Thursday, August 28, 2014

All Shipshape and Bristol Fashion.

We left Wales yesterday in brilliant sunshine, but by the time we hit Bristol the clouds had rolled in but at least it didn't rain ...


We parked in a Park and Ride carpark and caught the double decker into the city.

The boys enjoyed the view from the top deck ...



We started our walking tour off at the St Mary Redcliffe church ...


We stopped by a kiosk-cafe for lunch whilst watching a cormorant drying his wings ...

We started our walk around the docks but were held up by a selfish narrowboat owner who insisted on holding up the pedestrians and traffic just so he could swan around the docks ...


And there he goes,  the selfish bugger!

No sign of Wallace, but his side kick Grommit was waiting in the side car ...

It was a lovely walk with plenty of nice boats to look at ...

Multi coloured houses on the cliff ...

Another narrowboat, well it is a narrowboat blog!

Dockside pose with a very tired dog ...

Another Grommit ...

What I found fascinating was the right of way through working ship yards ...


Whilst in Bristol one must get a pic of SS Great Britain ...

Superb Ketch for sale ...

We did a complete circumnavigation of the docks and ended up back in the city centre by a strange dog sculpture, which the boys were most interested in ...

When you photograph a sphere ...

,,, it makes you look really fat!

The spoons is in a nice building, as usual ...

We really enjoyed out time in Bristol.  We were heading here down the K & A last August when we had to turn back at Devizes ...

We were heading to Bath after Bristol so we picked out a pub at Stanton Drew for the night, which was very close to Bath. 

We popped into The Druids Arms to introduce ourselves as customers from the Britstop book.  It would have been rude not to have a beer, so we did ... although to be truthful I had been feeling a bit crook all day so wanted an early night!  An early night it was, I was in bed at 21.00!!!  The last time I went to bed that early was when I was 12!

Elaine stayed up to a ridiculous hour and took a strange pic in the direction of the church (and standing stones) from the window of the van ...

This morning (Wednesday) I was feeling much better. 

What we didn't realise when we moored up last night was that we had moored up in a significant historical spot!

This is the view from the van this morning.  There are three big stones in the pub garden but I will pass it over to my assistant, Elaine to explain what they are about.

El here ... 

Well, what an amazing place we came across!  Thanks Britstops!  

The stones in the pub car park are collectively known as the 'Cove' and are pretty old ... about 3000 to 2000 BCE to be more precise - maybe even older!

Further round in the village are ancient stone circles, which are the second largest stone circles in Britain after Avebury.  Who would have known! 

I went to look at the stone circles myself as dogs aren't allowed in, due to their being cows roaming in amongst the stones!

I didn't realise until I got closer to the stones, but there were quite a few people in the field, most of them propped up against the stones checking out the energies ... so I joined them for a bit !

What an amazing place it is.  There are three stone circles in all.  One of the myths of the stones, is that the devil, in the form of a fiddler, attended a wedding and (encouraging the bridal party to dance on into the Sabbath) turned them all to stone.  The moral of the story is to watch out for random fiddlers at a wedding!

Actually on the way in, we were chatting to a chap who OWNS a site of his very own standing stones, somewhere close by.  He had come to check out the stones here to see how they compared to his own stones.  Imagine owning your own standing stones?  Awesome!  He said his mum would never enter the field where these stones were for fear that the myth was true!! 

It was such an amazing place - just loved it!  On the way back to the van, Paul snapped this cottage that he took a fancy to ... could it be because it was next to the pub?

It had just been sold for £250,000...bargain.


Then, I got him to try and push a stone over in the Cove before we set off ...

He failed, so we headed off for Bath!















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