Day 12 - Hereford to Winchester

We started off today travelling to Goodrich Castle to see it from the inside. Cheri had quite a few relatives on her Mother's side about 25-26 generations back that lived here, and actually owned and built it.

Since we missed the LDS General Conference last weekend we were able to download it and listen to in on the IPod while we drove between places yesterday and today. That has been rather nice to catch up on what we missed.


After Goodrich we travelled to Lacock Abbey. This place is not only a little Abbey but basically a whole little town set back in time. Being Easter weekend the place was swarming with traffic that included cars, bikes and people on foot. The old Abbey was owned by Henry Fox Talbot who created the first negative that photos came from. As a result, there was quite a bit of information about Talbot. Like all abbey's (either a monastery or covenant) this one was done away with by King Henry the VIII when he broke off from the Catholic church and took over the all the abbeys or had them destroyed. Many became private homes or something of the sort. Oh yeah, and they used this for the filming of a few Harry Potter films.

On leaving Lacock Abbey our GPS took us through the backroads a little. Sometimes this can be somewhat of an adventure on the little narrow roads. This time it was perfect. We passed quite a few homes with thatched roofs. The roads were still to narrow to stop but we managed to get a few pictures.

Then on to Stonehenge. Stonehenge was also crawling with people. Yet the way they have things setup you can walk around the area and get an excellent view and exclude most if not all the people from your pictures. Of course there were certain dangers on the way to the site.

Yet we arrived at Stonehenge without incident and took a few pictures. It should be noted. If you come to England look into either a National Trust or an English Heritage membership. Once you purchase one they allow you free access to hundreds of sites. In the case of Stonehenge they honor either one, got in for free, and were escorted past the line for entrance. We purchased a National Trust membership so most of the places you have seen belong to them.

Finally we ended up at the Old Vine Inn in Winchester. We are right across the street from the Winchester Cathedral which is rather impressive.

Being Easter we knew we would need reservations for dinner and made them in advance a few weeks ago. We decided to dine at our hotel and it was a good thing we had reservations. They were rather busy. We watched one couple without a reservation wait over two hours to get seated in this small little pub of a resturant. The food was excellent. Drew had a stuff chicken with basil and cheese. Cheri had the curry dish. And for dessert Drew had the plate of British cheeses and Cheri had the sticky toffee pudding, again, both were very yummy.