Avebury Rocks - I know, I've been!

The Solstice passed quietly in Colliers Wood. However, early signs of great festivity were to be witnessed in Avebury, where I spent last weekend. Our B&B had intimated that a few days later we'd have had to pay more for our rooms and probably to have booked them in June last year, or something.

It was very nice. At dusk, when I was taking portraits of individual stones, we spent a moment speculating on how long the embracing couple would stand in the circle we were crossing and do nothing. Later, from our room, we could no longer see them, but perhaps that was just night obscuring all.

Other notable features included the cost of the National Trust food (high) and the pleasantness of the ratatouille bought there (high); the absence of Julian Cope or any sign of his involvement in the place (probably knows better than to hang around near a solstice); the excellent Thai restaurant and shopping street in nearby Marlborough; a story from our landlord about the couple that spent the night after reconnecting on Friends Reunited and when she asked him whether he thought that they should get married this time, he said that he already was and she hit him with the key fob and took off in the hired car while he went to the local infirmary to be sown up; sitting under a stone and watching the world go by; tramping round Wiltshire's white horses (cut into local hillsides and mostly visible from the road) and the different look that the locals had from what we are used to seeing in either Poole or London.

Good one. We might make it an annual 'tween-the-birthdays weekend, though not always to Avebury, necessarily.