We’ve been plotted up on a winter priced plot at Home Farm Camp and Tourer site (Somerset) for three days so far. It’s been wet, though yesterday we did get out to Brent Knoll: the village and then the hill. Said hill is 449 feet tall, was once used by Neolithic men as a settlement (followed at some point by the Romans, and then variously by the Angles, Saxons and Danes). It used to sit as an island in a shallow sea, until the monastery’s around Glastonbury etc made determined attempts to reclaim the land and drained what is now the Somerset levels.
From the summit you can see in no particular order. Wales (the south coast), Cheddar Gorge (entry point), Glastonbury Tor, Crooks Peak, The Bristol Channel, the M4 in all its shiny wet glory, the mouth of the River Parrett, Hinkley Point C Nuclear power station (much in the news recently), Brean Down, Steep Holm, Flat Holm, Weston Super Mare, the east face of the Quantocks and the west face of the Mendips (of which Brean Down is the extreme end).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantock_Hills
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendip_Hills
I should mention that the end on Brean Down is another of those fascinating places around Britain that has been of great military significance until the end of the last war and a little beyond. Those of a nerdish bent will notice the fact that technologies such as radar, guided missiles, and high tech coastal patrol ships have rendered may of these fortified places entirely redundant (in fact if you think about it ... and I just did ... having fixed coastal defence is like putting all your eggs in one basket and then suspending a brick by string over them and lighting a candle under the string).The point if there is one (and I may have even made it elsewhere in the past), is that these places are linked by various individuals throughout history, Julius Caesar, Hadrian, Henry the Eighth, our unwritten pre-history to name a few. If there is a conciliation to these old military places being abandoned to the right to roam, the rigours of rough seas and the proof that almost nothing man made last forever, it is likely to be the fact that, we in post WW2 Britain are the safest, we've been (controversial statement time) since the Roman occupation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brean_Down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Knoll
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels
All the above is very interesting. However you ask: How are you and Amanda doing? We’ll we’re alright, restricted a little by the weather, being ultra diligent about managing moisture and still learning the steps to the dance around each other in the galley style confines of the new wagon. This enterprise will become by degrees easier when we are no longer avoiding the rain, but I suspect that the weather traumas will be replaced by a lack of available resource traumas the further south we go; by this I mean water and electricity. Life is so much easier with Hook-up, on site showers a launderette and so forth.
We are a little pooped after yesterdays five hour trek from campsite to Knoll and back, interspersed with fierce showers and gusty wind, a very late laundry session, followed by showers and bed.
Today we were late up. We did a quick run to the site shop, grabbed a loaf, some beans (to go with our Bacon), and half a dozen 15amp bladed fuses (because I forgot the switch sequence again and popped the 12volt leisure battery circuit).
We are tired, a bit tetchy and a bit achy, complicated by the fact that Amanda banged her head a few weeks backs and appears to have:
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) or positional vertigo. is a brief, intense episode of vertigo that occurs because of a specific change in the position of the head. If you have BPPV, you might feel as if you're spinning when you look for an object on a high or low shelf or turn your head to look over your shoulder (such as when you back up your car). You also may experience BPPV when you roll over in bed. BPPV is caused when otoconia tumble from the utricle into one of the semicircular canals and weigh on the cupula. The cupula can't tilt properly and sends conflicting messages to the brain about the position of the head, causing vertigo. BPPV sometimes may result from a head injury or just from getting older. Information courtesy of: https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/balance/pages/balance_disorders.aspx.
Today, we are taking a day off from adventuring, for the more relaxed activities of swimming and steaming in at the Home Farm Campsite spa: http://www.homefarmholidaypark.co.uk/
Luxury by eck.
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