Matt and I are freshly returned from our trip to Bath. The Roman baths there are the only thermal spa in the UK and steeped in Roman and pre-Roman history. The Victorians wrapped the whole thing in a nice façade but left most of the archaeology alone which was good of them. Well worth a visit if you are into that sort of thing.
The only let-down really was the prune-faced receptionist at the Menzie Riverside hotel. The hotel was fine but the receptionist was reminiscent of your least favourite school teacher.
We didn’t look at much else whilst we were there because of the rain. Instead, next day we headed south to Dorchester, stopping on the way to see that Homer Simpson is still just about visible mocking the well-endowed Giant at Cerne Abbas.
We walked up to Maiden Castle, a truly impressive hill-fort (basically a religious site the Durotriges adopted from the Neolithic founders) only to be absolutely soaked to the skin. We came, we saw, we got wet. Rather than drive straight to Salisbury to see Major Jim we dropped into the nearby Bovington Tank Museum which was indoors. However our squelching shoes echoed nicely within the cavernous building. It meant we could find each other after one of us wandered off to look at something.
Major Jim and his wife (and Curly the dog) were welcoming and we went out for a bit to eat (and some alcohol) in Salisbury. We slept well even though Matt’s snoring could have woken the entire camp.
Jim and Curly took us for a wander to the King Barrows and Cursus that overlook Stonehenge. We decided to not cough-up the entry fee to join the coachloads of tourists shuffling around the exclusion zone around Stonehenge and instead headed off to Hod Hill just southeast of Child Okeford in Dorset.
Matt had picked-up a book of short walks and one took in the iron-age hill-fort at Hod Hill and the nearby neolithic earthworks at Hambeldon Hill. It was a good chance to try out my new Merrell’s I had bought for the trip and two and a half hours of hill-walking combined with photo opportunities of Vespasian’s camp site. Hod hill is the only known hill-fort that the Romans converted into a Roman fort. It is safe to speculate that Vespasian’s second legion (Augusta) used this very site to stop, take stock and consolidate after their campaign against the nearby Durotriges hill-forts. He had already mopped-up Maiden Castle (along with a few other hill-forts) so we did these in the order he did.
All-in-all a good few days to revel in one of my favourite bits of history as well as get out and about in the open air. Thanks as always to Matt for driving around and putting up with my countless musings.
For those wanting a tick-list of places to visit, you could do worse than look at this article.
