To Chippenham

Last week saw a visit to Chippenham, possibly the first time I have visited the town, apart from a passing visit through the station on the way to a limo to Swindon - having got off a train which was not going to stop at this last, previous notice notwithstanding. I forget why not.

It was also an opportunity to revisit the A4, a road we might have occasionally used on our way west while the A303 was being brought to its present pitch. In order to reach the A4, we had to get to Reading via the M25 and M4, both of which were crowded and slow. It seemed a very long time since BH used to fetch me from Heathrow of a Friday evening, with neither of us thinking much of it.

The banks of the reservoirs at the junction of the M25 and M4 were very brown. Did they leave the sheep on them too long? Followed by a glimpse of Windsor Castle, but we were too far away to identify the flag flying from the top. Was it the Royal Standard?

We thought to break our journey at Reading West services. Which turned out to be a crowded and cramped emporium of junk food. Having passed an advertisement for bacon rolls at Greggs on the way in, we paid our first ever visit to Greggs, to be told that bacon rolls were a breakfast item and breakfast was off. Some compensation for the absence of junk food in the form of the striking near miss for the still missing No.36, snapped above.

The A4 turned out to be rather a good road. Not much dual carriageway, but wide, quiet and quite fast enough for us. Lots of good views of the countryside, including some panoramic views from the top of Wiltshire, down into Severn valley. Lots of new housing west of Reading.

Lots of raptors hanging about over the roads, with BH even claiming a flock of them. Including one confirmed sighting of a red kite and one sighting of a raptor stooping over something in a field, glimpsed through a hole in the hedge. One four legged animal legging it across the road, probably a rat.

A curious Catholic church, St. Joseph's, on the outskirts of Newbury. After the event, it took me some time to ascertain that it was Newbury, rather than Marlborough or Hungerford. With either Bing or Google coming to the rescue of the failing memory. But this morning, neither of them could produce an image which matched its striking appearance from the road, that above being the best that they could do.

While Marlborough School was pretty full on, dominating its end of the town. One imagines that the fees were pretty full on too. But how will they manage if we manage to quarrel with both the Russians and the Chinese and ban pupils from both places? A thought prompted by a tale from a cross parent from Epsom about how their little darling got dumped into a dormitory full of boys who preferred to speak Mandarin after lights out. Not good enough at £10,000 a term...

Wiltshire or Berkshire farmers doing their bit to make up for the absence of wheat from the Ukraine. Snapped from behind the back hedge of a large lay-by made by a bit of road straightening.

There were also lots of pyramid orchids, more than we have ever seen in one place before. A variety of orchid last noticed at reference 1.

Including this large patch of them.

Passed on Silbury Hill and various other attractions, but we did pause at Avebury, the place with the very large stone circle. One of which is just about visible in the middle of the snap above.

A curious place, attracting all kinds of odd people and without the facilities one usually expects from an attraction of this importance. World Heritage Site and all. But the public house - the Red Lion - was happy enough to give us tea and coffee, despite being busy with lunches. Very good humoured the young girls were about it too. We learned afterwards there was some tension between the villagers who wanted to stay just that and the villagers who wanted to cash in.

BH nearly managed to lose her heritage card inside an out-of-service parking payment post, but as luck would have it she found a trusty who had the key and was able to recover it. Seemingly, not the first time that such a thing had happened. While I came across a tandem Brompton, which was a first. But I didn't get to see how it folded.

After Calne, captured the Wellingtonia noticed at reference 3.

And so to the Angel Hotel at Chippenham, what one supposes was once a big old coaching inn serving the Bath Road, now completely rebuilt - more than just a wash and brush up - during the enforced plaguey interval. Including a large and swish new accommodation shed out back, much to superior to the corresponding sheds at, for example, the Royal Lion of Lyme Regis. Including a large car park. Altogether a fine place, operating under the Best Western flag; a very superior version of a Travelodge.

Our evening meal there started with bread and olives, with the bread, presumably cooked or thawed from frozen, a little undercooked, but quite eatable. I didn't risk a steak, settling for beefburger instead, which turned out to be better than average, with rather fewer dollops of goo. 

Wine satisfactory, available from all good supermarkets, originally from the people at reference 4, who also run to the glossy website which seems to be more or less mandatory for Tier II wine growers in what I suppose is a crowded and competitive market. Complete with the completely mandatory heritage shed, included above. Perhaps the seasonal grape pickers use it during their fag breaks.

We wondered whether we ought to refer Lotus Biscuits (of reference 5) to the Monopolies Commission, people who seem to have taken more or less 100% of the market for biscuits to be offered with coffee in public houses.

All in all, a pleasant meal, with pleasant if not very experienced staff; good value for money.

A new-to-me security feature, neater than the usual chain. Perhaps too neat: easier to tell from a distance if a chain has been properly hung. Good experience slightly marred by a fire alarm, possibly set off by an intruder leaving by a fire door, at around midnight. Lots of people milling about in rather curious dress, looking rather dazed. But we got back to sleep OK, once we had taken our duvet out of its cover. Much more comfortable with just the cover over us.

PS 1: maybe our fat leader will have reverted to just being fat by the time I finish this post. First observation: it took some seconds to extract this image from Bing. The Guardian was clearly not cooperating. Second observation: will he go back to making a fat living as a journalist? As I think he once observed in his cups, much more fun lobbing bricks over the wall onto the greenhouse than trying to keep the greenhouse in good repair.

PS 2: somewhere along the way we noticed the existence of the locks at Devizes. The thought now being that there has to be something of the sort to get you over the watershed between the Kennet and the Avon. That is to say the famous canal between same. Clearly locks to be visited at some point, missed on previous excursions to army camps in the vicinity.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/trolley-516.html.

Reference 2: http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/avebury.htm. The source of the map of Avebury included above. Found by Bing.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/wellingtonia-81.html.

Reference 4: https://www.arawines.co.nz/.

Reference 5: https://www.lotusbiscoff.com/.