On A Plain

The second day of my short southern holiday begins nice and early, as I wake to the cooing of wood pigeons at dawn and go for a short walk around the village, where the first warm sunlight of March is burning away February's last frost. Tom, Ivory and Kenny wake an hour or two later, and we set about frying ourselves a filling rustic breakfast: venison sausages in onion gravy, bacon and mushrooms, baked beans and scrambled egg. Then it's off out for a drive up the A303 to Salisbury Plain, where it transpires somebody left some rocks lying around in a field a few years ago.

The first unpleasant surprise of the day is that English Heritage are charging fifteen quid a head for people to walk two miles up the road and see those rocks. As we make our long pilgrimage from the visitors' centre to the henge, we're not the only ones grumbling about the slightly extortionate fee we've had to cough up in order to walk across land that was once free and see a structure built by our own ancestors. Sadly, that ever-elusive feeling of getting your money's worth in Britain in 2014 isn't anywhere to be found in the fields near Amesbury, and considering you can enjoy a full day's worth of activities and entertainment at the Black Country Museum for a few quid less, you're probably better off saving your money.

So, after going all that way, no Stonehenge blip for me in the end; of all my photos from the afternoon, I prefer this shot looking away from the henge towards the A303.

Later, it's off into Salisbury for a wander round the cathedral, before visiting a specialist sausage shop to buy something for tea. Having already gobbled a few deer bangers for breakfast, we're nearing the limit of how much anus a human being can possibly eat in one day, but the sheer range of intestinal mulch on sale in the shop is enough to tempt us into purchasing half a dozen Provencal and half a dozen wild boar sausages. These go down a treat with egg, chips, corned beef and generous amounts of mustard, and help set us up for a visit to the diverse taverns of Whiteparish. There's only two on the main street (which, with boundless originality, is called The Street), but where the Fountain Inn contents itself serving food and ale to a placid clientele, the King's Head next door is rocking the village with a live band playing REM and Clash covers to a mostly pissed audience and a slightly mental dog.

We head back at eleven for a few more bottles of beer and a few games of pissed-pong; our own variant of table tennis which entails neither player being fully capable of standing upright. Then to bed; a little out of pocket, but pleased that the South has finally given us a bit of quality for our quid.