England's green and pleasant land

We're back from a weeks holiday down souff. Started with 2 days in Manchester with Deirdre - a lot of dancing by the girls and catching up. Visited Chinatown for some food. Then we headed to Avebury - this cute English village (http://www.avebury-web.co.uk/avebury_village.html) with this huge circle of standing stones (?100m diameter) +sheep grazing round them.We stayed at this thatched cottage in a churchyard we'd stayed at before. The church bell rang every hour and one evening there was a churchbell practice - Ailsa + Heathger got very excited and did some interprative dancing. I tested out my low whistle on the cool church acoustics.I realised again why it is so cheap - some of the ceilings are about 5 ft height - so despite my best efforts, I bumped my head a few times. It has a fire burner to appeal to pyromaniacs like me. The photo above is from 2005.
We visited Jake in Southampton and checked out his 3 baby kittens. This is Claires first swing ride.
We had a day with Lou in Oxford and her cool 3 sons. Visited a farm and got to feed animals. Ailsa learned to walk a goat
We crossed the border into Dumfries and rounded the trip off with a relaxing stay (for us at least) with Geoff + Jen to celebrate Maes Bday. Happy 4th birthday!

John