The Old Rectory Bed & Breakfast Salisbury

I had to take Pete for a spin so I decided to visit Wincester, one of the oldest towns in England. Was setup as Englands capital at one stage and was pretty important place when England became a country, ie united under King Alfred around 7th century..

It did have a castle on the hill but all that is left are the foundation stones. The hall is still there with ...

... hides out (and trashes) in the latest film is in Lacock. And, wait for it, I can offer you an exclusive preview into what Harry Potter's parents' house (in Godric's Hollow) looks like, which will be appearing in the next film! How cool is that? Ok, well, only Caroline and Terri and a couple of other HP fans will get excited about it, but I thought it was cool.

Anyway, since I'm feeling rather sniffly, I think I'll end my entry here.

xox Hannah

Today several Trussell Trust staff and volunteers have bruised upper arms from loading hundreds of boxes filled with a reocrd breaking 3800+ Christmas Shoeboxes onto a rather large lorry... The bruises were worth it to see the lorry pull away and begin its 2,450km trip to Bulgaria to transform thousands of Christmases.

We have to say a huge thankyou to all those who donated boxes and to all those hardy souls who braved the cold in ...

I manged to buy a car in November, a purple Rover 216! Very sporty.. lol. But I did have to spend a bit of money on it to get it into shape and MOT'd. Well registered in Australia. He and I have had some adventures already but I'm sure plenty of more when I take him to Scotland with me!

Enjoy the photos of Pete

... and … small.
After a beautiful lunch of fresh organic bread and homemade lemon butter and fresh strawberries, we drove up to look at the Avebury stone circle. We were nearly there when we stopped for a closer look at some standing stones in a freshly mowed wheat field. At the gate a man in motorcycle leathers stopped to tell us we should go into the next field and look at the newest crop circle there. He fished out some photos of two of the latest circles ...

After Stonehenge, we started driving towards Bath which is a couple of hours away, so the driver gave us a bit of a tour on the way there. We saw things like the "worlds smallest prison", and a horse scraped into the side of a hill exposing white soil? beneath the grass. Apparently it was put there to signify if you were in a certain kingdom or not (forget the king's name of that area). We also learned that the Red Lion Pub is the most ...

... that Salisbury Cathedral housed one of the four remaining originals of the Magna Carta. So off we trekked to another amazingly beautiful cathedral in search of an old piece of vellum. We saw an original of the famous Magna Carta of 1215. This place constantly amazes me. You never know what extremely important piece of history you will stumble upon, whether you are looking for it or not. There's an interesting tidbit of history we learned about ...

... keen to be homeward bound so it was a quick look and then onward. In Florence we camped near Piazzale Michaelangelo which is right on top of the hill so we had great views of the city and the beautiful Duomo. We had a wander across the Ponte Vecchio ( famous 14th century bridge completely lined with gold and silver jewelley shops) and in to Piazza della Signoria where we had dinner in an Irish pub, played on the steps of the Palazzo Vecchio and admired all the sculptures and ...

... an hour though because that is when the next bus was going to come after we had been dropped off. But, an hour was plenty of time. I didn't buy anything in the gift shop though...that was kind of disappointing. So, we made our way back to the train station because that is where the bus drops you off at. After arriving, some girls went back to London on the next train out, and the rest of us joined Dr. Schlueter for lunch and at the Salisbury ...

After Stonehenge yesterday we drove down to Salisbury to check into our hotel. This is a small country town steeped in history with many museums and the worst road and signage system in the whole of Britain! After driving around for ages we eventually found our hotel which, on the web site looked magnificent but in reality was a washed out dump and the service wasn't much better especially from the ...