Stonehenge and Salisbury

It sounds strange, but despite being from Wiltshire and having lived here most of my life, I've only actually been to Stonehenge once, when I was 9 or 10 years old. And the only reason I went that time was because my sister's French exchange was staying with us and really wanted to go! Actually, my family has always preferred to go to Avebury, as it's much nearer to where we live, it's free, and it's a lot less crowded.

However, my partner Claudio recently mentioned that he really wanted to go to Stonehenge - unlike Avebury, it is famous all over the world as one of the great historic landmarks of Europe. Moreover, we're going to be out of the country for most of December and plan to move away from Wiltshire in early 2025, so it made sense to go as soon as possible. The journey from our house is about 70 minutes, which may seem long by British standards, but is not long at all by Chilean standards, so Claudio was quite happy to drive down there!

The one big drawback of visiting Stonehenge is the cost; if you book online in advance, it costs a little over £25 per adult, and it's even more if you pay at the counter on the day. Very expensive, particularly in today's cost of living crisis! There is, however, the option of parking a little way out from the site and walking along a public footpath to a free viewpoint, which allows you to see the stones from one side only. We did consider this option, but eventually decided to cough up for the tickets, in order to see the stones from all angles and to visit the museum. We viewed the purchase of the tickets as a kind of bucket list experience, as we don't plan to go back for many years - probably not until we have kids who are old enough to find it interesting, which I certainly didn't when I went at the age of 9!

The drive down was actually quite interesting - we went through Avebury and then through some other pretty towns and villages like Devizes, with lots of traditional thatched cottages.

After arriving and having our tickets checked, we went to have a look at the recreation of houses from the prehistoric period that's located just outside the visitor centre entrance. There's even one that you can go inside!

And then we got on the shuttle bus over to the famous stone circle itself.

Weirdly, it was actually a lot bigger than I remember it being (usually I remember things from my childhood as being bigger than they really are), and while I remember only being able to see it from a distance, there's now actually one side of it that you can see fairly close up - though maybe that was always the case, and I just didn't remember it!

This time around, I also felt more of a sense of power and mystery coming from the stones; it's incredible to think that they were put there 5000 years ago, and that some of the stones came from as far away as Wales. It's a shame that we'll never get to see it as it was in its heyday when it was fully formed, but it still looks pretty good for its age!

Having now seen both Avebury and Stonehenge in recent years, I'd still choose Avebury for a day out, as it's a much more relaxing place (and it's free!), but the formation of Stonehenge is very special and unique and certainly worth seeing at least once in a lifetime.

Back at the visitor centre, we had a go at pulling an extremely heavy rock, before visiting the museum. Inside the museum, there's a big circular room made out of screens with images of Stonehenge as it was in the past, making you feel like you're inside the circle. That was pretty cool! It was also interesting to see a timeline showing how old Stonehenge is in comparison to other historic places we've visited or hope to visit in the future. 

We then headed south towards the city of Salisbury, stopping off at Old Sarum, which was once both an Iron Age hill fort and a Norman castle. I believe I'd seen it on TV once and been really impressed by it, which was why I wanted to go, but we quickly realised it's one of those places that looks much more impressive from a bird's eye view than it does on the ground.

Old Sarum is made up of two circular mounds - a smaller one on top of a bigger one - and while the bigger one is free to walk around (though there's a charge for parking), you have to pay £8 per person in order to walk around the smaller one, which has the remains of the Norman castle. Based on our view from the ticket office, there wasn't really that much to see there, and we'd already paid a lot for our Stonehenge tickets, so we decided to pass and just walk around the bigger mound. Our experience there was a little underwhelming, but I'd absolutely recommend looking up the bird's eye view images of the site.

Our final stop of the day was Salisbury itself, where our first port of call was the famous cathedral, known for having the tallest spire in England. It really was a majestic building to see and we're glad to have visited it, but unfortunately there's a charge of £12 to go inside (£10 if you book online in advance), and we couldn't really justify that after paying out so much for our Stonehenge tickets. You can walk around the cloisters for free though, which is a nice experience.

The rest of the city was also a picturesque place to walk around. It's very beautiful in a kind of Medieval English way, and made me think of York, as opposed to other beautiful cities near me like Bath, Cheltenham and Oxford, which have a more continental vibe.

All in all, it was a very fun day out, and felt like a real adventure, despite the fact we didn't leave our home county! Even though we're planning to move in 2025, it is nice to have places like these so close to our doorstep, and we're going to try to appreciate them as much as possible during the rest of the time that we'll be living in this part of the world.

Hello Again!

...and we're back!

It's been exactly four weeks since I last posted, and to be honest, I didn't see myself coming back to blogging this soon, but for some reason, today, for the first time in months, I felt compelled to post a story on Instagram and inspired to write a little post here.

Part of me has missed blogging over the last month - I do feel a bit of nostalgia for the period of time in 2021, where I couldn't wait to sit down in front of my laptop every weekend with a mug of tea or coffee and create something that really sparked joy in me, whether that was a recap of somewhere I'd visited locally, or something else about the topic of travel in general. Funnily enough, that was a very difficult, dull and uncertain period in my life, and a time when I didn't travel much at all, but was also the time when I was most passionate and full of ideas and inspiration for this travel blog.

On the other hand, it has felt freeing to give myself a break from blogging. I've realised that writing blog posts somehow, and without me noticing, turned from a weekly joy and escape into something that felt almost like an obligation at times, which is bizarre, because it's absolutely not an obligation in any way!

I've been thinking about how I want to move forward with this blog, and I think the answer has come to me over the last week or so. I want to enjoy writing here and for it to feel like a fun hobby again, and in order to achieve that, I definitely need to move away from trying to post to a regular schedule and instead only choose to post when I'm actually inspired to do so.

The other key change I want to make going forward is to write shorter posts - think the written equivalent of TikToks/Instagram reels, as opposed to YouTube videos! While I still want to write the occasional longer post (the lengthier ones I wrote recently about the places I've lived and the places I'd like to live are actually by far the two posts I've enjoyed writing the most this year), I generally want to keep my posts much more concise from now on. 

I was quite attached to the idea of fully recapping each big trip I've been on day by day in order to really give a proper sense of what it's like to visit these exciting places, but those posts are actually the ones I find least motivating to write. Going forward, I'm going to find new, more concise and hopefully engaging ways to recap my longer adventures.

And in the near future, I'm looking forward to bringing back my Country Guides series - I've got a few more guides to make and need to update some of the existing ones - and I also want to try some other shorter post ideas, including quizzes!

A Little Travel Adventure

Before I sign off, I want to highlight a new local place in Wiltshire that I visited with my parents this morning: Sustain Farm Shop and Café. It only opened recently, so it was our first time visiting, and we were impressed. Not only did it offer very generous portions of coffee and cake, but it also has a little farmyard with some gorgeous and friendly animals! It was a lovely experience to say hello to them. And if you've got kids, there are climbing frames and even a bouncy castle to keep them occupied.

I've said this before, but it's worth repeating: sometimes even a morning out in your local area can give you a little bit of the same escapism that going further afield for a longer period of time does.

I'm an ordinary person with an ordinary job, and I can't replicate the sheer volume of travelling that some of the better-known travel bloggers can. But I can present something realistic and achievable on this blog: the act of fitting travel adventures into your life as much as possible, whether that's through weekends exploring your local area, or the occasional bucket list trip to an exotic, far-flung destination. That's really become the ethos of my blog and I plan to continue in that vein for hopefully many years to come.

I'll see you back here soon for more travel adventures - big and small!

Bye for now!

Westonbirt Arboretum

Time to write about another local trip!

Last weekend, I went off for an outing to Westonbirt Arboretum with my parents, who have a membership there. It was the first time I'd been there since I was a child and I didn't really remember it, so it basically felt like visiting somewhere new.

It's a very big arboretum with a lot to see, but on this visit, we went to the Old Arboretum, as well as the Treetop Walkway.

One of the most fun features of the arboretum is the Gruffalo trail, where you can find six animal characters from the famous children's book. 

Some of the more nature-based highlights for me included the giant Californian trees and the Chilean araucarias.

The Treetop Walkway was also fun to do, and a different and interesting way to see the trees.

And as always, it was great to end the outing with a tasty coffee and cake in the café!

Although I'd say I prefer Batsford Arboretum, as I find it more picturesque and love its Japanese theme, I still had a very nice time visiting Westonbirt. Spending time in nature is always a good idea, and it's a great place to do just that!

Life Update and January & February Highlights

Claudio's now been in the UK with me for nearly three months, and we've been living at home with my parents since Christmas. We'd hoped that in the first few months of 2024, we'd be able to sort out our future plans, but of course, that's not proving to be easy. Nothing has come up in terms of work for Claudio in the UK - probably because he's currently on a tourist visa - and we're not sure we'll be able to get a partner visa for him, because the requirements are supposed to be changing soon. And in any case, I don't think the UK's a great place to live at the moment, and I don't know if I want us to be tied down here by a two-year visa, when we'll both hopefully have EU citizenship within the next year or two. Having said that though, Claudio has been attempting without success to get an appointment to submit his documents for Italian citizenship for over six months now, so who knows how long it will take him to get his passport. (Hopefully the process to get my Irish citizenship - which I plan to apply for this year - will be quicker and easier.)

So, all in all, things are pretty much still as uncertain as they were before. And although we long to settle down somewhere permanently, we've realised that that might not be easy to do until we've got more options open to us. But fortunately, there is an adventurous side of us that has things we want to do and places we want to go before we settle down permanently, and so we're now looking into some exciting plans that could be a great way to fill the time before we both get our EU citizenship.

Of course, we've been stressed and worried and full of uncertainty lately. But despite all this, I want Claudio to enjoy his time in the UK as much as possible, however long he's going to be here for. 

Once a week, I go into the office in Bristol, and Claudio comes with me by train. Usually he goes round visiting different places and museums in the city, and sometimes he goes off to other cities. Once he even went to Wales by himself, which was quite impressive considering he hadn't really travelled solo before.

And of course, at weekends, we try to go off to nice places whenever possible.

Here's a selection of highlights from the first two months of this year...

Our Engagement Celebration!

In January, we had a low-key celebration of our engagement at one of our favourite restaurants, the Thai Emerald in Cirencester. It was a really lovely evening! As always, the restaurant looked beautiful, the food was amazing, and it felt like an ideal place to celebrate our engagement, given where we're planning to have our honeymoon...

The Whitehall Garden Centre

The following day, we went for coffee and cake at the Lavender Lodge Tea Room in the Whitehall Garden Centre. This is one of the prettiest cafés I've ever been to, and to make things even better, we saw gorgeous reindeer, goats and donkeys while looking around the garden centre!

Afternoon Tea at the Old Bell Hotel

For my parents' birthdays in February, we went for an afternoon tea at the Old Bell Hotel in Malmesbury. It was a new cultural experience for Claudio, as he'd never had a traditional British afternoon tea before, and we all really enjoyed it.

Malmesbury Animal Sanctuary

One place I really wanted to take Claudio was Malmesbury Animal Sanctuary, where you can find rescued chickens, goats, alpacas, and emus. Claudio was particularly happy to see the emus, as he follows a Chilean "car influencer" who has one for a pet! They are very funny birds, and certainly entertained us with their movements and expressions!

Claudio's Christmas Present!

I got Claudio a Christmas present this year which I'll probably never be able to beat in future years! As he's a car fanatic, I decided to get him a supercar experience voucher, which involved driving a Ferrari and a Lamborghini, and having a high-speed passenger ride in a GTI. So on a rainy day in February, we went over to Castle Combe race track to use the voucher at a supercar event there. Claudio was in his element and had an amazing time - he especially loved driving the Lamborghini Huracán - and it was great to watch him having so much fun!

The Temple of Minerva and Botanical Gardens, Bath

This probably would have been our wedding venue, but then we found out that we can't legally get married in the UK because of our civil union. All the same, it was really nice to visit this little temple, which is located in a beautiful, secluded part of the city that I'd never visited before, despite the fact I've been coming to Bath for years.

(As it happens, we've discovered what looks like quite literally our dream venue in Chile, so hopefully we'll be able to get that booked for the Chilean summer!)

The Swan Hotel, Bibury

This is another wedding venue that we were considering, though after visiting, we felt that the village of Bibury itself was too full of tourists to have our wedding there. But the hotel itself is lovely, and as part of our venue visit, we got to visit its garden, which is so pretty.

AV8 and Cotswold Airport

This is a place we didn't get to take Claudio last time he was here, so it was nice to show it to him at last! It's really interesting to look at all of the different types of planes at the airport, and the décor in the café is so fun!

More adventures will be landing on this blog very soon, as it's not long before we'll be off to Italy! Even though our future plans are still really uncertain at the moment, we have to make the most of this time together, explore this part of the world, and have great experiences whenever possible.

See you back here soon!