#93 August 13, 2022 Nomad Diary. Avebury Stones. Cardiff Day Trip. Prior Park and Train Tunnels Walk.
Week’s Highlights.
Friday. 12. Today we take the bus to Bath to get us within a mile of Prior Park. There is a scenic Palladian bridge that we are going to see. We have a beautiful walk all the way there. When we arrive we find a lovely landscaped walk with information boards explaining this place in further detail! We walked down a wooded pathway toward the valley where the bridge is. We took pictures and walked back up the middle grassland. The mansions at the top of the hill were built by the same man, but are now owned by a college and have no access to the public. We decided to walk on up and over the hill through the neighborhood to a bicycle path. The bike path is built on an old railroad bed and there is a train tunnel to walk through now. We walk through what the map shows as the southern Cotswolds where so many people love to visit for beautiful architecture and country walks. We didn’t even plan this, but we are so enjoying it!
The tunnel was amazing at a mile long! Then we found that there was a second tunnel that was ⅓ of a mile long. The long tunnel was cool like a cave out of the hot day. Inside the tunnel were lights just bright enough to see. We were passed by families on bikes. There was classical music playing through speakers in the tunnel that kept us company too! We walked for nine miles this day. I really wanted to go to Bath Soft Cheese for lunch but we knew that we weren’t going to make it before 2 or 3pm. We were getting hungry and around 1pm we found an ice cream shop and got a soft twist. It was a welcome cool in the hot day and gave us just enough to make it to Bath Soft Cheese for lunch!
Then we were able to relax, have a great lunch with award winning cheese, and catch a bus in Kelston near the cafe to our town down the road.
Thursday. 11. Today we spent all day in our comfortable airbnb. We cooked three meals here, did laundry, and watched tv after 7pm. My favorite show has been Antiques Road Trip. In the show, two buyers get 200 pounds to go shopping. They are sent on a road trip to different antique stores and getting together 5 items for auction in the final town destination. Then they auction the items and see who made more money. It’s all for charity and I’m having a ball watching this show. I get to learn about the drives, the items, the locations, and the people on the show.
Wednesday. 10. We planned and made a day trip to Cardiff, Wales today. It was about an hour from Bath. Once we arrived, we walked through the town. There are places called Arcades that were built in the late 1800s and are like indoor malls. They are beautiful with a pedestrian walking way through shops that share the arcade, and most of these are 2 stories tall with glass ceilings. There was a market we also went to that was all under one two-story roof. There were a variety of vendor booths that sold all kinds of items and foods. We spent a couple of hours at Cardiff Castle. It has a huge medieval styled house, an 11th century Motte with a moat, and even some Roman ruins to view.
Tuesday. 9. Darrell makes pancakes! He is so good at this and we can get real maple syrup here in the UK since they are connected to Canada. It’s also berry season and we keep stocked up with a variety. We have a slow morning, and decide to walk to Keynsham for the promise of a Mexican (really!) restaurant that has good reviews. We also can get some groceries in that town. The Mexican restaurant, Dalia Cocina, turned out really good! Better than we had hoped. We enjoyed the food and I left them a good google review. The owner loves everything Mexican and has never been there. Well she cooks some tasty food and we were able to tell her what we know about Mexico and where we have been. At dinner we fixed ourselves Wedge Salads! We have bacon as standard grocery item and it works well with this dish. We got to Danish blue cheese that is soft and mild, and I make an Italian vinaigrette that tops it off!
Monday. 8. We figured out our way using buses and trains to Avebury Stones, a UNESCO world heritage site that is less visited than Stonehenge and really amazing in it’s own right. At Avebury there is a restored Manor house that has parts of it dating back to the 1400s! There was a wealthy man in the early 1900’s who purchased the manor house and the whole town as his way to protect and study these stones. Many of the stones have been used through the centuries within other buildings in the area. Even with many missing stones, there are so many still to walk around and enjoy for hours. We ate at the only pub there which was good food and we were glad about that! We also walked an extra mile to get to see Silbury Mound. It is considered the largest artificial mound in Europe compared to the size of an Egyptian pyramid.
Sunday. 7. 6 miles the long and slow travel way to Bristol for worship. We walk 2 miles to Keynsham to get a bus to the Bristol. We wait about 10 minutes for the bus. We ride from Keynsham into Bristol for about 20 minutes. We have learned to watch for our stop as, and how to ring a bell to indicate to the driver that we want to get off at the next stop. From our bus stop in Bristol, we walk about a mile up a steep hill, then level off into a flatter neighborhood to get to the church of Christ. We enjoyed our time studying the Bible together, singing and meeting new people who live and work here. As with other groups we’ve been with, there are many immigrated Africans within the group. At this group I met a man from Ghana and one from Barbados. I didn’t meet the others but suppose that they are from a variety of places. These two men have been in the UK for more than 15 years each and have wives and children. After we finish here, we walk a mile towards Bristol Temple Meads train station and a restaurant where we have planned to meet up with Barry and Marcia, a couple we met on our Iceland-Norway cruise. We get to their favorite UK hangout: Wetherspoons. It’s a cheap-eats chain where wifi and bottomless drinks bring in the crowd. We sit and talk for about two hours about traveling adventures, theirs and ours. Then Darrell and I walk next door to the train and ride it for 10 minutes back to Keynsham. We walk the 2 miles back through the pasture to our town and our airbnb in Bitton.
Nomad Notes. Somewhere in here Darrell suggested that we eat our largest meal during the middle of the day and eat light at dinner time. We are generally out and touring during the day and this makes it really easy to shop and have our breakfast items and our salad items at our airbnb. It also gives us a chance to get our vegetables in with our salad especially if our lunch hasn’t had many.
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