What to do with half a day in Dorset

Strictly speaking it's Avebury. The stone circle visit is a must.

I went in 1999 on my way back from Cornwall on a stone circle visiting holiday (via Stonehenge) Lou has never been. It was much more impressive than Stonehenge.

Are you still allowed to touch the Avebury stones (unlike Stonehenge - we used to climb on the fallen ones)?

One of the stones forms the end wall of one of the cottages.

If you're into that kind of thing there's Silbury Hill - I don't know whether you're allowed to climb it - and West Kennet Long Barrow - there used to be a lay-by and a finger post pointing up the hill - you just wandered into it - they've excavated it and removed the skeletons.

The Red Lion there has an extremely deep well inside , one of my works mobile phones may still be at the bottom of it .

My only concern with all the recommendations for the Tank museum is that half a day may not be enough time to do it justice or get best value from the £18 admission fee . If you like ancient sites then you could route yourself from Avebury to Wareham via Cerne Abbas with very little deviation where the ancient giant chalk figure is located.

It was tidied up a few weeks ago and they had a surplus of volunteers all wanting to clean up the most famous bit.

GH

And the pub is nearby and better too.

Don't know when you are planning this for so you might already have been but, if not, East Dorset CAMRA's summer pub of 2019 is the Horse & Groom in Wareham.

I went on Wednesday.

That was the second pub we went to. The first pub was the Duke of Wellington but as the car park pay and display machine was next to the back of the pub and it had it had been a long journey........

As for a long journey, Barnsley to Avebury Stone Circles then to Lilley's Cider shop in Frome and then to Cerne Abass (thanks to GH for that).

I would have stopped here for a pint

but Lou was complaining about me wasting time doing a detour to show her a big chalk c*ck.

Ah well, we'd been away for a few days ourselves so I was obviously too late.

I came across an interesting name for a pub as we were leaving Grantham earlier:

(I was just about to hit 'send' when I noticed I'd managed to get 'bus' and 'fare' into the same sentence! Purely accidental, I can assure you!)

The most unusual one I've seen (and only ever one of them) used to be at the bottom of Edward Street in Brighton.

It was called 'Dog Tray'.

There is a literary connection, though, as I found out many years later.