HOW WE'RE TRAVELLING...: ROCKS AND ROCKSTARS, Tuesday, October 4.

We were on the hunt for Martin Clunes aka Doc Martin who apparently lives in Bridport and films his show out on the nearby Cornwall coastline but no luck there. It is a beautiful stretch of coastline and when I say stretch it take you about three hours to reach the very south western tip at Land's End and then another three to come back again so no time for further exploration here unfortunately. We had to head back inland for the Salisbury district which is the home of Stonehenge and our next homestay, with the same friend's brother on this occasion. It was nice to get another local perspective on the area and seemed hiliarious to meet in the carpark at a World Heritage site.
It's a bizarre experience to be driving along a motorway surrounded by farmland and then bam, there's Stonehenge on the left on a grassy field, just sitting there like some kind of huge garden ornament albeit from a squillion years ago.
Spooky and familiar, you can't pass it by even if you do think it's just a bumch of old rocks. It did look eerie against an ominous sky and you access it by walking under the road to the field, an audio tour providing history and conjucture about the mysterious stones. The truth is no-one really knows what formation means and who actually built it which is pretty funny considering all the ranting and raving about this place. Oh well it gets the tourists and mad medieval types in. The cynic in me stood there imagining a bunch of farmers from the last century having a laugh dragging all the stones on steam driven tractors saying 'that'll stump 'em'.
After our stones experience we found our friend's brother Mike in the carpark and headed down to the nearby village where they live. It must be funny driving to work past Stonehenge everyday. Our hosts took us to a lovely pub in another village passing winding narrow lanes with cute cottages, streams, bridges and stone walls and their matching manors. 'Do you know Sting the musican?' Mike's wife Mary said as we passed the iron gates of this giant stone mansion. 'That's his family home. His also has a place in New York. He goes to the local church services sometimes.'
Nevermind rockstars, during dinner I was raving on about the critters of England and I guess, like visitors go mad for kangaroos and koalas, I was keen to see a hedgehog and a badger. Turns out our hosts have a hedgehog that lives in their back garden. How Beatrix Potter is that! When we got back Mike kindly got the torch and we went hedgehog hunting in the backyard. They are nocturnal so they were likely to be out snuffling around. I was like a five-year-old looking and listening for a snuff-snuff here and a snuff-snuff there. But no luck. I sat in the conservatory (another favourite English pastime) and was talking to Mary while Mike made a third attempt as finding a HH down the back when out of the corner of my eye saw sometime wobble across the lawn near the back door. After a shriek of excitment I ran outside and there is was in all its spiny glory, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle minus the apron and bonnet. It was probably terrified of some Aussie ding-dong dancing around it squealing oh my god, oh my god. It ran to the hedge (no relation) and pushed its snoze in trying to hide. They are pretty timid animals and you can pick them up but I wasn't that brave. The poor thing was probably 10 times more frightened. It flinched as I gently patted its back which is exactly like a bristle broom, infact they really feel and look like those cast iron boot scrapers so often modelled on these little blokes. See ya little fellow, thanks for making an appearance I said like it was going to thank me. Sorry no photographic evidence of this as it happened too quickly. Mary said they also get moles burrowing in the backyard as you see little mounds of dirt occassionally and then there's the badgers. Mike quickly put the torch away before I got any more ideas.