England 21- Hackpen Hill and Rockley and just wandering around

Since I’ve not been really doing day-to-day entries to document our countryside stay, and instead have been doing hunks of things – like an entry for Marlborough and an entry (or two) for Bath and an entry (or two) for Avebury and an entry (or two) for Disaster Day, I’m getting kind of confused about what day I’m on. If any. But I know we went to Hackpen Hill and to Rockley on Friday, June 28. I did at least keep a pretty good paper journal record while we were there. And we went hiking on Fyfield Downs Saturday. And then we went… home. Sniff.

According to my paper journal, we went to Avebury twice on Friday, had pints at the Red Lion, and then went to the Barge for lunch, and then had dinner in Marlborough. I think we ate at the Wellington pub in Marlborough – unfortunately I did not do a very good job of keeping track of where/what we ate and drank in my journal because I also had a Moleskin London City Guideand that’s where I tried to keep track of all that, along with expenses- and of course I never have that one handy when I’m writing an entry here. {okay, it took me so long to write this that I’m finishing in the evening and have located my London Moleskin notebook. We ate at the Green Dragon in Marlborough, and split two curries between the three of us- a Thai and a Chicken Marsala. And they were excellent.}

Somewhere in all that running around, we found time for Hackpen Hill, where you can access the Ridgeway Trail and see the Hackpen Hill White Horse, and for Rockley, which is a teeny tiny little place close to Marlborough and Avebury. Well, both are close to Marlborough and Avebury. Here’s the National Trust map at Hackpen Hill:

You can hopefully see Marlborough and Avebury down at the bottom left side, and Rockley is right outside Marlborough.

We were going to hike some on the Ridgeway Trail, but it was seriously threatening rain so we didn’t go far.

This is the Hackpen Hill White Horse. Sadly I didn’t get a very good picture of it. I took this out the car window as we were driving up to the Ridgeway. (On a totally unrelated but amusing side note, Baker B usually drove and I’d sit up front and Kim would sit in the back- and Kim had the bejesus scared out of her more than once when she’d glance at me and realize I was taking pictures, and for a second she’d forget the driver is on the opposite side in England, and would think I was driving AND taking pictures). (OH, and more than once Baker B and I got in the car, and then sat there a second trying to figure out what was wrong… then we’d realize both of us had gotten in on the wrong side. Those wacky UK cars and roads!)

I loved these signs with the motorcycles leaping over the cars. I guess car-leaping-by-motorcycle is okay April 1- October 30? Or maybe that’s the thieves making off over the tops of cars.

We just walked a bit beyond the grove of trees.

The views were beautiful up there-

There was police tape across the pathway that went into the little grove of trees – yikes!

We met two other walkers who said kids would ride motorbikes into the grove, and one of them had lost control and hit a tree, and was killed. We walked around the police tape – it was apparently just for keeping motorbikes out.

There was a tree with what looked like balloons set beside it.

The Ridgeway was SO tempting.. but we weren’t really dressed for rain.

So we drove over to Rockley. It’s just a little teeny group of a few houses and an old church, off the main highway. Very pretty- and appropriately enough everything seems to be built out of rocks.

There were some odd graves – or memorials of some sort- in the little churchyard.

And horses in their blankets in the field behind the church. They looked interested in us, but wouldn’t come visit.

I want to move into this house.

Or this one would be fine too.

A letterbox in the rock wall:

Kim hunting small rocks to take back to a rock-crazy co-worker:

Baker B entertaining us: