Gardens and Stones

PLeaving St Michael's Mount we travelled onto Salisbury - here Jackie and Margaret were enthralled by the Cathedral a wonderful example of ancient and modern- a set of terracotta sculpture representing the characters of the Twelve Apostles.  In 100 years will tourists view these contemporary sculptures and consider the time in which they were created?

Judy, Joanne and I took a different path and visited St Ives and Lyme Regis both seaside towns full of tourists and character.  

In the morning we left early for Stonehenge, a truly amazing experience.  To find that what we think of as prehistoric people, engineered and constructed this circle of stones over 4500 years ago, transporting giant stones from many places hundreds of miles away was a feat we could only wonder at. A truly magnificent place so no wonder people have so many different attachments to it.

Photos cannot do this wonderful place justice.

In Eastbourne Joanne left us to visit relatives and we checked into the 1930's at the Lansdowne Hotel.  One lovely lady at breakfast told me, She had been visiting the hotel since her sons were children "not every year, dear" and her boys are now in their 60's. A lot of repeat business here!

Gardens here have amazed and delighted us in many ways, the colour and forms are so varied but today we visited Sissinghurst world famous for it's designers Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson as much as for it's beauty. We all loved the White garden in particular.

Vita truly painted with flowers!

Brighton brought out the hidden child in each of us!  We followed this with a big ice-cream - found only after a long search - we are really expert on ice-cream now and only the best hand made stuff will do for us!  

We also visited the Pavillion the OTT  palace of George IV which was incredible in it's opulence.  Room after room of red, gold, gleaming and sparkling everything - George was amazing in his taste and extravagance.

After this we veged out on the Brighton Pier and watched people for a while whilst wondering how we'd get out of these deck chairs.

Tomorrow we are off to London Town -  look out London, here we come!  We are all ready to dress up and go out on the town!  Our tickets are booked!