After breakfast at the hotel, we headed around the neighborhood. We went to the book shop around the corner and then walked down Portobello Road. I bought a skirt. We checked out of our hotel. It was a Doubletree. Did I mention their signature thing is cookies? They gave us warm, yummy, large chocolate chip cookies when we checked in, yesterday when we asked the front desk about something and then again today at check-out. Awesome. So, we ate our cookies as we walked to Paddington Station. We arrived just five minutes before our train was scheduled to leave, so we didn't get a picture of the Paddington station sign for the girls or find the statue of Paddington Bear that is apparently there. Though a large portion of the station was under renovation, so it may not have been accessible anyway.
The train out to Didcot was about 45 minutes long. I slept the whole way. We rented our car in Didcot and headed out on the road. Tom says driving on the left isn't very disorienting to him and that didn't take getting used to, oddly enough. But he did say the super narrow roads, and the speeds at which people drive on them, and navigating intersections are a bit tricky. But overall, he's doing really well and we drove all over today.
We started at the Uffington White Horse and Dragon Hill. The Uffington Horse is the oldest chalk drawing. In Neolithic times they would dig away the grass to expose the chalk underneath and draw pictures with it. We met a National Trust worker at the top of the hill by the horse. Because of the drizzle (and downpour right before we got out of our car), we were the only three up there. The horse is large and is sort of on top of the hill to face the Gods, he explained, so there isn't a way to see the whole thing at once unless you fly over it. From on the horse, however, you look down and get a great view of Dragon hill which is a perfectly round hill that's flat on top with a big chalk blob on the top. The legend is that the hill is where St. George fought the dragon and when he spilled the dragon's blood, it was so poisonous it burned the ground and nothing has grown there since. The guy said that while the horse requires a lot of upkeep to keep the grass from growing over it, the "burn mark" curiously requires a lot less. There was just a giant field of sheep to wlk through to get up to the horse and it had a gorgeous view over the farmlands surrounding it.
From the Uffington Horse we drove to Lacock and got there five minutes before the last admission to the abbey, so we ran around the amazing cloisters (Harry Potter film site) and then wandered around the grounds and the town.
Then we drove to Avebury which is just as picturesque. The standing stones are everywhere here. There is a giant stone circle that surrounds a big part of the town and then smaller ones off of that. We ate at the Red Lion pub which claims to be the only pub in the world that is in the center of a stone circle. We had fish and chips and Banoffee Pie (to compare to Tom's. Because Tom has been perfecting his recipe to my liking, his is now the perfect pie and is better than the one we had today). The food was good. The place we were staying was just around the corner, so we drove over there, but no one was home. So we had to come back to the pub and give them a call. They had taken the dog out for a walk and all was well, so we checked in. It's a lovely adorable house literally next to the stone circle. We dropped our stuff off and then walked around from about 8:30pm to 9:30pm until it was getting dark. We took pictures and hiked around the fields with stones.
Today was the first day in the UK I've had all the allergy symptoms at once (itchy eyes, post nasal drip, runny nose, and sneezes), so my eyes are exhausted.
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