I got back from Lincolnshire late yesterday evening, and went straight to the hostel for an early night as Husni was picking me up early this morning to go for a drive out west. We had tossed up over a few locations, Oxford, The Cotswolds – but finally settled on a drive to Cheddar, one of the ‘Great British Drives’, stopping off at Stonehenge on the way.
Bright and early we started off on the highway, stopping in for a roadside breakfast in the miserable rain. But magically, as we got to Stonehenge the rain cleared – leaving stereotypical English grey skies, and fog over the fields.
We took the shuttle bus up to Stonehenge and wandered around.
We saw a crow trying to fly between two stones with a stick that was too wide – he kept failing but didn’t give up. Stonehenge was pretty cool – but in stereotypical Melbourne fashion we jokingly said how ‘we have better rocks back home’. Husni pulled his least impressed face at Stonehenge.
We drove on, finding little country laneways where we could, driving down past gorgeous old English farmhouses rather than sticking to the highway.
I took a photo of this horse and then yelled ‘Bye!’ The horse jumped about a metre with a ‘Ahh! It can talk!’ look on its face.
We made our way towards the drive through to Cheddar, and finally we made it around the corner, pulled the top down of the car, and sped our way through the windy roads, edged by tall, towering cliffs covered in greenery. It is possibly one of the most beautiful drives I have ever experienced – but we were going too fast for me to capture much, and it just couldn’t show how amazing it was on film.
We sped on through to Bristol, as we had lunch reservations at River Cottage Canteen.
I was ridiculously excited – I have been obsessed with River Cottage for years, and now I was finally going to go eat there.
We were just in time for roast dinner – we had lamb, carrots, salt roasted garlic, potatoes, kale.
We had glasses of River Cottage Elderflower champagne, and finished up with a rhubarb, pear and orange crumble, with a huge bowl of the creamiest vanilla bean ice cream I have ever had.
After lunch we were meant to be going to check out Bath, the old roman bathing town, but in a post-lunch coma all we could bring ourselves to do was drive through the beautiful town.
I will have to come back one day to see it properly, preferably not after a sunday lunch. I’ve missed the tradition of sunday roast – it’s very British, but my mum would always do us a Sunday roast in Australia with roast lamb and the BEST roast vegetables. Unfortunately i’ve never really been interested in cooking meat, so when I moved away from home the tradition died. Eventually Melbourne Sunday lunch at Eric’s was the new tradition, and I got so used to having a table full of beautiful Sri Lankan curries (which I now miss as much as my mum’s roasts!).