North Devon holiday 2010 part 1
Unlike the last couple of years, we weren’t going to Centre Parcs this year. Much as we enjoyed it, it was time for a change. We decided the look for somewhere in Devon that we could take the bike to.
After some internet searching, Jo found a place called Hallsanney Cottages. It seemed just right. It is about half a mile from the Tarka Trail, which is an old railway line, now cycle path and had a king size bed for us. It ticked a lot of other boxes as well including free Wi-Fi; I know we’re on holiday, but it’s useful for weather checks and checking out places to go.
We did a lot of the packing last night, so the plan was to get up early, load the car and get away at about 7am. We didn’t do too bad, getting away at 7:45. The car seems to get more full every time we go, but it all fitted.
We were going to stop off at Stonehenge on the way, so I packed my 18-70 zoom as well as the Bigma (50-500). The RAC travel planner estimated 1 hour 50 minutes to Stonehenge, which would be about 9am when it opened. Allowing for a bit of traffic delay, that would work out fine. We were looking out for services for a break after we came off of the M3 and pulled into the first one. It only had a small carpark and that was full to overflowing with people trying to reverse back out. We eventually got out of there and stopped at the next one for a quick break; much better. We made good progress until almost at Stonehenge, then the last 2 miles took a hour of crawling. That said we got there about 11am, so not bad time after all.
It is surprising when you first see Stonehenge, just how close the road is to it. The Heel stone is only about 6 foot from the road. The car park was busy, both being full and with people milling about everywhere. The entrance to Stonehenge is very small and could really do with a makeover. You queue down a slope and then it opens out into a small area where there are tables for the cafe on the left. The cafe is on the far right, so if you get a drink, you would have to get across the queue to get to the tables. There is one entrance kiosk for paying visitors and another that was in use for the coach trips and English Heritage members. In the same area are the exit turnstiles, so it is pretty busy in that area. Once you have paid, you are straight onto the audio tour kiosk, where you can collect a free audio tour device, again this area is fairly narrow and rammed with people from both entrance kiosks trying to get the audio device. The exit from the gift shop is here as well, you can certainly say everything is compact. Past the audio tour kiosk, you turn the corner to your right and are then met by groups of people trying to make their mind up if they are going in the gift shop entrance. Past that you only have to follow the tide avoiding the people returning from Stonehenge. Once under the road, you come up a slope and finally it is less constricting. We left the path and went up onto the grass on the right to start with, mainly to get out of the crowd for a few moments. At this point, you can actually stop to look at the stones themselves. We worked our way up the outside until we were nearly at the back and then came back to join the path that went closer to the stones. I had to smile when I heard an American lady saying “I thought it would be larger than this”, and had to resist answering her with “would you want to be moving these stones let alone larger stones.”
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