Withy Mills

We left Waterwynch for the last time, having cleared up the house and auctioned off all the leftover food items. Jason and Mark kindly volunteered to drive us to Cardiff Airport, where our pre-arranged rental car was ready for us to pick up. I say “pre-arranged car” but in fact it was a completely different car. We’d ordered “Nissan Juke or similar” but what we got was a Vauxhall Combo. That’s right, a fucking van! It was the only vehicle they had with an automatic transmission. I’ll be leaving them a very poor review.

The vehicle doesn’t come with satnav and the Bluetooth was being very temperamental, so eventually we plugged Nicola’s phone in to the USB socket, which is very inconveniently located on the screen. Then we plugged in, firstly, the directions to Caerwent, where there are some ruins of the remains of a walled Roman town, with impressive walls up to 5m high in places. Most of the rest of the town is only seen as foundations these days. We stopped off for some lunch at the Coach & Horses pub. Next, to Sainsbury’s, so we could revictual for the coming days, and then the directions to our new accommodation just outside Bath, on Withy Mills Farm. We settled in and had quiche and salad for dinner.

Roman ruins at Caerwent

The following morning we made a plan to visit the stone circles at Stanton Drew, then travel on to Glastonbury. We located the stone circles and found some signs describing them, put £2 in the honesty box, and proceeded through a gate to observe the stones in a cow-infested field. We didn’t get too close to the stones as it appeared some of the cows were calves, so may have had over-protective mothers who would merrily have trampled us. There are no facilities there so our visit was short.

England's 3rd-largest stone circle, in a field, with some cows

We then drove on to Glastonbury, and visited the abbey. As we arrived a tour was about to start, so we tagged along with that and learned all about the history of the abbey from its early establishment, St Dunstan and St Patrick and assorted other saints, all the way through to its eventual destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Our guide was very professional and gave a personal touch to her stories. It lasted around ¾ of an hour, and we then wandered around a bit more, up to the pond and cloisters. We then made a plan to get some lunch, update our parking (we’d only had enough change for 2 hours’ parking initially), and then return for a choral concert at 2pm, and more wandering around, including finding the reredorter. We left in search of tea and observing all the weird shops that make up Glastonbury High Street, whilst seeking out an ordinary shop (Boots The Chemist) amongst them. The weird shops, and High St, was being increasingly populated by persons of a New Age persuasion, easily identified by their dress, scent, and hairstyles. The festival gets underway next week.

Glastonbury Abbey - ruined!

Having found a Boots and got what we needed, we headed home, only briefly impeded on a couple of occasions by farm traffic.