Winter Wiltshire weekender - Avebury, Marlborough and Rick Stein
Dragon Hill
"Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
My birthday is in January. Every year. Usually it’s grey and cold. By then, everyone is done celebrating. And they would prefer to be buried under their cozy blanket enjoying the relief of canceled plans, which is ultimately better than no plans.
When my husband Andrew asks what I want to do for my birthday it’s also boringly repetitive: “a little restaurant on the beach in Spain, tapas, a cold glass of wine, the sun. Rip off my clothes for a swim past those rocks after lunch.” But in my actual life the kid’s school term has started and we don’t have any family in the country, so Andrew suggests “What about walking in Wiltshire?”
Marlborough
And so to Marlborough we went. It’s a traditional middle-class English town in the North Wessex Downs. It has a notably wide High St, an edit after their Great Fire in 1653 and plenty of pubs. Importantly, it’s close to The Ridgeway, an 87 mile trail described as Britain’s oldest road. This put us near the trail head at Overton Hill near Avebury. The trail mingles with the standing stones at Avebury, cuts through the Chiltern Hills and finishes at Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire.
There was a last minute booking at The Lamb Inn available. The Lamb is a pubby pub. This was not the Soho House version of a country pub with whimsical wallpaper and a distressed leather chesterfield. Stay at the 15th century Marlborough for that. This was a roaring fire, football on the TV and a sticky floor boozer. When the owner, who could have been Brian Cox, saw my 4 and 6 year old weaving through the Friday night crowd, he took me aside to let me know that we booked a quiet room, but there would be a band tomorrow night. While the thread count was not high, it was a perfectly comfortable bed in a room big enough for us all with above average UK plumbing. I would recommend for Americans looking to see an authentic English pub, with a breakfast fry-up to match.
Avebury Standing Stones
We spent a pea-soup grey day in Avebury - not enough fog to be mystical. But the giant stones, which were first arranged in lines and circles and set between 2850 and 2200 BC were standing on their own available to touch. There were no queues and minimal ropes. Just mysterious questions about why neolithic people wanted these stones here, in this precise arrangement?
We walked on The Ridgeway and past Silbury Hill which is a man-made mound the size of an Egyptian pyramid (significance unknown!) to West Kennet Long Barrow. While the former is decidedly not a burial sight the latter is a cave-like tomb made of boulders. English Heritage have since added some sky-lights and appeared to be burning sage incense, which was a nice touch for their audience, but presumably to cover up some foul existing smell. We brought our own sandwiches, but Avebury has a cafe if you want to buy lunch.
Rick Stein’s mussels
Since it was a birthday celebration, we went to Rick Stein’s place for mussels. Lloran House is a Grade II listed building with a gleaming brasserie style bar. It’s all beachy blues, but had upscale feel especially after spending the day in muddy boots. Water is served in thin lipped glasses - one of my favourite low-stakes luxuries. The glasses are so thin that it makes me nervous when my toddler takes a sip, but any restaurant that publishes a kid’s menu is an open invitation to the chaos of children. Our 6 year-old Tallulah was interested in being her older self for the night. She requested mussels and neatly tucked the linen napkin in her lap. I was on a mission for the classic moules marinière, which I believe should always be available at a Rick Stein’s, but the curried version they had was tasty too. However, there is absolutely no reason to have chips if they aren’t triple cooked, especially with mussels. Rick, why? Andrew’s monkfish wrapped in bacon was heavy in a frozen chicken-kiev way. Loved the passionfruit crème brûlée because it was classic and not a dessert we tried to recreate at home during the pandemic.
White Horse Hill
The Sunday was devoted to White Horse Hill, which is still near the Ridgeway but crossing over into Oxfordshire. The National Trust site describes the horse as an enigmatic chalk figure, perhaps over 3,000 years old, once maintained by locals who would hold annual festivals to add limestone and trim the edge of the horse. We walked the ridged circle of Iron Age Hillfort, Uffington Castle. This is also where the ledge of St George locates him slaying the Dragon. What the complex does not have is a public toilet, which surfaces as the most popular comment on the Trip Advisor page. The drive and walk around the site is long enough and the visitor volume is high enough that having no place to GO is a problem. We spent many minutes loitering around the trees framing the parking lot looking for a gap in foot traffic.
This wasn’t the most rugged adventure we’ve taken, but it was remarkable because it felt like we time-traveled into the future. We were alone, in cotton wool insulated from other people, circling stones and staring at the layers of green countryside at the horizon. The fun was the getting away as the family we were growing into. It was the first time a trip was not weighed down with toddler accessories and surprises. There were no diapers or accidents. We weren’t on other people schedules or wrestling kids into clothing. The trip was the four of us, enjoying each other’s company. Nothing more, nothing less.
One year I’ll celebrate in Spain.