Lacock Abbey - spiritual home of all blippers

We bid a fond and sad farewell to Ena early this morning with a last 200 metre drift to the moorings at Bradford Upper Wharf. We enjoyed a superb breakfast at the Canal and River Trust Cafe across the water from Ena watching as she was cleaned and prepared for her next visitors and watching canal activities as boats came and went through the lock.

After breakfast we travelled to Lacock, a National Trust site, which proved to be a very interesting visit all around. Home of H. W. Fox-Talbot, inventor of photography (although the French would have something to say about that). There's much to see here; an exhibition on Fox-Talbot, the Abbey itself, the house created from the Abbey where the Fox-Talbot family lived, all the Abbey grounds and the village of Lacock which is a very interesting place to browse around.

I was torn between posting the famous "first ever" photograph of the lattice window taken by Fox-Talbot and several others which were worthy of inclusion. In the end it was the shot of the cloisters that won it but I included the window as an extra along with a shot of one of the village houses and another inside a greenhouse.

The journey home threatened to be as challenging as the journey there last week; as soon as we joined the M4 we were held up for 45 minutes owing to an accident. Fortunately, as soon as we were past the site the traffic improved and we had a trouble free ride home this time going north around the M25 to avoid the jams on the southern section caused by the M3 being closed again for roadworks.