Devon and Cornwall

Hiring a car was the best decision! Not a cheap decision but a wise one.

We picked it up at Heathrow and drove west through Wiltshire to North Devon.  We took two days to do this and stayed over night in Marlborough very near Avebury. North Devon was extra special to me as we were staying with my Auntie Margaret and Uncle Bill - two of the world's wonderful people - and it has been a long time since I have seen them.  We stayed with them for a week and had a glorious time! SO MUCH FOOD!

On the first day they took us to Clovelly a very old and very steep village. No cars can go down into the village so we parked at the top and walked - usually a landrover brings everybody back up, but to our misery not in winter.  Luckily at the bottom of the walk through the village is a pub - the Red Lion - of course we are in England a pub always comes to the rescue. The locals all have sledges to take down their groceries - it is so cute!! Margaret and Bill then wanted to take us to Hartland, but we happened to drive past an 800 year old church - so we spent the next hour walking around the graveyard and exploring the church.  It is so fascinating to think what that church has seen. We did reach Hartland finally after driving up and down and round and round very narrow lanes - VERY narrow lanes. And they had two way traffic - aargh! Guess what was at the bottom - a pub!

Our exploration of North Devon continued the next day with Appledore, Westwood Ho and Bideford; loved the first, ambivalent about the second and found the last cute.  In fact I loved Appledore (photo on the right) so much I want to live there. 

A road trip was then necessary to explore Cornwall - we stopped firstly in Redruth to do some family research for me and then stayed the night in St Ives. Redruth was where my great great grandad was born and worked as a copper miner.  Pauline and I spent a couple of hours (a cold couple of hours) in St Uney cemetary looking for a Trevena grave! Don't know if we found it, but we found the house that he lived in 1850! Bit mind blowing. The following day we drove around the very bottom tip of Cornwall and visted Land's End where the Royal Navy were practicing life saving (the free show was great) to end up in Penzance.  We both had such high expectations of Penzance, but it was nothing but a shopping centre - NO PIRATES! On this drive around the coast we came across another stone circle - the Merry Maidens - it was just there in the middle of a farmers paddock!  After an adventurous two days we headed back up north to Bideford through Truro, apparently it is the oldest town in Cornwall. The navigator (me) was rubbish on the trip north and the drive took at least an hour longer than it needed to, but we would never have seen those endless hedge-lined narrow nail-biting lanes otherwise. 

Obviously we are gluttons for punishment and the next day we decided to head back to Cornwall to Bodmin Moor to check out more stone circles! And took Uncle Bill and Auntie Margaret with us - they now have the stone circle bug as well.

We have said goodbye to the lanes, the pasties and relatives (alive and dead) to spend a few nights in Somerset before heading to Wales.  There are a few stone circles in wales for us to find!! 

Avebury and Stonehenge

Our trek round the stones of SW Englamd continued with Avebury and Stonehenge. Up and out early (always challenging) we made it to the prehistoric site of Avebury early to give us time to walk around it – and it was well worth it.  Avebury is 14 times bigger than Stonehenge, which makes it the largest stone circle in Britain with a circumference of 1.5km and predates it by 500 years.  And you can walk freely among the 17 kms of stones which made it a great experience.  There are still some stones standing that form the ancient walk up to the stone circle and of course we walked up it trying to imagine who had walked up there and why.  It was brilliant, an amazing experience!  What was more amazing was walking into the circle of stones - the energy changes a lot - inside the circle the air was more electric.

From Avebury we drove South to Stonehenge.  Stonehenge was an equally amazing experience, but different. The biggest difference being that you can’t actually touch the stones or go near them. But wow! These huge prehistoric stones standing upright with other stones balancing across the top – amazing!  The whole experience left me quite speechless.

Construction on this great monument began 5,000 years ago, but the stones that still stand today were put in place about 4,000 years ago.  Unfortunately, the current site is only part of the original Stonehenge because the original construction has suffered a great deal from both weather damage and human pillage of its rock over the millenia including close contact with tourists.  This meant I couldn't enter the stones to feel the energy within the circle, but it was still unforgettable!

Bodmin Moor

Auntie Margaret, Uncle Bill, Pauline and myself took a one hour drive to Bodmin Moor - took us two hours after we got lost in Launceston.  We couldn't find the way out!  Bodmin Moor is of one the last great unspoilt areas in the South West and much of its prehistoric and medieval past remains untouched by the passing of the centuries - 2000 prehistoric sites are still visible.  We climbed to the summit of Stowe's Hill near a little village called Minions where for more than 6000 years man has lived, worked and farmed.   On top of the hill we came upon a Bronze Age stone temple known as The Hurlers, which consists of three large aligned stone circles, but we only saw two.  It was so cold we couldn't walk any farther. Legend has it that men where turned into stone for playing hurling on top of the hill!!! Well it is a theory anyway!!

Unbelievably we found a tea room that served cornish pasties and cream teas - yum yum! And we had both!! We went from there to Trethevy Quoit. Well I say went, we struggled to find it and drove around the tiniest hedge lined lanes, when we did get there we only had 5 minutes of dim daylight left!! But we saw it and it was magnificent. This quoit is known locally as The Giant's House.  The capstone is 3.7m (12ft) long and, in its half-fallen state, 4.6m (15ft) high. There's also a natural hole piercing its highest point, but noone knows the function of this port-hole, some experts speculate that it was used for astronomical observations.

Time team have been to Bodmin Moor if you want to check it out; http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/2007_bod.html