Weekend with Glennn and Megan

The basic plan was Bath, Stonehenge, and Salisbury Cathedral. We left Malvern aiming for Forest of Dean, but found a road closure. We found ourselves heading into Wales, towards Monmouth. Those street signs are unpronouncably interesting. Raglan Castle loomed on the horizon, and although there was some concern that we didn't have time, and also that the weather was not very clement, we paid up and went in. Despite being in ruins (compared to Tower of London), it's still an imposing place.

From Raglan, we headed back past Tintern Abbey (no time to get out there), and made it into Bath. We didn't really have a detailed plan, and it was the weekend of the Bath festival, so trying (with only a tiny map) to decide which part of the city we should search for a car park resulted in an extended tour. But we found the Abbey, and almost went into the Pump House - only detered by the queue and cost factors. It was certainly a nice place to walk (and drive) around - fine weather would probably have only increased the crowds.

There was time to visit Stonehenge on our way to the Salisbury accommodation. It was quite impressive for my third visit - but we found it too cold to enjoy the full benefits of the audioguide. Only Joanna had gloves handy (is that a pun?), so the rest of us couldn't hold them up to our ears for long enough to hear the stories. But I'm sure Megan and Glennn were pleased to have visited, despite the temperature. I understand it was a significant contrast with Jerusalem, where they had been three days earlier.

After installing ourselves into our B&B place, we went for a walk in the Salisbury city centre. Having seen his poster in the south, the four wise guys went searching for the Messiah. (It was remarkably funny at the time.) We asked three different people (a taxi driver, who said that the church didn't exist any more, but basically had the location right; a bartender; and some senior citizens smoking outside a bingo hall) where St Martin's Church was, and got three different answers - each in a different quadrant. We tried the closest place, but it wasn't right. And so we decided that there wasn't time to acquire both culture and dinner, and the latter had priority. It did take quite a lot of walking, finding no room in the Haunch of Venison, and ... negotiating ... to finally choose a place. And it turned out well. The Red Lion had been built in about 1220 for the people working on the Cathedral, which was started the same year.

The next morning we attended a service at the Cathedral. I was a little disappointed that it wasn't the Cathedral Choir, but the repertoire was good, including the Howells Paean as a postlude. (Interestingly, I heard my other favourite Paean - by Leighton, the only other paean I know - on the radio that afternoon.) Then we went off via Nether Wallop, Middle Wallop, and Palestine to Avebury, where there is another stone circle. This one had smaller stones, but was a larger site. It was perhaps more interesting, since we could walk all around them and touch them. Lunch at the village pub was slightly disastrous - two meals arrived after 20 mins, but after waiting for an hour, the others didn't. We cancelled them and left hungry.

The trip home was via Cotswolds - in particular Upper and Lower Slaughter and Bourton-on-the-Water. They were all very pleasant, and I think Glennn would need no convincing to come back for a relaxing romantic getaway.

We had an interesting conversation about Footpaths.

(This post written from memory on 11 May about the weekend of 19-20 April.)