Headlines
We Go to Cerne Abbas to See a Rude Man
Wow! That Hare was Big!
Lunch at the Coventry Arms (though not by the river)
Winchester, its Cathedral, and the Start for the South Downs Path
A Special Dinner: Rick Stein (we choose fish)
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Stream of Consciousness
We Go to Cerne Abbas to See a Rude Man
It rained overnight. Just a light rain, by the looks of it. Or a very heavy dew. The rest of the day is forecast to be fine and warm.
At breakfast -- another hearty full English breakfast for me -- there are five young women dressed for cycling. They join another dozen or so, from different accommodations. Heading off for a long day of cycling... Deb heard them mention fifteen hours, perhaps not for today. It would be nice country for cycling: hills not too steep, roads not too busy, good scenery. Just a bit scary when cars squeeze past.
At the Poachers Inn we see a souvenir postcard with half a dozen photos. Three photos are the inn... but the other three include the Cerne Abbas Man. It's a chalk figure, a drawing done by cutting out the turf and laying down lines of chalk. A couple of hundred metres high.
I'm not sure exactly how tall the man is. But I do remember reading that lying inside the outline of his erect penis is a local fertility rite. That gives an idea of the scale. It also helps explain why the Cerne Abbas Man is also known as The Rude Man.
There are other chalk giants and chalk horses. Cerne Abbas is within easy driving distance. That's where we go first. Pleasant driving through beautiful farmland.
Just as we arrive at the Man, a group of hikers pass by. Teenage girls, full backpacks. At least one with twin stripes of zinc cream on each cheek, more decorative than effective. I only spot one "adult", a man. Brave man!
The Rude Man is very impressive! Lying up and down the hill across the valley. Clear to see though the standard photos seem to have been taken from higher up, that is, from a drone or helicopter. There's a public footpath runs just below his feet. We choose to not follow it...
Glad we've seen it... No we can tick off, See chalk giant :-)
Wow! That Hare was Big!
We've seen the occasional roadkill. Not much, really. Perhaps the crows and foxes are active. Today we see a squashed hare. It's enormous! Not just a big rabbit, this thing is more than twice a big rabbit! As big as a dead kangaroo!
I never realised that a hare was so much bigger than a rabbit !
Lunch at the Coventry Arms (though not by the river)
After that, it's a lot of driving. We had driven through Cerne Abbas. We also see roads leading to Up Abbas and to Nether Abbas. Spread themselves, the Abbas family :-)
I zoom past the turnoff back to Piddletrenthide. We could let the GPS make up a new track but I enjoy the name... We double back and complete a loop. Follow the narrow road through the village. Through narrow country roads, back to a bigger road...
Roads get bigger. We're on a motorway. There's a lot of traffic going in the opposite direction. Escaping Winchester? Or all the way from London? Who knows! Just glad it's not so bad in our direction.
It's after noon... I pull in at a convenient pub: the Coventry Arms. It offers today's special of pheasant pie. There's a large and pleasant eating area out the back, overlooking the river. We have sandwiches, indoors.
It's another of these ancient buildings where I flinch as I walk under the low ceiling beams. Service is by a pleasant young man with an upper class accent. I wonder if he's bought the pub with daddy's money, or is working as a waiter to become independent. Idle speculation, we enjoy it :-)
Winchester, its Cathedral, and the Start for the South Downs Path
We find our night's accommodation, Giffard House, Winchester. It's a medium sized mansion, now divided into b&b rooms with ensuite. The first of the arranged accommodation for our walk.
There are three flights of stairs... I decide that I will dump some stuff from my case, to leave in the car. (The car stays here whiile we walk.) Deb will also lighten her case. The cases get carried by car (while we have to walk). Still, it makes it easier if we have less to carry up and down at the start and end of each day.
Deb starts reading the walk notes. It seems that I have chosen a company that specialises in getting hikers quickly along the Walk. That explains why one day is 35km! What fool chose this company :-? Ah well, we wouldn't want to walk for more than a week anyway. Just get it over with... quickly.
One odd thing about English breakfasts: the inns and b&b's only start breakfast at 8 or 8:30. The sun is well and truly up by 6am... It seems a waste of a hiking day to have to wait till 8am to get breakfast.
The accommodation for tonight is very nice, I'm sure the rest will be just as good. Something to look forward to at the end of each day :-)
At about 5pm we drive to the centre of Winchester. It's only a kilometre (direct line) but tonight is a night for driving. While we still can! We park near the cathedral. (Winchester Cathedral. I can't stop humming the song...) The Walk starts from the cathedral, though we see no signs. A map in the information office window shows where we need to go tomorrow.
We walk round the cathedral. Wander onto High Street -- the Saturday street market is just packing up. We sit by the lawn at the front of the cathedral, relaxing, watching passers-by. We're definitely in a city, in almost Summer, you can tell by the clothes:
One thing I realised, from our stay in Cornwall: the relevance of fashion magazines which push losing winter fat so you can wear summer clothes. In Cornwall I would check out the passing women. Some were attractive, some less so. But that is just their faces! The bodies were just heavy bundles of clothing... Could be anything, under all those layers.
Now there are people walking in the sun in frontless, topless, backless summer nothing muches. Well, in clothing that is far more revealing of the body shape. (Not that it's really warm. Just warm for England.) Anyway, now I can see that a person could develop a less than perfect body over winter and not show it... Then want to "get back in shape" for summer.
A Special Dinner: Rick Stein (we choose fish)
And now, for 6:15, we are in Rick Stein's restaurant. I booked it months ago. Ever since Robbie commented that we would be in Cornwall and Rick Stein has a restaurant in Padstowe. Okay, we're now in Winchester. The logic has stretched a bit.
There are tablecloths! And half a dozen waiters / waitpersons looking after us. And a menu with prices from high to astronomical... by our standards.
We decide to have fish.
In fact, the prices of the half dozen basic fish dishes are reasonable. I don't actually worry about prices on holiday. But I do have a rough feel for typical meals that we have bought. The more expensive Rick Stein meals are fancy dishes that I would not appeciate. (Or lobster thermidor which I would not buy because I really only like the thermidor part of it.) What we want is fish. Those dishes are reasonably priced.
Deb has sea bass. I have turbot, which I've never heard of. Which is why I choose it. Both are delicious.
My first cut into the turbot surprises me, there are bones! They are easy to remove. Apparently, the bones add flavour to the fish flesh.
For dessert, Deb has rice pudding with extra stuff. I have ginger pudding with stuff. My pudding is strongly flavoured, like a gingernut biscuit. Delicious but could have done with lots of yellow custard.
So that's our special dinner for this holiday...
Well worth the booking :-)
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Dr Nick Lethbridge / Agamedes Consulting
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"The greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing." — William Arthur Ward.
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