Today was a quick sweeping day through my past! I took Geoff to Marlborough first, which was the nearest town to where I grew up. It was pretty weird to see the old place's like Duck's toy shop (where we stopped in and bought a mini diabolo for old time's sake!), and the India Shop down by the duck pond! I bought a fountain pen in WHSmith's and poked my nose into Polly Tea Rooms. The fairy shop is gone, but Monsoon is still there by Woolworth's - it is all such a trip! We had lunch in Calne, and took a quick look into St. Mary's (my secondary school) and then headed to Avebury. We spent a while walking around Avebury stone circle, and watching two old hippie ladies 'be one with the stones' to try to 'absorb their power', it was freaky but very amusing watching them try to nestle into the nooks and crannies that they could find! Then we headed off to Pewsey - we turned down the wrong road by mistake and ended up in the West Woods - we decided to see if the old picnic spot I used to go to was still there, it was, and so we got out and took some pictures of the bluebells that were out in full bloom in the forest. Then it was back on the one lane road - we had a couple of close calls with the mail man, but Geoff worked out the pull-offs and we survived!
We went up to St. Francis school (my primary school) - it has added lots of new buildings and the old tennis court has turned into parking spaces which was kind of sad, but still interesting to see. We drove through past Martin's (the old news agents) and the best take-away Indian restaurant ever (okay so I am biased), and went up into the old Church to look around - it was pretty much the same except the pews were replaced with wooden chairs (sad!) Then we headed for Wooten Rivers to see Oak Cottage (the main house where I grew up.) The roads were much smaller than I remember, and it was an interesting drive... we stopped at the canal to take some photos of Geoff on the locks, and then parked by the house and walked down to the allotments. It was really weird to see because nothing has changed at all! Then we drove over to Bottle Farm (the house I lived in before I moved to the states), we went down the driveway but there were quite a few cars there and we didn't want to get yelled at so we took a quick peek through the hedge and moved on. (Mr. Vigor's is gone.) We went up past the white horse on the hill, and past Pewsey Vale riding center, and on back to Bath.
The reason we headed back to Bath is I found the piece of paper from Mum with the road names on it, so we wanted to make a last attempt to find my Great-Grandparent's grave. (We already had searched Haycombe cemetery and gone back the following day to the info. office to try to look it up with no success.) We followed the directions to the intersection written down, and found a little church called Bath Abbey, sure enough - there it was - I cleaned it up and arranged the flowers I had bought, spent some time there talking and then we headed towards Medway.
1 comment:
Wow, that must have been seriously trippy! The same picnic spot I'm thinking of? With the mental mothers and their lack of phone reception...those were the days!! xxxx
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