I forgot to mention the White Horse at the top of yesterdays page, it is made by exposing the chalk under the soil, supposedly our ancient ancestors created hillside pictures in this way although the one in yesterdays photograph was cut in 1812 after some delay as the original contractor ran off with the money! There are eight in this area (all horses) which take a considerable maintenance effort to clear the weeds, whitewash is applied at regular intervals to keep them fresh.
There are also a great many standing stones and neolithic graves in the area (Stonehenge and Averbury are close by) so we were excited to see what seemed to be some sort of monument at the top of Picked Hill this morning (photograph above). We were a little disappointed once we peered through the binoculars that instead of stones they were a herd of cows, all standing at the top of the hill.
When the canal was built many landowners were reluctant to let this stinking ditch cross their land, Lady Susannah Wroughton insisted that the canal be made an ornamental lake as it crossed her land and the bridges be more ornate than the normal functional design. The picture shows her lake whose view from her house is now obscured by trees.
Today we walked into Pewsey where as usual the Lucas curse struck, all the cafes and cake shops were closed but we did manage to visit the local museum which was a) cool (it was in the 80’s outside and b) quite interesting, although their feature on local pubs only recorded about a dozen, the town is about the size of Bishop’s Castle which had 54! The museum is housed in an old engineering workshop so there were lots of metalworking tools and machines.
Strangely to record the Coronation of King George V in 1911 the people of Pewsey erected a statue of King Alfred, perhaps the stonemason had one in his yard he wanted to get rid of.
Tomorrow will probably our last day of sailing east and we will turn round (never easy in a canal) and start to retrace our steps.