Stonehenge and the White Horse

Spent a very restful night in Glastonbury at the Apple Tree B&B and got up early to enjoy both a nice hot shower (showers in Britain tend to be a bit haphazard by American standards, the plumbing so often being designed for bathing rather than showering) and a very nice breakfast prepared by our hostess. We made the acquaintance of a gentleman from the London area, in town for a talk, and a elderly woman from Australia who was visiting family in England after having visited her sister and her family in America. She was making her way around England with a Britrail pass and was just charming.

The weather was fine for our trip back. We went through the Salsbury Plain to visit Stonehenge, which was as nice as our first visit (the high point of our trip last year). We stopped off in Avebury and saw the stones there by daylight, along with getting a little something at the Red Lion. Christopher found a nice blackthorn walking stick in a shop there that suits him to a T.

We also found our way (eventually) to the White Horse, the chalk horse cut into a hillside and associated with the horse-goddess Epona. It was quite a hike, so we viewed it from a distance rather than climbing all the way up. We were a bit pressed for time to get the car back to London, so we ended up skipping Oxford and heading straight back. Our three days in the British countryside complete, it’s back to work for both of us tomorrow: Christopher doing his lecture, workshop, and signing at Witchfest, and me finding a quiet spot to take care of e-mail and do some editing (and, hopefully, to post all this stuff to my livejournal!).