The Wayfaring Path

Last week was a lot quieter than the one before, with the heat sapping all motivation to do big long walks. We stayed closer to home – charity shopping, visiting Box Wood, filming a new meditation video up on the common, and walking to the local ice-cream factory. We were conserving energy for the big weekend adventure to Winchester and Butser Ancient Farm!

Note: if you can’t view the videos without it asking you to sign in, don’t click the red arrow in the middle, click the “Watch on YouTube” link at the bottom left of each video.

Box Wood is fab, green and quiet – there’s no parking nearby so only people who a) know it exists, and b) walk to it are there… which is hardly anyone at all! The land was purchased by the villagers and is maintained as a reserve with a local wildlife trust. Apparently it’s glorious in the spring with all the bluebells, which is motivation enough for me to return.

On the Wednesday it was HOT! Like 30+ degrees hot, which is too much for us. We had been wanting to go to Winstones ice-cream factory, which is about a 40 minute walk away, and so we foolishly decided to go that afternoon. Through Amberley (past the cafe that sells Winstones ice-cream lol) and along for what felt like a very long way till we found the place. There was a nice field next door to sit in and eat your ice-cream but there was absolutely no shade, just wilting people cramming ice-cream into our faces. We walked back through the common and I got us walking in the wrong direction so it took twice as long to get back… and just as we were leaving the common I spied an ice-cream van selling – you guessed it – Winstones ice-cream!

We left after work finished at midday on Friday, walking down to the bus to Stroud, then a train to Reading, and another to Winchester. There had been warnings all week about potential delays due to the hot weather, and true to form there were. The announcements at Stroud station were hilarious, obviously automated, and a real rollercoaster. Train is approaching > train is late > here’s the train > no it’s not > mind the gap > we’ll refund your money > it’s nearly here > it’s 9 minutes late… on and on it went for a solid twenty minutes. We had a 19 minute window to catch our next train and of course there were no delays to that one so we had time to kill in Reading.

We eventually got there, two hours later than we hoped and too late to get into the cathedral, museum, or Great Hall. But we had an excellent dinner at a Greek restaurant, where my extremely rusty Greek from my one summer working on Rhodes impressed the chef enough that we got free desserts! Nice! I can definitely recommend Yiayia’s Kitchen if you’re ever in Winchester. We walked to the King Alfred statue – important to say hi to Æthelflæd’s Dad – then around the town centre. Everyone happy and summery and relaxed. Well, the lads outside the Wetherspoons were eternally looking to get punchy but apart from that it was very relaxed.

We walked halfway to our Airbnb and then my sore feet called for a bus ride the rest of the way. Our lovely host Nigel came and met us at the bus stop, which was the first sign that we had found ourselves with a warm, unique and interesting new friend – the type of host who makes the whole stay feel really special. We cooled off in the lovely garden by the fish pond, discovering a shared love of travel and motorbikes, adventure and history. Nigel is basically a walking Boys’ Own Adventure, and is so excited to share his experiences. I wish we lived in Winchester so we could hang out with him more.

Nigel has a wonderful old Land Rover (which reminded Regan so much of his Dad) and he has a few cool motorbikes too. It was lovely to see the boys together, and I was so happy that the Airbnb gods were smiling upon us. The Land Rover is kitted out for proper adventure travel, and Nigel and his partner Lynda have done some amazing trips, notably a 15,000 mile drive to Singapore! Sadly Lynda wasn’t well, so we didn’t get to meet her, hopefully on our next visit! We could have stayed up for hours chatting but we had an early start so headed to bed.

The next day was our trip to the summer solstice celebrations at Butser Ancient Farm. I’ve been so excited to visit here, it’s an amazing centre for experimental archaeology where they have built various houses and buildings from periods ranging from the paleolithic through to Anglo Saxon. We don’t know for sure how a lot of these buildings were made, so they work out as much as they can from the available archaeology, and then experiment with different materials and techniques to learn as much as possible. They also experiment with different craft techniques (think metalwork and textiles), and have all manner of amazing events throughout the year.

It’s a bit of a pain to get to, so Nigel drove us there – via an iron age hillfort! The trip home was a bit of a mission, so we were suuuuuuper grateful for the lift to Butser – definitely a place that you need a car for, sadly. It was summer solstice, and they had a weekend of celebration with stalls, musicians, activities, and a general happy and mellow vibe. We got there early, so were able to wander around the buildings in our own time. The different techniques are fascinating, and I could definitely see myself living in one or two of the houses (in the summer!). I sat for a time outside one of them and could hear the talking and laughing and music from the main field, and for a moment could imagine how good the warm sunny days must have felt after a long cold winter.

There was a “real” Roman hanging out in the villa – the first villa to have been built in England since the Romans left many centuries ago. As he explained it, their type of building works well in the hot and dry climate of the Mediterranean, not so much in England; but being Romans they refused to believe that the local people had developed a sensible building style for the conditions, so they kept building entirely unsuitable houses! And it was interesting to look around and see what an anomaly the villa was, compared with the rounded, earthen-walled, thatched-roofed buildings built both before and after the Romans were here. There are still rounded cottages with thatched roofs here, so it’s a style that has stood the test of time.

We had lunch and then headed back to Winchester. Due to the train + heat = delay equation we got back too late to visit any of the main sites (AGAIN) and I was getting worried I’d not get to see inside the cathedral – there are mortuary chests that contain the remains of Anglo Saxon kings, queens, and bishops that I really wanted to see. The people in the chests died over a thousand years ago, and we still know their stories – think King Canute (Cnut) and the tides, and his wife Queen Emma of Normandy, who was a Norman ruler of England before William invaded in 1066; and the much earlier King Æthelwulf – Alfred the Great’s father (Æthelflæd’s grandfather!).

The chests were made a number of years after the people died, and some of the chests had earlier caskets inside. The chests were disturbed and damaged during the English Civil War and the remains all mixed up. There’s currently a project underway to analyse and identify the various bits and bobs and get them into the correct chest. So the remains aren’t actually in there, but I was still hoping to see the caskets anyway.

We were standing outside the cathedral entrance trying to decide whether to barge in to Evensong as our last ditch effort to get inside when a lovely woman approached us and said she was part of the Fulltone Orchestra who were playing a concert that night – Music from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Tickets weren’t much more than the entry fee, and we had enough time to scarf down a Pad Thai before the concert began. It was brilliant! Amazing musicians, heavenly acoustics, atmospheric light, cool temperature… it really couldn’t have been better. At intermission I found a friendly usher who took me as close to the mortuary caskets as we could get – I was so stoked and a bit overcome with emotion, which was a bit silly as they were empty. But anyway, it meant a lot to me and I was so grateful to have gotten as close as I did.

The next morning we had more brilliant chats with Nigel, and then the boys got onto the subject of motorbikes, with a bit of a show and tell. Regan was stoked! I feel so sad that he’s not able to ride his bike at the moment. Nigel dropped us off at the beginning of a great riverside walk into town and we were so sad to say goodbye to him. The walk was just lovely, past ancient buildings and friendly cows, and then through the town past the house Jane Austin lived and died in. We decided we really like Winchester and it’s on the list of Places We Would Live In.

After the warm weather train shenanigans of the previous two days plus the fact one of our trains that afternoon had been cancelled due to no driver, I was getting a bit stressed about getting home, so we decided to visit just the Great Hall and then head for the station, leaving the other sites and museums for another day. The Great Hall had loads of leadlight windows with the heraldry of many notable chaps from history (and the very occasional woman), many of whom I recognised and know a few things about, which was exciting (to me lol). There’s a huge round table, mounted on the wall, supposedly King Arthur’s; but sadly it’s a few hundred years too young to be Arthur’s. It’s cool though, and a great place to visit.

Then it was time to go… it was a five stage journey, Winchester > Reading > Swindon > Stroud > Nailsworth > Pinfarthings. It all went smoothly, thank god, and we made it home with enough time to mooch about and relax in the cottage. Nice.

So now it’s our last week in this lovely area and cute cottage that feels like home. I’m feeling sad and wistful to be leaving, but also starting to get a bit excited about the next adventure – Chalke History Festival this weekend!