Sue’s check up at Salisbury Hospital went well following the cataract operation so we decided to have a few days away in Cirencester. We did have a bit of a worry on the day of departure because her eye was slightly reddened so we rang the hospital and they thought everything should be OK.
We like the Caravan Club site in Cirencester because it is within walking distance of the town and also Cirencester Park. What we didn’t know was that the facilities block had been refurbished, to a very high quality, so it was a pleasure to visit.
Cirencester has a very long history and some of the archaeological remains date back 200,000 years. During the 16th and 17th Century the wool trade flourished in the town as can be seen by some of these plaques on the buildings. Double mouse click for a larger photo.
Some of the old doorways
| Post Office Cottage | Another doorway |
| Church of St. John the Baptist | Entrance gates to Cirencester Park |
Cecily Hill is on the approach to the Park and the the Tontine Buildings are a significant part of the road. I saw the word ‘tontine’ and knew I had heard it before, but couldn’t remember where. On looking it up it has an interesting history. This is taken from the internet:
‘At the foot of Cecily Hill, Cirencester's most elegant residential street, stand the Tontine Buildings of 1802. They are apparently so called because Lord Bathurst won them in a Tontine. Now illegal, this was a winner-takes-all financial scheme where the winner was the last participant to die. Of 23 bays, this long building is draped with flowers in summer. On the outside, it looks little changed with the original carriage arch still in place.’
Whilst out and about we saw lots of fungi. Here are a couple of different types. I started trying to identify them, but realised I would have to trawl through about 600 different fungi – so didn’t bother.
If you want to, please send me the answers.
We did lots of geocaching which as usual took us to some interesting places. Here you can see Sue at the ‘song pole’. The explanation is also taken off the internet
‘The song pole is a listening device by which the visitor is encouraged to reflect on the act of listening itself. It is a bird box designed to provide a nesting site for Great Tits or Tree Sparrows during the spring time. A microphone provides the aural equivalent of a microscope and listening closely to the intricate detail of the nesting box’s sound world it becomes possible to hear the intimate habits of the nesting birds.
When the birds are not nesting, the song pole acts as an ‘ode to absence’……. ‘
A new addition to geocaching is doing a ‘challenge’. Here I am doing my third challenge. I had to get to this finger post, which is at the source of the River Thames, and take a picture of myself with the post. It was a bit of a challenge because the access footpath lead across a farmers field which had just been ploughed. There was no water here at the time of my visit.
| The Christmas Market in Cirencester | Sue outside one of the chalets |
There is an underpass close to the caravan site with some rather colourful graffiti.
The watery themed ones are painted by the local school.
Oldie photo
L- R David Wordsworth, Carol W, Colin Campbell, Sue, Trish C.
This was taken in Barbados in 1994. We were all celebrating our 25th wedding anniversaries.
