Day 29. Wimborne Sept 4 2001

A difficult day for me as my pen has run dry and I find it hard to get used to the vagaries of a new one. Writing becomes more of a chore than a pleasure and changing colours feels almost like a betrayal to the continuity of what I am writing. It will take a while to get used to.

It was a difficult day emotionally and physically as well. We have been fairly idle these past few days and the rest definitely showed in our performance. We could scarcely manage hills that we had been starting to take in stride, It didn't help that Heather had forgotten to take her medication two days in a row. Her breathing was heavily laboured and we were forced to stop constantly. We may be forced to reappraise how far we can travel by bikes.

The route we biked was mostly farmland, but near the end we passed through the Beech Lane, a road that ran through a line of three hundred and sixty five beech trees until it ended at the old gate to the manor house of Kingston Lacy. It was a beautiful ride, though some trees had been knocked out in recent years. Near the gates of Kingston Lacy we passed a caravan of gypsies, their horses roaming about the verges. Apparently, based on on information from Colin and Hayley, there is strong animosity between gypsies and the people known as New Age Travellers. While the gypsies have a historical right to camp in certain places the NAT’s do not and the gypsies believe that the NAT’s, with their filthy campsites and less than legal means of making a living, are giving all travelers a bad name. It was intriguing to see their fancifully coloured wagons and know that a tradition hundreds of years old was still carrying on.

Our stop of the day was at the Badbury rings, where, or at least close to where, four Roman roads meet.

  The rings are the remains of an ancient hill fort, obviously well defended.

There are those who claim that the rings formed the fort on Mons Badonicus, Mount Badon, where King Arthur won his last battle to be king of a unified England. Of course the claim is applied to many places but it is nice to have stopped at one of the candidates. We explored the rings, crossing a Roman road to get there

  and saw how easy it would have been to defend them.

  From the rings we biked into Wimborne, which tired us both out. Our campground was about a mile out, next to some rather ripe pastures, but it has a pool, which we have decided to try tomorrow. We will stay an extra day so we can bike back to the manor house of Kingston lacy.

Next Entry: Day 30. Wimbourne
Previous Entry: Day 28