Semi Planned, or The Story of the Wrong Horse

The imposter...

What's with that?

King's Bruton Boarding School.

John lost in memories.

Bruton village.

The Church of St Mary's.

Exmouth Beach.

Apparently a common sight in coastal towns.

John's sister Chrissie.

Lodgers Kaitlin, Jazz and Roy.

Sunday, August 27th.

The plan today was to drive to see the white horse of Uffington in Wiltshire, that XTC used for their 1982 album English Settlement. John entered 'white horse Wiltshire' in the GPS and away we went. We drove out of Wales and back into England and an hour and a half later we saw a white horse on a hill, but it looked much more modern and realistic than the stylized one I was looking for. I thought that perhaps it was an indicator to point the way to the real one on the other side of the hill. So we drove up the hill and parked. There were other people up there flying kites and picnicing. I asked a guy where the horse was and he pointed us in the right direction. When we got to the edge we could look over the hill and there was the same horse imposter! I asked another bloke about the Uffington horse and he told me we were at the Westbury White Horse. Who knew there were two?? Apparently there are others too. He said the one I wanted was another hour and a half way, in the opposite direction to where we wanted to go. I was very disappointed, but at this point John realized where it really was and said we should have stopped there on the way to Wales from Dottie's place, but since we will be going back that way at the end of the week, we will visit it then. John and I have a tendency to not fully research or sort out our plans and although usually all goes well, occasionally things go awry. Hence the name of this post.

Anyway, we spent a bit of time on the hill enjoying the view on this spectacular, warm, clear day and then we drove to the town of Bruton. This is where John and his sister Chrissie attended boarding school. John was at the King's Bruton boys boarding school for 6 years, basically his high school years. The school was founded in 1519! As we walked around the grounds of the school, through the village and into the Church of St Mary, where John sang as a baritone choirboy I could see he was lost in his thoughts and memories as he revisited ghosts of his past. We ordered a pizza and sat in the grounds of the church soaking up the sun. They started construction of the Church of St Mary in the 12^th century and and finished it about two hundred years later. It is built on the site of one of the earliest churches in England, which was constructed in the 7^th century.

After lunch we drove south to meet John's sister, Chrissie, in Exmouth, at the mouth of the Exe River. The last time I visited Exeter she was in Spain, so we had not met previously. We wandered around the beach enjoying the sights and flavour of the place before going to an outside cafe for a couple of pints. Then we walked back to the carpark and drove to Exeter where John and Chrissie live. She has recently left her partner and moved in with John. We had a salad and salmon dinner and talked to John's three lodgers: Roy, and Jazz and Kaitlyn. John rents rooms here as a money maker but also because he spends about half his time at Dottie's place near London. We had a couple of glasses of wine and talked about life in Northern Ireland (where Kaitlyn is from), which is apparently still very conflicted. John served in the military there for a period of time. Then we talked about travelling and how John and I met among many other things.