Wiltshire Day Trip – Part Four – Homeward Bound.

From Salisbury back to Dover, even by fast trains is approximately a four hour journey and although I was awash with a very large cup of tea purchased in the buffet at Salisbury station I knew that I would be needing a meal soon. So I alighted from the Salisbury to London train at Basingstoke, party to avoid a confrontation that I could see brewing between a guy who was playing his variety of music, at full volume, to a crowded carriage of unappreciative customers (yes, another moron who thinks that he has a human-right to make life a misery for others but who would undoubtedly have caused less misery if he had been flushed away on a Kleenex at sperm stage)!! Basingstoke was a town which, until now, I had always passed through en-route to somewhere else and now as I emerged into the town it struck me as even less inspiring than the first impressions of Swindon. And at least Swindon produced Diana Dors! Basingstoke, however, just wanted to suck me immediately into a vast shopping mall – there seemed to be no escape. Only later did I learn of actually very pleasant sounding options. However, now my stomach ruled and I reasoned that I shopping mall would very quickly produce a grub outlet. Wrong!!! There was, admittedly a Sainsbury’s supermarket right there at the entrance but I preferred somewhere where I could sit down. The further I penetrated into this vast complex the less likely it seemed that I would find one. Eventually however, instead of clothes and mobile phone shops I found a small restaurant mall and as I was by this time famished, I walked straight into a burger king and had one of their offerings. Not exactly comparable to my lamb-shank of earlier but it hit the spot.

Now to embark on that remaining few hours of rail travel to reach home feeling knackered but with memories of a good experience of Wiltshire and with a determination to return an explore in greater detail.

Wiltshire Day Trip – Part Three – On to Salisbury.

The bus was not as peaceful as the one that brought me there but it was a nippy ride along fairly minor country roads and soon we were in Marlborough, another well known town that, because it is not on the railway network, had previously eluded me. I believe that there is a famous public school here and certainly the place exuded wealth with a magnificent wide main street and several old and interesting buildings. Signposts here pointed to Hungerford, a market town on the River Kennet and the Kennet and Avon Canal and within the North Wessex Downs are of outstanding natural beauty. It has seen numerous events in history, the most recent being in August 1987 when a local resident went berserk with a gun and killed sixteen people at random. Our bus climbed out of Marlborough, once again affording magnificent views in this attractive countryside and we trundled through places with village pubs and churches standing amidst thatched cottages and barns and rolling hills.

We descended into the small town of Pewsey and here the bus terminated but with a connection to Salisbury expected within five minutes. Shame really because right opposite the bus stop was a bric-a-brac store that even advertised the sale of scarecrows! The bus to Salisbury was a double decker again and the front of the top deck afforded good views of more beautiful villages and hamlets – Manningford Bohune, Upavon, West Chisenbury, Enford, Netheravon, Figheldean but then the character of the villages changed and we arrived in Bulford. Bulford serves an army camp and to my amazement the schools were already turning out at quarter to three. Now, I am NOT a fan of travelling on buses with schoolkids and my heart sunk when the bus stopped outside a school where probably thirty kids were fighting to get on board. One girl decided that some perfume she had obtained was worth spraying over virtually every one of her friends and there was general mayhem with the driver stopped periodically to come up the stairs and to yell at them in his west-country accent – now, bloody sit down, the bleedin’ lorra yer!” to a response of jeers etc. But they weren’t a terrible lot really. More alarming was the way that residents here and in neighbouring Larkhill took their lives in their hands as they darted across the road without so much as a glimpse at oncoming traffic. Eventually the kids were left behind and we descended towards Salisbury. This bus journey (all the way from Swindon to Salisbury) covered approximately fifty miles of mostly glorious countryside and cost less than a fiver. Brilliant value by any standards. And your reward at the end is Salisbury. One of my favourite places on earth with its cathedral and water meadows and historic centre. The photo above was taken in a quiet backwater in the centre of town and so typifies the feel of the day with its beauty and colour.

Wiltshire Day Trip – Part Two – Avebury.

When I got off the bus at the tiny village of Avebury I was immediately transported back in my memory to a television series that I loved as a teen called “Children of the Stones”. Filmed on location here (and now on the YouTube website) I found myself alighting from the bus and standing in front of a building that was used as the village Post Office in the series (now an antiques shop). The evidence of the stone circle (or circles) was immediately apparent and a small huddle of people were listening to a guide nearby at one of these prehistoric monoliths.

A main road does run through the village on a sharp bend so the impact of the traffic, which is not especially heavy anyway, is further reduced by vehicles moved “respectfully slowly” through this modest but magnificent place. A larged thatched structure, the “Red Lion” pub stood prominently across the road from the bus stop (it can be glimpsed in the photo above) and this lured me in straight away for a lamb shank lunch washed down with a pint of ale. Both were priced, if not cheaply, at least realistically. There was no waste. Now it was out to explore the stones and the surrounding village. Absolutely the sort of place that a visitor would associate with the Britain of the “Avengers” series with Emma and Steed! I found myself, even as a Brit, soaking up the precious atmosphere of the place. But it was not too “chocolate boxy” and because I had visited in late October the place was not crowded.

This special rarified atmosphere was briefly interrupted by the arrival of a coachload of school-party children, probably aged around nine to eleven who errupted from their coach, scattered all over the main road (to the despair of those supposed to be in charge of them) and who then began to chase the sheep yelling at their maximum lung capacity. Well, you know what I am like for noise! This affront to my senses was soon put at some length away by my rapidly choosing another part of the village for exploration and within half an hour they had gone and tranquility returned. I contemplated staying overnight at a bed and breakfast facility visible in the photo to the left of the pub. It was called “The Lodge” and I thought that even if they charged fifty pounds a night for bed and breakfast it would be worth it. But then I remembered my transfer ticket and my sense of economy prevailed. I did not even walk up the path to that homely door. (When I got home I checked out the website for the place – two nights there would cost the same as a transatlantic flight! – not surprised though ‘cos it looked great!).

Plenty has been written about the stones, about how when Christianity arrived in Britain these stones were associated with devil-worship and were either broken up or buried as the centuries passed. It happened to be a marmalade heir who resurrected many of them in the nineteen-thirties and helped to make Avebury what it is today. A lovely place and almost criminal to by-pass if you are within reasonable distance. For me it was very rewarding for even this fairly lengthy day trip and I plan to return again next year for a more detailed and extensive exploration.

The tourist information office, located in an old chapel, was an attractive place but I scored them low marks on not having a railway timetable in the place that could have told me connections from Pewsey (a few miles distant to the south) to Paddington in case the weather forced me to curtail the day. As it was my bus was due and although the lady offered use of the internet I did not have time to go through the rigmarole of looking up on-line which could have been checked with the flick of a page or two.

The next 95 bus came on schedule and I boarded a minibus this time for my onward journey…..

Wiltshire Day Trip (Part One – Outbound)

 

 

 

This Autumn, with the utility companies announcing obscene rises in gas and electricity bills, my original plans for an overseas break were put on hold indefinitely and I decided to take a few day trips from Dover using public transportation and coming home each evening.  This meant VERY early starts and late finishes and a day afterwards to recover but were actually extremely enjoyable, not least because the expenditure was minimal.

The decision of where to go was tricky. I decided that I wanted to visit somewhere that I had never been to before and the prehistoric stone circle at Avebury, a few miles south of Swindon, came to mind. In the days before the internet I would not have been easily able to find out bus times, nor even if a bus actually went there although I assumed that it would. Now, however, it was a simple matter, my means of the search engine, to establish times, routes and connections with ease.

So I set my alarm for five in the morning of Wednesday 22nd October and set forth on a dark morning on a train from Dover to Tonbridge. An “across the platform” interchange here worked well and I was at Redhill about one hundred minutes after leaving Dover. Now it was time to change from the regular commuter electric trains onto one of the cramped cross-country services that run semi-fast to Reading. This routes, running in the shadow of the north-Downs offers some extremely attractive countryside views, some of the locations being a mere twenty miles from the centre of London. The bucolic nature of the scenery was further accentuated by the train having trouble on some of the steeper gradients due to wheelslip with leaves on the line. This latter problem was frequently used by the condescending and ignorant British media as “another excuse” for late trains. They did, of course, make no effort to establish whether it was factual. Anyone with half an ounce of common sense watching the mulch of fallen leaves being squashed onto the running rails and forming ice-rink conditions would understand the problem but, no, most journalists seem to either go by car or just yell like banshees about (a) the cost of their season ticket and (b) another delay (regardless of how it is caused). Here was a classic example of the driver doing his or her level best to keep the train going in very difficulty conditions but the efforts would certainly not be “seen” (much less recorded or reported by your average journalist). We lost about fifteen minutes of time on this stretch and then lost our path amongst other trains using the tracks we shared at the junctions. This reminded me of another correspondent in the media who scorned the reason for a train delay being “congestion”. He asked how trains can possibly encounter congestion on the tracks. It’s a funny thing, mate, but when trains from various locations reach a junction they often have to wait their turn to proceed. If a train is late it can miss a “slot” and that can cause as much congestion on the tracks as can be caused on any road or in the airways. Anyway we got to Reading in time for me to have five minutes to spare before my connection to Swindon.

This Inter City train to Swindon had something on board called a “quiet carriage”. This is a supposed haven from the interference caused by your fellow passengers who like to play ipods etc at a level which is definitely not “personal” or have their ringtones of their phones blaring out every minute or two. Too good to be true? Of course! The last time I tried using one of these carriages I thought that I had managed to obtain the peace I craved when, at the last minute, a large group of Chelsea supporters boarded. They were not especially obnoxious but they were certainly not quiet. Same on this train except that the phones that rang frequently belonged to what society would generally label as a “professional” class of person. The type who likes to travel in a quiet environment as long as nobody tells THEM to shut-up. To be honest it’s nowadays an impossibilty to doze when travelling by rail, and in the “quiet carriage” because it’s so irritating to be surrounded by ignorant plebs posing as people “of consequence”! Anyway, enough ranting. The train journey was punctual enough and I arrived at Swindon about four hours after leaving Dover.

Swindon is not a town which, upon arrival, inspires the senses. However, it was the birthplace and hometown of one of our much under-rated post-war beauty, Diana Dors. This blonde bombshell was a pale UK immitation of the Marilyn Monroe genre but she actually had a great deal of talent and her acting ability was only occasionally recognised for what it was. Before she was “discovered” her real name was Diana Fluck. Needless to say, it was far too potentially a shocking name for post-war Britain. Personally I think that Swindon, although famous for it’s railway works etc. should have a Diana Dors museum. Perhaps it already has one?

Here it was just a five minute walk between the railway station and the bus station. And it was here that I boarded a Route 95 Wilts and Dorset double decker bus and asked the driver if he was going to Avebury and what the best fare was if I decided to travel further on, later, to Salisbury. An old-ish man in his late fifties he was extremely helpful and sold me a “transfer ticket” for £4.90 which would take me all the way and would allow a break of journey up to four times. From the front of the top deck of this lightly loaded vehicle I enjoyed the scenery as we climbed into the hills to the south of Swindon and, within twenty five minutes, arrived at Avebury.