A BEAUTIFUL SUMMER'S DAY IN WILTSHIRE

You really can’t beat the rolling downs of Wiltshire on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon and with perfect clouds too!  After a good morning at church we decided to take Jazzy out for a little drive.  Mr. HCB always asks me where I want to go but it’s difficult to decide because we have so much lovely countryside all around us.

Eventually, I decided that we would go out through Wroughton (I still haven’t driven Jazzy yet!) and then we turned off onto the Winterbourne Bassett road - about 7 miles from where we live.  We had been this way last winter and wanted to stop in the same place and walk along a No Through Road, so we didn’t have to worry about traffic.  However, there was a van parked, so as there was no room for us, we decided to turn into the NTR and eventually found a place to stop and just sit, have our picnic, and enjoy our surroundings.  

We hadn’t been there long when we spotted two walkers, one of whom seemed rather tired.  They stopped and told us they were doing the White Horse Trail, a 100 mile route which gives views of the nine white horses which are cut into the turf of the chalk hillsides of Wiltshire.  If you want to read more about them, have a look here.  

The man said his feet were hurting quite a lot, so they wouldn’t stop for long as they had another 13 miles to go to get to the next white horse, having passed the one at Hackpen, just up the road from where we were.

We wished them well but as we watched him walking, wondered if he would make the next white horse!  We then finished our picnic, enjoying the peace and quiet of a summer’s day, watching the corn swaying in the breeze, listening to the birds and spotting various butterflies as they fluttered past.  As we drove back down the road to make our way home, we both shouted out at the same time “There’s the white horse” so Mr. HCB stopped the car to let me take a photograph - what a good job I had my Canon with the long zoom!

I decided to make a collage - and although Derelict Sunday is now finished as a challenge, we even found a derelict tree by the side of the road - and if you look carefully, you will see I managed to sneak a photograph of Mr. HCB - although he doesn’t know yet.

On our way home, we stopped overlooking Wroughton and although the view was wonderful all over Swindon and looking towards the wind turbines at Watchfield, we felt very sad that there was lots of litter around - pizza boxes, coke cans, cigarette packets and numerous other bits of rubbish.  I think we need to go back up there with gloves - I wasn’t keen on touching any of it without - but if we could see the litter bin on the nearby post, why couldn’t those who dumped the litter?

“The real world, in my opinion, 
     exists in the countryside, 
          where Nature goes about her quiet business 
               and brings us greatest pleasure.” 
Fennel Hudson : A Meaningful Life