England - visiting friends in Wiltshire

We are on a brief trip to England to visit our old friend, flatmate and Geoff's best man, Pete, who we haven't seen for many a long year. He and his very lovely wife Helen live in a beautiful area which is near Bath in Wiltshire, at the south western edge of the Cotswolds.

We flew into London City Airport on Tuesday and took the train into Central London, before taking a bus out to Corsham where they live. It is an official area area of natural beauty and certainly stunning. Their village, Corsham, was used as a set in the Poldark movie.
Corsham is also where Dickens wrote the book The Pickwick Papers.

We then drove to Avebury Henge, it is similar to, larger than, and arguably better than, Stone Henge. Both are part of a set of Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial sites, and are part of a world heritage site. We timed it a little wrong again as it was a day away from the Summer Solstice and the site was very busy, some of the people looked super intense too. The stones are all huge and stand on their ends in a circle, surrounded by a wide ditch (henge) and is a hugely impressive area which dates back to about somewhere between 2850 BC and 2200 BC!! After that we drove past Silbury Hill, another mysterious ancient site (mound) before lunch.
We had lunch at Honeystreet Mill cafe which is by a canal and has Longboat moorings beside it, a very eclectic place. We then visited Caen Hill locks, in Devizes, the longest straight flight of canal locks in the country (29 of them) completed in 1810. It is an amazing feat of engineering that was needed to carry coal, via canal, up a hill to London. The area is also extremely peaceful and tranquil, although probably not so tranquil when it is busy, as this series of hand operated locks would be very tiring and potentially frustrating.Read more