Alone again ...

Well, Tim & Marlene left on Tuesday and I am alone again ... its kinda nice to have the place to ourselves again after a solid month of guests, but I do miss having people here too. Its defintely more fun doing stuff with people than by myself ... but don't feel too sorry for me, I have some serious shopping to do today! Friday night is the Summer Ball at the Officers Mess so Peter will be all dressed in his mess kit (aka his fancy uniform), and I have a new dress to wear. But I need to get some accessories to go with it .. and some accessories to go with my other new dress that I will be wearing to a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday! Peter and I are looking forward to that day alot - its a day off for him that we get to spend together in London, potentially seeing/meeting the Queen! And we get to visit with our friends Dave & Kristy who live north of London while he attends Cranfield University - they are our CF friends and are attending the same garden party.

All that being said .. on the last day that Tim & Marlene were here, we packed in a whole bunch of siteseeing, what else is new? We visited the World Heritage site of Avebury which is a samll town not far from here that is surrounded by prehistoric stone circles. Many of the stones are as large as those at Stonehenge; plus there were sheep everywhere and we walked through fields with the sheep. The only drawback was the sheep poo everywhere that got all over the bottoms of my jeans :( Oh, and it poured rain!








From there we continued on our drive to Old Wardour Castle - they hadn't yet seen it, even though it was my 3rd visit, but its still nice to see. On the way we stopped at a Pizza Hut for the lunch buffet which Tim had been craving all week ... I had to cut a guy off to get there, but it was well worth it! We changed our plans on the way to the castle and stopped at Stourhead (pronounced 'Starhead') to view the gardens, we didn't have time to see the house if we also wanted to see Old Wardour. We walked through the extensive garden which was created in the 1740's by the owner of the home, Henry Hoare II who was a wealthy banker. People started noticing that his garden was different than the current trends and thus became renowned as being at the forefront of the 18th century English landscape movement. This was because it didn't follow the perfectly manicured shapes and lines of the French inspired gardens that had become popular (think Versailles). Instead it was designed to be more of natural setting with wildflowers and pretty scenery. It included St Peter's church, the 'Pantheon' and 'Temple of Apollo', a Palladian bridge and a grotto .. and a small lake. Very impressive.







After the garden we headed to the Castle and took time to do the audio tour and take some pics ... then headed home. Peter was home earlier than expected so we were able to spend their last night all together and played a rousing game of 'Racko' ... it was lots of fun having them here and I'll miss them! And I'll miss not being around to watch Marlene's belly grow :)

The next visitors are Andrew & Christine who arrive later this month; hopefully the weather will improve some before then - Tim & Marlene defintely got the short end of the weather stick! I have lots of time to rest up this time before the next round of siteseeing begins!

Team PM