn't - it was officially Very Good and had to be exclaimed about.
We walked it some years ago, and got spectacularly mired down in bracken and uncrossable streams, due to misreading the dotted line denoting the edge of National Trust land as the dotted line denoting a footpath. This has only added to its iconic nature, so climbing Sugar Loaf was pretty much non negotiable, no matter what the weather.
As it turned out, the weather was okay, with rumours of rain elsewhere, but no rain actually falling on us. Mountain vistas often look between with patchy clouds, I think, than in clear blue skies.
But thunder was forecast, so were careful not to wander too far away, and kept the walk fairly short. This gave us time to go to Raglan Castle on the way back. It was lovely and sunny when we arrived.
5 minutes later, the thunder started, and the downpour. So instead of exploring the castle, we spent most of the visit sheltering under a bridge by the moat, watching fork lightning - some of it less than quarter of a mile away - and listening to the thunder. As we left, we thanked the staff for laying on such a good audio-visual recreation of the Civil War siege.
For most of the time we were there, there was still sun on Sugar Loaf (though not, admittedly, in this picture.)
On Wednesday we walked along the river to Goodrich Castle, where my parents met us. We pottered around the castle, climbed a tower - up an amazingly narrow spiral staircase - and had lunch.
Taken from the same place as the castle picture, but looking the other way:
Then my parents left, and Pellinor and I walked home the long way round, taking in several other meanders, a zombie-filled factory (or so it looked to me), Welsh Bicknor Youth Hostel, The Black Bridge (an old railway bridge where we tried to play Pooh Sticks in the swollen river with blades of grass and tiny mushrooms; it didn't really work) and a never-ending field of sheep. It kept raining in short bursts, but only lightly - the sort of thing when you put up with it for a while, before finally deciding to put your coat on... only for the rain to stop and you get Too Hot and have to take it off again. And so on and so on, rinse (literally!) and repeat.
Eventually, though, our luck ran out and we got caught in a veritable downpour, enough to soak us to the skin about an hour from home. But we'd pretty much dried out again by the time we got to the Pub On Our Side Of The River (5 minutes from home), so we stopped for a drink or two, and even managed - briefly - to sit outside!
On Thursday, the weather looked more promising, so we decided to stay local and just stroll around the environs. So we walked down (or up?) the river to the Biblins rope bridge (not as scary as it sounds, but wobbly enough that one half expects someone to pop up and ask "WHAT... is your quest?") then back along the other side, to the Pub On The Other Side Of The River, for an unexpectedly large "light bite" and rhubarb cider! RHUBARB CIDER! I don't normally hold with Not Apple Cider, but last year discovered the delights of rhubarb cider, so was quite overjoyed to find there. (Although possibly less overjoyed than I'd have been had I found it somewhat earlier than the last day of our stay, when we were booked into a different - and rhubarbciderless - pub for our evening meal.)
Then, on impulse, we hopped onto a pleasure boat for a river cruise, with was relaxing and fun. The man behind us saw a kingfisher, but I didn't. And then up to Symonds Yat again, just because it was there, then back over the rope bridge and home. It was a lovely day, even though - or perhaps because? - we didn't Do Anything. (Or take any interesting pictures, either, it seems.)
In the evening, we had dinner in the Pub On Our Side Of The River, having booked a window seat with a view. As a result, the meal was enlivened by constant passing canoeists and kayakers, including an unruly group of children. Actually, it was enlivened even more by the running commentary on said canoeists and kayakers from the people on the table next to us. It started to pour with rain while we were there, and Someone hadn't bothered to take a coat, but home was only a few minutes away.
On the Friday, we packed up and left, and went to Tintern Abbey, had a nice lunch in a nearby tea room (home of the largest tea cake known to man), then headed back east into England, to Lacock.
Tintern:
Lacock was... odd. I've been before, and still have the guidebook, so could see that less than half the rooms were open. Half the photography exhibition seemed to be closed - working on a new temporary display, I think - and the grounds were less extensive than I remember. It's all very nice, of course... but had I actually paid to go in - it cost £18! - I think I'd have been rather fed up. We usually take HOURS in historic places, but finished this one in not much more than two. I'm sure it filled a whole day last time. I think the number of rooms open depends on volunteer availability, but the price remains the same, no matter how much - or how little - you can see.
Nice cloisters, though (even though the old guidebook reveals that half of these were closed, too.)
A mermaid corbel, with a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand, with a comb and a glass in her hand.
Gandalf in the Great Hall.
And a goat. In 1919, a visiting student put a sugar lump on its nose. The owner of the house was so amused she left it there, and it's been regularly replaced ever since.
We stayed for the night in the pub right in the middle of the village, which was nice, then on the Saturday headed to Devizes, for the museum (very interesting, and full of Stonehenge stuff) and the lock flight (also interesting, but impossible to photograph from the ground.) Pellinor saw a kingfisher, but I didn't.
And then home. And if anyone's still reading this, I'll be amazed!