The Busy Family, In Search of White Horses

As we leave the cottage and say goodbye to the proprietress, she tells us that her family were referring to us as "there goes the busy family" due to the amount of things we had planned that week. I say we but of course I mean Carole. I suppose it's better than being called the lazy family.

We are moving on to Reading where West Ham will be playing away tomorrow...It's not the nicest day and we toss up whether to go the long way via Stonehenge or leave that for another trip but we figure Stonehenge will be more interesting than Reading and head south.

Get to Stonehenge and see hippy types parking up a dirt road,presumably to avoid paying in the official carpark so we follow suit but turns out the car park is free (a rarity in Englnd!). Doh.

Admission is pretty reasonable at £7.80/£4.70 which includes an walk around audio tour gadget. The rocks are reasonably impressive and all the recent rain has caused them to close the footpath that goes around the back behind the circle. That was actually advantageous since it means we could take photos without any tourists in the shot. Bonus.

Afterwards we walk up into a nearby field to see some burial mounds known as barrows.

Still have time left before we can check in at Reading so we google for the nearest white horse. There are 14 White Horses carved into prominent hills around Wiltshire out of natural occurring chalk. We managed to find one and it was worth the drive..the photos don't really do it justice, but we were happy to see it.

Rock up to Reading and check into our Holiday Inn paid for with Amex reward points (8000 pts per night. The Holiday Inn is only about 500m from Reading's home ground, the Madjeski Stadium. It was built in 1998 on a former council tip purchased for £1 and while modern, is one of a number of cookie cutter stadiums built throughout England with no soul. A plastic ground full of plastic fans. Maybe that's just me being bitter as Reading beat us again despite being 2nd bottom in the league thanks to a James Collins howler gifting them a goal. That's 2 trips in consecutive seasons to Reading for us and two losses. Yep I'm bitter :)

To make matters worse after looking like Carole & Ben would miss the match without a ticket I managed to also get them seats in the Reading end for an outlay of £60 so they got to share in the misery, in the back row of the stadium.

Have a cheap feed at the World Turned Upside Down pub up the road which has a £4.20 Roast buffet and £1.49 bottomless ice cream and try to forget our misery.