We began today with a repeat breakfast, foregoing only the cereal. Even so, we left our charming little hotel quite satisfied! Today, our journey was to take us to Glastonbury Abbey, Glastonbury Tor, Cheddar Gorge (in the region famous for having originated Cheddar Cheese) and finally to the ancient city of Bath to see the famous Roman Baths.
There was so much we need to fit in to today and tomorrow that we chose to take a slightly longer route, but one that would avail us of faster, wider roads. And so, we departed Ilfracombe on the A361, eventually catching the M5 (an interstate quality thoroughfare) and arrived in Glastonbury by noon. We took an hour or so to wander around the grounds of the Abbey, destroyed in 1539 by Henry VIII. If you check out the photos for today, you’ll see some of the ruins.
We somehow managed to see, but not photograph Glastonbury Tor, partly due to the haziness and partly due to just not thinking about it! So, go check this out: View Glastonbury Tor
From there, we drove north to Cheddar, where, after sampling a little of the cheese, we drove up the Gorge. This is simply amazing scenery, the like of which I seriously never realized would exist in England! Yet, here we were in a gorge carved out of the granite by runoff from 10 million year old glaciers.
It’s only a 30 minute drive from the top of the Gorge to Bath. These were, as usual, quite pleasant minutes. The temperature has been climbing since Sunday and today it reached 28 degrees C… what is that? 83 degrees Fahrenheit. When driving over here, with no air conditioner, it’s hot!
On top of that, we had NO directions to get us around in this bustling city! After what should have been a 5 minute drive from the outskirts of Bath to our hotel, but was in fact an hour of most frustrating crawling through stop and go traffic, taking innumerable wrong turns simply because we got into the wrong lane, we arrived at our destination.
It is only a short 2 minute walk from our hotel to the Roman Baths. We spent 2 hours wandering around here, in a most incredible location. And that gets you all caught up to date with us!
Tomorrow, we’ll be visiting Avebury – the site of an ancient stone age town and stone circles – then on to the last major landmark of our journey, Stonehenge!
Alas my friends, I strongly suspect that this is our last post while we are here in England. I will, of course, post if we find wifi, but we have a busy three days ahead with a family wedding and family activities, so I may not be able to.
On The Road II 
