Distance walked: 10.5km, Alcohol consumed: 1 glass wine
After breakfast, we paid Iris and headed off. I had thought she might give us a discount since she stuffed up our booking but she didn’t. She didn’t even remember how much to charge us. I had to tell her what she had quoted us. I suspect she wouldn’t even have remembered to charge us if I hadn’t reminded her.
Our first stop was Tetbury. Home to many antique shops and a shop full of Highgrove branded items. Highgrove is the home of the Prince of Wales. The antique shops were interesting to browse in. I would have been seriously tempted by several items, but fortunately the impossibility of shipping furniture back to Australia saved me. The Highgrove shop was interesting too. Not so much for the contents, which were just standard gift shop items, but the amount of money some people are prepared to pay for something connected to the royal family.
After Tetbury, we planned to stop at Malmsbury but it was market day and parking was impossible so we went on to Lacock. Iris had been rather scornful of this village, condemning it as a model village. It was a little like an English version of Sovereign Hill, but all the houses are original and people really live there. It is adorable. A lot of historic shows, plus some parts of the Harry Potter movies, have been filmed there. You can’t actually drive into the village. There is a large carpark on the outskirts run by the National Trust and then it is a 2 minute walk into the village centre.
The manor house at Lacock is Lacock Abbey which was the home of a Mr Fox Talbot, who was the inventor of modern photography. I had always thought it was Daguerre but it turns out it wasn’t, according to the small museum on photography at Lacock. Daguerre’s method just made a single, positive imagine. Fox Talbot’s made negative, from which you could make multiple prints. All modern photography has been developed from his approach. He was a classic Victorian gentleman of scientific bent who explored many things, including spectrum analysis and was one of the first people to decipher Assyrian cuneiform. Just see what can be achieved if you don’t have to work for a living (and are a genius).
In addition to the museum you can also go through parts of the Talbots house, which has been furnished as it was in Fox Talbot’s time. You can also wander through the ruins of the Abbey’s cloister (usually - it was closed for filming something) and saunter through the gardens. We went through the house then stopped for lunch, planning to come back to see the gardens afterwards.
We wandered around the village, before stopping at converted stables for a light lunch. I had pate on brown toast with a salad. Mary just had a ham sandwich.
We then tried to re-enter the grounds of the Talbot’s house. When then discovered that we had been supposed to pay an entry fee of 12 pounds each. For some reason, we weren’t charged the first time we went in, in spite of chatting to the woman at the entrance. Her replacement wasn’t so obliging and we weren’t sufficiently interested in gardens to pay up. This proved to be lucky as it suddenly started to pour with rain.
Finally we set off for Bath. We had thought to stop by our B&B to drop off the bags before returning the car. However, the drive into Bath took longer than we expected so we just returned the car first. This proved to be a wise move as there was nowhere to park near our B&B. Cars are not as convenient as you might think. What is really convenient is a car and driver, as parking is a nightmare. Driving can also be exciting. The English approach to road design is “when in doubt, add a roundabout”. They even like to nest them so instead of a circle they are ore like a figure 8 - insanity. It took us 1 1/2 hours to drive the 20 miles from Lacock to the car hire depot.
We then got a taxi (car & driver!) to our B&B which is lovely. We both have good, big rooms (mine is the biggest) with big comfy beds and spacious bathrooms. The only drawback is that it is about a 10 minute walk from the centre of town.
After settling in we went into the town centre to pick up a bunch of pre-booked tickets from tourist information centre. After this we just roamed around, getting our bearings before stopping for an early dinner. It was a Friday night and we didn’t have bookings. It also suddenly came on to rain so we stopped at the first likely looking place - a very hip pizza joint called Dough. The make pizza and also pasta from a variety of different grains, including hemp, as well as just wheat. Mary had gnocchi made with turmeric in a paprika dough basket. The gnocchi was very good, the basket was just odd. I had tagliatelle made with chestnut flour with a duck ragu. The pasta was clearly made with something other than wheat but I wouldn’t known it was chestnuts if I did read it on the menu. The waiters were suitably Italian and flirty, which we both appreciated.
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