Glastonbury

Late start to the day today. Real life is starting to creep back in and I had emails to attend to and reports to read and respond to.

I decided to venture to Glastonbury today. First stop was the Somerset Rural Life Museum. It was a working farm up until the 1970s and is now within the built up Glastonbury area. There was lots of information and rural life in Somerset in the past.
To begin with I thought the barn was a church, it was part of the abbey and used for storing produce until the dissolution of the abbey 1539. After that it was still used as a farm building until 1972.

The orchard has a variety of local apples. I can only assume they were cider apples as I tried two different varieties and they weren’t great tasting.

After the museum I went down to the Abbey. I was lucky enough to arrive just before a tour started. There’s a lot of stories and conjecture about the abbey. It’s reported King Arthur and Guinevere were buried in the grounds of the Abbey and later reburied in a tomb in the abbey church. The tomb and all it’s contents disappeared after the dissolution of the abbey in 1539. We’ll never know.

The Glastonbury Thorn is said to be descended from a thorn staff placed into the ground in a nearby hill by Joseph of Arimathea. It flowers in the winter (Christmas) and spring (Easter).

Driving back to my accommodation I saw signs to Bratton Camp and White Horse. I know we are in the chalky hills that give rise to the chalk horses so took a detour. Back in 2016 I’d detoured to see a chalk outline near Cerne Abbas and been very disappointed. The outline was very faint.
This white horse didn’t disappoint. I first went to the Bratton Camp area which is actually above the horse. Then I went down below and was shocked at how it appears on the landscape. It turns out it’s been concreted and painted white so stands out very well.Read more