Its the summer holidays!

I love my job and I love my holidays and thankfully at my job I get long holidays. So the first weekday of my holidayy I decided to go to Cheddar Gorge. After weeks and weeks of rain, today was the first 'overcast' day and so I decided to go to Cheddar gorge because it is very pretty and because I needed some cheese for lunch! Thankfully on the way I could tick off one of my Enchanted Land places, Rodney Stoke a thankful village.

For those of you who don't know, a Thankful Village is one which had no losses in ww1 and a doubly thankful village is a village which had no losses in ww1 and 2. These villages had their young go off to war and they all came back. Rodney Stoke proudly professes its thankfulness, even in it's village sign. I quickly pulled over the car when I saw that they have a 'shrine' to the fact that they are a thankful village. I drove down this small country lane to find a the church perched on a small mound looking out onto the Somerset Levels

. I walked up to the church and it was locked. Disappointed I turned round to find the key holder (a village oap) who was more than happy to let me go in. He chatted to me for about 5 minutes about the church and the history and then was on his way.

As enchanted land says:

"We come to Rodney Stoke in Somerset we find a village proudly expressing its thankfulness that it offered 17 men and four women to England and all came home safely home. Nowhere else have we found the spirit of thankfulness expressed as in a lovely window here, facing the door as we came in, with these grateful words:

To the glory of God and in thankful remembrance of the safe return of all the men connected with this parish who by land and sea served King and Country in the Great War."

The village only lost four people in the second world war and has a plaque dedicated to them, strangely enough another plaque on another wall documents another person who died in ww2, it is presumed by the villagers that this person was not part of the armed forces when he died but was in a cargo ship at sea (or so I was told by the kind gentleman).

The enchanted land also talks about other aspects of the church which make it special, the tombs of the Rodney family and the pews, which the gentleman who opened the church for me told me about. One the end of each pew is carved wood, two girls (I think they were the vicars

daughters) who taught people of the village how to carve and so each pew end was carved by a different person of the village. One was carved by Reginald Hale: "who left Rodney Stoke to seek his fortune overseas sailing in the greatest ship that ever then had gone to sea, and went down with it on his first voyage. It is one of the sad little postscripts to the poignant tragedy of the Titanic." The pew carved by Reginald Hale is the picture to the right.

As I was leaving the church I bumped into the old gentleman again and he told me how they had a dig recently by the church and found roman pottery and so it seems Rodney Stoke has been part of history for years.

Anyway so from there I drove onto Cheddar and decided to got straight up the gorge. It was so fun to drive up! Yes I am still relatively new to driving and so there are lots of roads round Somerset which I find fun to drive, and this is fun! I stopped at the top (I tried on the way up but it cost £5 to park for the day and as I wasn't going to stay the whole day I kept going) and then decided to go for a walk. Near the top I pulled over and decided to see if I could get a picture of the gorge from the top. But first I had to walk to the top which was a hell of a steep climb! Bearing in mind that there had been a months worth of rain this last weekend it appears I climbed up the route that it must have come gushing down at some point. The footpath is a steep climb, and full of the gorges rocks, on any other summer I am sure it would be bone dry, but today it was very muddy and very slippery! Still I wanted to get a picture at the top (because my dad would be annoyed if I didn't) and I decided to climb it. It was incredibly difficult, but I got to the top and looked around for

the view. I couldn't find the view which is on all of the leaflets (you have to pay for that one) but I did get a lovely view of Somerset. From Glastonbury Tor to the Bristol Channel, and I believe it would be even better if it was a clear day.

At this point I was getting hungry and so made my way back down, which was even more difficult then on the way up. I was over taken by walkers, who were clearly dressed for a walk, unlike me who was in a cardigan, t-shirt, new jeans (which a dog at Rodney Stoke decided to leave his imprint on) and a pair of boots. Anyway, I made it down safely!

I had lunch at Simply Gorgeous a lovely little tea rooms playing 1950's music with 40's and 50's nick nacks dotted about. As I was in Cheddar I had to have a jacket potato with cheddar cheese (it seemed only right). I looked round the village which has some very touristy shops in it and looked to see if I wanted to go to the Cheddar Gorge Explorer thing. I decided not, as it was £18.95 per adult which seemed very steep for me, so I didn't go in the caves or up the tower.

I decided not to walk anymore but instead visit The Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company which is the home of the only cheese still made in cheddar. For £1.95 you can see how the cheese is made and watch it being made and then after that you conveniently come out in their cheese shop! I had to buy some of their cheese and splashed out and bought their c

ave mature cheese which tasted amazingly! The best thing about their shop was that you could buy a knife

for 75p in case you 'couldn't wait till you got home'.

The bottom of Cheddar Gorge is very touristy however when you are driving up it, it is peaceful and definitely enchanting.

Anyway after that I went to Axbridge (which I will write in another post as this one is way too long) and then drove back to cheddar as it actually getting sunny! I drove up it again and took pictures but half way up I stopped off for another picture and heard a beautiful noise. Half way up the cliff was a man playing an Alphorn. It was beautiful just hearing this alpine noise echoing through the gorge. A perfect ending to the day.

Bath

I love Bath. I don't know why, probably because it is so uniform, clean and connected to its history. A little like me, I guess.

Anyway since I moved to Somerset a month ago I have had a very fleeting relationship with Bath. Popping to it to use its station or to visit a friend. But never to visit Bath. The weather has plaid its part in keeping me away, we have had a months rainfall in just one day! And the rest of the weeks weather has not been too good either. So as the sun decided to wake me up this morning (without me requesting it) I decided to utilise every minute it gave me today and head to Bath...

So after using the brilliant park and ride service I stopped in the centre of the city. I love walking around the streets of Bath, I feel so relaxed, like the feeling you get when you just come out of a spa into the warm sun.

I walked to the royal circus and then onto the royal crescent (of course stopping all the way to take pictures). Whilst I was walking I noticed some vans which look suspiciously like a film crews and so of course I double back for another look, and then once again for one more. Yes, people were filming, no I could not see what they were filming. Sadly it was being done in one of those fabulous Georgian houses. I did get very excited when I saw a man dressed in 18th century clothes, so I wondered over to where he was talking to an elderly couple under the pre-tense of me and my camera taking pictures. After they left he came over to me and I found out that he is an 18th century tour guide in Bath, such a shame. However I did find out an intresting fact about Bath... apparently the royal crescent and circus was designed and built by a pagan who loved Stonehenge. Which explains why the diameter of the circus is the same as the diameter of Stonehenge!

Anyway so from there I went to The Bath Bun Tea shoppe. As I am single I had lunch alone, usually this can be quite a scary prospect but today I grabbed a table in the tea room and enjoyed my lunch.

On from there and I walked the city a little more, stopping by the canal, where I had my first view of Bath when we came into it on a canal boat years ago. Finally I stopped to go shopping. I have had a lot of vouchers for M&S so I bought some baking equipment!

I have to say one of my favourite shops of the day was Topping Company Booksellers, where I picked up Michel Roux's Pastry book signed by him!

So a lovely day in Bath is over, and a lovely moussaka has been made in my new Le Creuset casserole dish. Now all I need to do is to think what I shall bake this week...

Wymondham Station Tea Room

So after a pretty rubbish week this week, we decided to go to the tea rooms at Wymondham Station in Norfolk. It doesn't sound exactly exciting when you say it out loud but the tea rooms at Wymondham are supposidbly based on the 1945 film Brief Encounter (one of my favourite films). Brief Encounter is a story of a woman in a un-exciting marriage who one day accidently meets a man at a train station cafe and they have a brief relationship. It is a wonderful and heart breaking story and I love it.

The tea rooms is in the heart of the lovely old station (which is still used) and as we enter it from the platform door we find ourselves in one of the rooms.We were lucky and found ourselves a spot in one of the booths... not like a 50's diner but on seats which were once used in train carriages like Brief Encounter. It all seemed very exciting, yes some of the wallpaper was peeling and there seemed to be a bit of 'renovation' going on but it was also charming. I loved the train carriage style and the photos of Brief Encounter everywhere and train memorabilia.

We decided to order a cuppa and some dessert (as we had a big breakfast) and ordered from their consise menu. My mum and I ordered cinamon apple pie whilst my dad ordered jam roly poly. I can't fault the service as it was quick but we were let down with the food. My dad's dessert had been over cooked whilst my mum and I couldn't taste the cinamon in the apple pie and the custard was watery. We were disapointed.

It seems that this cafe could be something amazing and a tourist attraction if only it had a bit more work done on it. The idea is brillant but the excution needs work.

After our Brief Encounter with Wymondham Station, we then quickly stopped in Wymondham itself as I wanted to get my first tick on my Enchanted Land checklist. The market cross, a picture featured on page 137. So this is my first taste of stepping in Arthur Mee's and his 'recording angels' footsteps and hopefully I will be able to get to more places soon.