After a week at our country retreat at Shrewton, it was time to pack up and move on. That required an early start, but thanks to the 90 minute drive (I am so glad not to be driving any more!), it was after 11am before Ian hit the trail for his final day on the […]
It was time for Ian to head back to the South Downs Way, starting from Saturday’s end point at Hall’s Hill, and finishing at Cocking, some 20 km away. That meant I had several hours to spend at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum – “weald” meaning heavily wooded. This is very similar to […]
I have watched every single episode of Downton Abbey, have seen both movies, and can’t wait for the third. The writing is impeccable, the cast are wonderful, but the star of the show is the stunning setting. So when I discovered that Highclere Estate was less than an hour’s drive away, visiting was a no-brainer. […]
After a sleep in, a shopping trip, and a lunch at home, we set off for an afternoon of Neolithic history. Stonehenge was not our destination; instead we headed north to Avebury, and stepped back in time over 3000 years. Avebury and Stonehenge are very different. Avebury is a much larger site, and you can […]
The heat of yesterday was replaced overnight with overcast skies and a bit of light drizzle. It was Day 2 for Ian, who pulled up pretty well from his 21 km walk. We returned to the car park at Exton where he’d finished walking yesterday, and he was soon underway. The plan was for me […]
It was time for Ian’s 4 day South Downs Way walk to get underway. In 1997, we walked the SDW from Amberley to Hove, as training for hiking in Nepal. Twenty seven years later, Ian decided to complete the remainder, from Winchester to Amberley. I would be the chauffeur, doing morning drop-offs and afternoon pickups, […]
With a MapRun event planned for this evening, in Totton, which is just west of Southampton, it made sense to spend the day in the vicinity. The skies were clear of wet stuff, and the Isle of Wight was our destination of choice. This made for a day of logistics, with a return ferry and […]
We might have been more reluctant to leave Timsbury, had it not been for the telecom heavy machinery that arrived this morning, and promptly began digging up the road in noisy fashion. For a quiet country village, there has been a lot going on this week. With a relatively short drive to Shrewton, we hung […]
Drama notwithstanding, our aim today was to visit Paulton, and in particular, the Holy Trinity Church, where my 3 times great grandfather, Silas (aka Cyrus) Simes, a coal mine bailiff, married Lavinia Wheeler, on 27 December 1819. It was Silas and Lavinia’s son, David, who left Paulton for Bath, then decided to emigrate to Australia, […]
Timsbury is a small, sleepy Somerset village, much like the other small, sleepy Somerset villages surrounding it. Nothing ever happens here. Until today … Ian woke up to see a fire truck going past, at 6am. Oddly, he thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. When we got up properly at 8am, we […]
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