We woke up early again. First, a walk through the immense garden of our B&B. We spotted two deer playfully chasing each other, or is it rutting season after all?
We booked breakfast at 8:00 AM. Last night, we could tick off whatever we wanted. A truly personal and attentive approach.
Around 9:00 AM, we headed to McDonald’s. No, not what you’d expect, but to load the car.
Our first stop was Hinton Ampner. The estate was partially open, so we could visit the garden and a small church on the grounds. But the house itself didn’t open until 11:00 AM.
After about an hour, we drove on to Mottisfont, an estate where everything was open, so we strolled among the many visitors scattered throughout the estate and visited the garden and the house. The nice thing about this house was that Ian Fleming was a family friend there.
Around two o’clock, we set off for Stonehenge. The navigation system shows a huge traffic jam just before Stonehenge, and we feared it would be a very busy tourist attraction. However, it turned out there had been an accident, and once we’d passed it and parked our car, we could quickly show our National Trust passes and hop on the bus shuttle to the stones. It was a truly impressive experience. After a circuit around the stones, we took the shuttle back and drove to the Cerne Giant, a 55-meter-high hilltop figure of a bald, naked man with a prominent erection, holding his left hand out to the side and wielding a large club in his right. The figure is formed by shallow ditches dug in the grass and filled with limestone rubble. It’s estimated that it was created around 700-1100 AD.
And then it was time to book a hotel; we found something in Torquay and drove there. On the way to Exeter, we loaded up the car and had a chimmichurri steak at Beefeater.
After checking into the hotel, we decided to take an evening stroll to the sea.
The temperature was around 19 degrees Celsius, and despite mostly sunny weather, we experienced our first English showers on the way in the car.
Video of the day:
