This morning, after our English B&B breakfast, we headed south for a gorgeous drive through the Coln River valley, and ended up in a tiny town called Biburg. This was another wool-based economy town, with a series of adorable weaver’s cottages, across from the river where they washed their wool. After a stroll through the town, we jumped back in the car and headed for Cirencester (Roman Corinium) which was at one time the capital of Roman Britain. They have “the finest of the Cotswold Wool churches”, which is one of those lacy Gothic things with lots of stained glass windows. After sharing a quiche in a tea shop, we spent a couple of hours in a marvelous Roman museum, with lots of huge mosaics and fun history pieces. We finally understand how the Celts, Romans, Saxons, Jutes, Normans, and Angles all fit together and succeeded each other. Then we sprinted up the road to Tewkesbury to see a magnificent medieval abbey, which was the inspiration for the fictional abbey at Kingsbridge in Ken Folett’s novel “Pillars of the Earth”. After that, a quick drive back to Bourton-on-the-Water for a pretty good pub meal (Anita had English pea, corn and ginger soup, I had a delicious lambshank), wrong way walk that got us wet in the rain, then back to the room.
