No diving at Stourhead

We had originally planned to do our last dives wearing wetsuits before winter sets in this weekend, but the weather during the week wasn't good, so rather than potentially loose a deposit on a charter boat we changed our plans and went down to Wiltshire to see Emily (one of Sarah's school friends) this weekend at her new house and place of work, Stourhead Estate.

It takes around 2-3hrs to get to Stourhead, and on the way you pass Stonehenge. As i may have already told some of you Stonehenge isn't the mystical sacred site you expect, it's right beside a major road, so as we drove past i took a photo so y'all can appreciate it.

Stourhead is a "Celebrated 18th-century landscape garden and Palladian mansion". Emily's flat is in the rear of the house, so we can now claim we have stayed in a country manor as honourable guests - forget the fact that we may never actually set foot in the main part of the house where all the antiques are. We did get to walk around the grounds though, which are absolutely amazing. In the grounds there is a village, a pub, a few temples, a few grottoes, a huge lake with a couple of man made islands in it, lots of trees, lots of ducks, but no squirrels.....Too many guns in the area me thinks. There were also a few cows, so i foresaw a bit of a 'cow-tipping' session that night, but Em thought it might hurt the cows.

I did finally try an old English favourite while we were there - a cream tea. I was expecting a nice cuppa with cream instead of milk, but as with all things English, i was completely mistaken - it's actually a cuppa and scones with jam and 'clotted' cream. Delicious!

And now the Little Chef saga comes to an end. Little Chef is a chain of restaurants that you can find dotted along every major highway, usually beside a service station - where you would usually find a McDonalds or Burger King. Ever since i've been in the UK i've passed these places and it has become an obsession to eat there. Whenever i mentioned this to anyone, they would invariably point out that the food was crap, so we never went to one. Well, Little Chef is apparently closing down soon, so we decided that the time had come to stop there and try a meal, and as it was brekkie time i went for the full English breakfast, without the black pudding The verdict? Pretty good as long as you're not expecting a piece of parsley on the plate. The difference between real fast food and this place is sumed up in the sign below.

And as you can see, it's a great place to pick up women!