Berkeley

Having arrived back in Bristol on Monday and got ourselves settled back in with groceries etc, Tuesday was a quiet stay-at-home day.  Siobhan baked some more bread and already seems to have the hang of it.  The book that she has been reading about bread must have helped so that she is learning from someone else’s mistakes rather than having to make them herself.  Siobhan made these great little buns so we had sliders for dinner on Tuesday night.  Sliders were big in the US for pub food – they are little burgers each being a different flavour.  Yum!

Jenner Museum

St Mary's church

On Wednesday we found a walk in “Walks Through History – Gloucestershire” that looked interesting.  It involved walking around the villages of Berkeley and Ham.  Berkeley was only about 30mins from where we are staying in Bristol and it had a public carpark not far from the centre of the village. Before setting out on our 6 mile walk, we thought that we had better steel ourselves with coffee.  It was very pleasant too.  That done, we first wandered past the Jenner museum.  This is where Edward Jenner set about discovering a vaccine for smallpox.  Out the back there remains a thatched hut where he used to treat the poor for free.  While we were too early in the day for it to be open, we spoke with one of the locals who told us a lot about it all anyway.

Our journey then continued past St Mary’s church which apparently dates back to Norman times.  It also was closed and looked as if it had seen better days.  Berkeley Castle was only just down the road, but rather than going inside it, we wandered through the fields next to it which provided a great view of the castle.  

Berkeley Castle

Edward II had something to do with this castle but we never got to the bottom of that as we didn’t go in.  England seems to be covered with these walkways and public footpaths that go across farmland.  They are great places to walk as it is so nice to be out in the countryside on a nice day.  Anyway, the walk across the farmland took us along the banks of the Avon river for quite a while.  Some of the fields must have been destined to become hay as the grass was at least knee-high as we wandered through.  When we left the banks of the Avon, we proceeded through some wheat fields.  This was harder going as we didn’t really want to walk through the wheat crop – but it had been planted right up to the hedge boundary (and, yes, this is all still public walkway).  We compromised by walking down the tractor tracks through the wheat.  We eventually emerged on to a lane and walked up the road into the village of Stone.

 

This is where the walk got a bit tricky.  We followed the instructions and went through the village green in Stone (slightly bigger than a back yard) and down another lane and into a bridal path.  To say that we might have been the first people to venture down the bridal path in a few years is an understatement.  It was so overgrown with blackberry and nettles that I doubt that anyone would have even used it for its intrinsic purpose and taken a horse down there.  We were both in shorts as well, and so there were a few encounters with the nettles despite our best dodging efforts.  Grant ventured down the path to see if it got better as we were supposed to take a turn in 20 metres.  While the turn was evident, the level of foliage was even higher so we abandoned that as a potential route.  That was pretty annoying as we now couldn’t follow the instructions to get to the deer park built by the 3rd Earl of Berkeley.  The iPhone map app came in handy here as at least we could work out where we needed to be at the end of the walk.  The app doesn’t show the public footpaths though, so we could either retrace our steps or walk back on the roads.  We chose the latter as at least it would be different.  We got to a point where we could see the deer park up on the hill and ended up walking parallel to the fence, about 100 metres away across more farmland.  The deer park had a high stone wall as a fence, so we didn’t fancy our chances crossing the farmland and then having to vault the fence.  We still got to see it anyway.

This then led us into the village of Ham.  Ham is home to the Salutation Inn which has just won the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ales – like our NZ SOBA) award for Gloucestershire Pub of the Year – for the 4^th or 5^th year in a row.  It was very friendly and welcoming and they had a great range of real ales.  We had a great chat with the owners and a couple of locals while sampling some nice local ales.  Siobhan made friends with the pub cat who took Grant’s seat as soon as he got up to get another beer.  It was a welcome interlude and by the end of the session, Grant wasn’t complaining about the stinging nettles any more.

It wasn’t very far back up the road until we made it back to Berkeley and where we had left the car.  We’d had a really nice walk but decided that we would head back to Bristol rather than visit the Jenner museum or the Castle.

The rest of the week has been spent in a very relaxed state.  Siobhan got a call from one of her teaching agencies and has an interview on Monday.  This is not an ordinary interview – it is potentially going to take about 4 hours.  She has to prepare and take a lesson on linear equations for a class of 29 Year 9 kids.  The lesson goes for an hour.  If the school likes how she does with that, there is a proper interview with the principal etc later in the afternoon.  Exciting times, and Siobhan has put a lot of time into preparing a lesson for these kids – they had better appreciate it.  On Friday we went to the movies and saw “The Five Year Engagement”.  Don’t bother unless you really have nothing better to do.  We have also been for a few walks but the weather has been average and it has rained most days.














Today is Sunday and Tony & Ingrid get back from two weeks in Germany later today.  It will be good to see them and hear about their adventures. Tony & Ingrid are having some work done in their garden that starts tomorrow.  They are having a retaining wall rebuilt as it is in need of some maintenance.  Grant is going to help out with that while Siobhan goes to her interview on Monday and then on Wednesday we are going to head up to see Nicola in Edinburgh, stopping for a night in the Lake District on the way.  Off on another adventure soon!