Today we jumped out of bed early ready for our big day tour.

Tonight I am very eager to jump back into bed to get over our big day tour.

That doesn’t sound terribly good, but it is misleading. The day was great, it’s just that it was very very hot in a little sweaty bus, and we travelled about 150 miles with 16 other people, met about 10,000 other tourists along the way, and saw more quaint little cottages, in quaint little villages than one ever needs to see in one day. But, as I said, it was great!

We started with Stonehenge. Now, we had visited (if you remember) some standing stones in Orkney, but Stonehenge has just got this particular ‘special’ status surrounding it. It is a remarkable achievement, just the fact that it is a working calendar is enough to impress me. The stones are huge, but the entire thing is actually a lot smaller than I expected. Luckily for us we got there just before the crowds so I managed to get a couple of pictures taken without the 10,000 other tourists saying ‘cheese’!

Next we went on to Avebury, which is actually 2 rings of standing stones (albeit much smaller stones). Unfortunately, before they were discovered to have been rings, a town was built in amongst them, and now a road pretty well crosses right through them. Little is really known about them, although there seems to be a lot of references to fertility, including the fact that the sheep there usually have 3 lambs, instead of the more common 2.

The National Trust village of Lacock is pretty, but essentially very National Trustish. Much prettier, was the town of Castle Combe. Voted prettiest village in England it certainly lives up to it’s reputation. All the residents still follow the time honoured tradition of leaving their front doors wide open, so for the many, many, many tourists that pass through, it’s like an open invitation to stick your nose in. Very nice indeed. Best of all, whilst in the church visiting the knights tomb, we noticed that the knee rests that are used when praying, were actually individual stools each with a tapestry cover, probably made by the local church going folk, depicting different floral arrangements. It was very charming. We also had a quick squiz at the Manor House Hotel there, which is around �200 odd pounds a night. Definitely where we will stay next time. That is, after we win this weeks Lotto of course.

So off to London tomorrow. I have lots of things I’d like to visit, so I’ll do my best to keep you updated as soon as I can…

Later.