After a lot of time spent dawdling around, I've launched www.quotationsbook.com. I hope to improve it a lot over the next few weeks, including adding over 70,000 fortunes! Please go visit and enjoy!
I had a fantastic weekend break around Bath. Five of us (Bruno from work, his girlfriend Ara, Leah the incomparable, and lovely Lucy) rammed into the car and drove over to near Bath on a fresh Saturday morning. We first put luggage in our nights accomodation, a luxury farm house B&B with our own kitchenette. It had roof windows, sofas, and was very cosy. 6 people ended up sleeping comfortably inside that night, more on that later! We went on to Bath, I met with friends at a pub, and did all the walking about and sightseeing. After a few drinks and a walk around Victoria Park, we joined Malcolm to dig into grocery shopping for cooking together. It was more organised than I imagined, thanks to Ara's decision making before we got in. Leah still bought things at the end, and at the last minute! We got back to the farmhouse (6 in the car), which is a little ride outside Bath, nestled inside a valley, but with adjacent hills either side. The sounds in my car were many and varied but Grease did feature. At home, we had an awesome time cooking and watching Eurovision. Many of our heads lost many millions of brain cells by accidentaly smacking on the very low roof beams! We kept a tally of how many bangs we each had, Leah was undisputed champion with about eight solid whacks! The hardest single hit must have been poor Lucy, because the beam thundered really loud when her head smacked it. Later, after much conversation, Malcolm decided to sleep over because Leah (bless her!) slept on the floor. Lucy (who's Norwegian) enjoyed the Norway entry muchly, although I fancied the Romanian one for a few reasons. We sang songs with my guitar and mellowed to bed.
In the morning and I rang up a totally loud song to wake Leah and Bruno! We must've woken the room downstairs. The morning was crystal blue, but this was to change during the day, when it rained like crazy. There was farm animals outside, and we played with them for a bit! We had a full English breakfast, packed up, and rammed into the car again to drop off Malcolm and say goodbye to him in Bath. While passing Bath Abbey, I stopped so we could pick up a map for the day's driving. We drove to Dyrham Park but it was expensive to get in, so, seeing the opportunity to test my Land Rover, I bushwhacked across a field and we drove to the end, peeping though the fence to see a group of red deer. We were then back to the road, this time heading for Castle Combe, said to be the prettiest village in England. It certainly was. The Manor House Hotel was wonderful, like a scene from some fairy tale kingdom. After a drink and food in an old pub, we visited two more old towns, Lacock and Avebury. At the Stone Circles in Avebury, we stopped inside the Red Lion for quite some time and had a huge dinner. As soon as we walked out to see the Stone Circles in the evening it rained (surprise!). And in the rain, we met a Celtic Druid, who said they learn from the scriptures of Hindu Brahmins. He was being filmed for a BBC documentary about the solstice coming up, and we were told we might be on TV soon enough, since we were asking so many questions. We all chased the sheep at these ruins (sorry sheep!) and got back in for the road trip home. Leah bought me a chocolate at a service station. I had a fabulous weekend, new friends, it was full of wholesome life and food. Hope this happens more often. I can imagine this being even more awesome if it didn't always rain on our green and pleasant land!
Click here for our pictures (thanks to Bruno for most of them)
Posted by amitkoth at May 23, 2005 09:19 PM | TrackBack