England: Swindon and Surrounds

After Exeter I had some time to burn, waiting to see if I would get the job (I didn't, which turned out to be a good thing), so I decided to spend some time in Swindon. When I mentioned this to any British folk I met I was invariably asked: why?

The answer:

GoofCode! (Note: this photo is not from Swindon - Swindon is not this exciting).

So I went to Swindon, where Amanda had scored a great job at a bank and Goof was essentially a house husband...except they don't have kids...and they were not married. So really Goof was just a mooching off Amanda. Anyway, I stayed there for some time. To make matters cooler Goof's bro was there for a couple of days too. Now, the problem was that, as many of the British folk had pointed out, there was not much there. In fact all Swindon seemed to have to offer was a 'magic roundabout' which is five roundabouts all joined together.

Shadows! This may not seem like a big thing to all my mates back at home. But It is rare to see the sun come in in Britain so this super exciting! We celebrated. With beer. 

Much to my disappointment I missed this marvel of modern traffic engineering. Instead, Goof and I visited the many pubs and some of the more interesting surrounding towns. Although, that said one day we did walk out of Goof's place with the intention of going somewhere good and saw a hordes of people walking in the opposite direction. As I have always been a sucker for peer pressure we decided to follow them and we stumbled upon an international festival of some sort with weird dancing and music, food, and hippy doctors. It was kinda fun.

A Celtic Knight -  found at a museum in Cirencester. 

First we went to to look at the neolithic rocks at Avebury. These were actually quite cool.

 Baiky and I compare ourselves to some rocks.

The arrangement didn't quite make sense, but there was a massive ditch dug around the rocks that encompassed an area maybe the size of an AFL field or bigger and the rocks were placed all throughout. Big rocks, like it wasn't some drunken party, it required real effort and fore thought. But hey, I am sure they had there reasons.

Many smarter minds than Goof's have pondered why you would bother - but he is more photogenic than those academics. The ditch you can see just behind him. There was also a trail of rocks extending out from the enclosed (enditched?) area.

We visited Cirencester, a nearby town that had a castle, which is pretty much the reason I wanted to go as I had never seen a castle before (except the one outside of Holbrook, of course!). We also visited the museum here and I learnt about the history of the area, including the Roman occupation of Britain. If I remember correctly Cirencester, or the region, had a relatively large Roman military presence. All in all though it seems being a Roman soldier was a pretty good life (they got bacon!)

 My first castle.

The final place we visited was Chedder (can you believe there is a place called Chedder, honestly who would name a place after cheese). Chedder is the proud owner of a magnificent gorge that is considered one of the most highly rated tourist locations in England. Goof and I trudged all the way around, met some goats, saw some people taking a slightly more difficult route to the top, examined some road art, and decided that there must be a formula to writing comedy (not sure if Goof agreed with me on that one).  

 The road art: expand the picture if you can and you'll see some boobs drawn on the road. Told you there was a formula to comedy.

And we bought cheese. It wasn't too bad a place; smaller than I expected and a little too populated - kind of like going to the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains. That said, I have learnt that over here nothing is remote which is kinda hard to get used to.

And to think I got a little bit nervous when the wind suddenly changed direction.

Well, after some time, a couple of weeks I think it was, I decided I had to move on and give Amanda and Goof some privacy so I packed up and moved on to visit an old friend in Switzerland.

Baiky loved it! Me, I was too scared to near the precipice.