Been There, Done That

I've added a new category to left entitled, you guessed it, "Been There, Done That". We recently joined The National Trust (visit NT at http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/) which allows us to visit a bazillion historic sites and places for FREE! We have already gotten more benefit than our membership cost. So in an effort to catalog and give an overview of places we have visited, we all vote on the place we visited. If it was particularly good, it will get a 5+ rating.

Today, we visited Stonehenge (Evan and Finn's #1 request) and Lacock Abbey where portions of the first two Harry Potter movies were filmed. They were both OUTSTANDING! Impressions of Stonehenge were: smaller than we expected (but still very impressive) and surprised that it is right next to the road. The audio tour was very good.


Lacock Abbey and Village were great. The Abbey has been featured in many films including The Other Boleyn Girl, Emma, & Pride and Prejudice. We discovered that one of the three surviving reprinted (in the 1200's) copies of The Magna Carta was located at Lacock Abbey. It's also the home of the first photograph ever taken using negatives. The village was much like Williamsburg, VA, but the real deal. People dress like they are from the past, but it's actually inhabited by residents, not just existing for tourists. Getting there from Stonehenge wasn't very easy although they are not far from one another in distance.

All they need is their St. Edward's uniforms on and their house colour swim caps!

Yesterday, we visited Chedworth Roman Villa just outside of Cheltenham. It was interesting, but small. However, we just had a few hours to visit it anyway, so it fit well into our schedule. This is a picture of a pigeon mosaic from the floor of one of the baths.