A Weekend Away
The Wife and I had one of those rare weekends, when she’s not working and I don’t have a game of football and so on the spur of the moment we decided to jump in the car and head away for a couple of days.
I had a vague idea of where to go so after booking a B&B near Frome in Somerset on Saturday morning, we jumped in the car, filled it up with petrol and hit the motorway.
Just over two hours later we arrived at our first port of call, Stonehenge. I’ve driven past it a couple of times but never actually got up close to them. We parked up at the newly built Visitor Center and after grabbing a bit of food and picking up our audio guides decided to walk to the stones instead of taking the handy shuttle bus.
20 minutes later and just as it starts raining, we arrived at the stone circle and fire up the audio guide to fill us in on the history of Stonehenge. The hailstorm that arrived as we got half way round put a bit of a dampener on the time there but it was quite fascinating learning all about the place.
Due to the rain, we decided to take the shuttle bus back to the visitor center and after a look around the tat gift shop we spent a bit of time in the exhibition that goes into greater detail and gives you more of a historical visualisation of the area. We then got back into the car and headed to the B&B that we had booked that morning.
After a bit of a drive, we arrived at Eden Vale Farm in Beckington, a small village about 10 miles south of Bath. The B&B was situated down a long country lane and sat alongside the River Frome. It is a working farm with loads of animals on it as well as stables for horses.
After checking in we had a wander around the grounds and visited the stables to check out the horses including a pair of cute and very friendly Shetland ponies. We headed into Beckington for the evening to grab a bite to eat at Forester’s a local pub/restaurant. Typical pub fare on the menu and the fish and chips I ordered was really good.
The stroll back to the farm was done in near darkness down the country lanes but we made it back without incident or injury, although we did inadvertently scare some horses at one point with the torch light from my phone.
The breakfast the next morning was really good and it was kind of sweet that one of my eggs turned up late because it wasn’t done to perfection (the yolk kept breaking) and they were most apologetic!
After breakfast we packed up, paid our bill (only £65!!), loaded up the car and headed to the next stop on our adventure, Longleat Safari Park.
OK, so we like animals. This isn’t news. But we’d never been to a safari park before and this seemed like the best time to go as we were close by. OK, so I’d planned this one all along as a ‘surprise’ for The Wife.
We drove around the park and while we managed to get up close to the lions and tigers, the elephant was nowhere to be seen and the rain meant that the monkeys stayed huddled up together in the dry and didn’t get up to their regular mischief of attacking the cars. Which was a shame I was looking forward to a monkey trying to take apart my car with it’s furry little hands. Ah well.
After the drive around we visited the attractions in the park which included a ‘jungle boat ride’ (slow crawl around a lake) to see the gorillas (static), seals (noisy) and hippos (invisible). We also got to walk with Penguins where one of them decided he liked the taste of my jeans and kept attacking me for a bite of them.
After a bird show, I held a tarantula, much to The Wife’s disgust, and then we headed into Longleat House to have a wander round.
We left shortly after and after a stop off at my sister’s house for dinner, a chat and a pint in the local pub on the river, we finally made it home just in time to go to bed.
We’d done a 340-mile round trip and had really enjoyable time. It’s good to get away from the regular weekend routine. Now to find time to go away again….
