Having been blown about for a few hours it was time to return to the car but not before I took a look at The Manger.  An incredibly steep and beautiful valley formed during the las ice-age.  In fact you can see the markings on the walls of the valley which show how the ice melted away.

Brave cows!

It is also home to some vertigo loving cows and apparently at night the Whitehorse of Uffington comes down here to graze, it is certainly big enough.  Normally slopes of this steepness would be grazed by sheep and I saw a flock or two round the other side.

The Manger and me

On our way back home we took a few detours through some charming villages and towns and stopped off to have some traditional west-country style cider, us being just a few miles from Wiltshire and the start of the west-country.

Thatchers Cider – It’s a little known fact that Mrs Thatcher was a great cider brewer…. or maybe not!

Having done almost a loop, we were were again just a mile or two away from Waylands Smithy when our car tyre exploded and we were left marooned in the middle of nowhere and without a spare tyre due to it being a leased vehicle.

A totally ruptured tyre

It was entirely possible that we could have been waiting there for 3 or 4 hours on a Saturday night far from anywhere but I think my faith in Wayland the magical smithy who would re-shoe your horse overnight bore fruit as incredibly a repair man came to us in less than an hour.

Watching the sun go down

As the repairs were put in place, I stood and watched the sun set as travellers have done here for 8,000 years.