Trip 2011

After a fairly “cool” night at the Tintern Abbey Hotel (I am beginning to believe that many places turn the heat off at 11:00 PM), we awoke to a fairly chilly room, and what you might charitably call a “warm” shower after letting the water run for about 10 minutes.  There were only three couples in the hotel, judging from what we saw at breakfast, and we were all put in a far wing of the hotel.  We DID have a fantastic view of the abbey ruins from our room, so we did have that going for us.  This hotel didn’t seem to have point-of-use type water heaters for the bathroom, so the hot water may very well have been on the other side of the hotel.  Since the room heat (radiator) and hot towel rack (in the bathroom – also a radiator-type appliance) use water through their systems, we never really got warmed up until we went down for breakfast.

On the subject of breakfast, it would help to understand that a “full English breakfast” consists of a couple of courses:

• Starter (fruit and/or juice) course
• Cereal course
• Main course
• Tea with Milk
• Toast

The main course generally has included:

• Eggs (actually, unless you specify, you typically get one fried egg, sunny-side up; over-easy can be a challenge in the UK)
• Bacon (served more like a ham slice than what ‘mericans would consider bacon)
• Sausage of some type
• Fried or grilled tomatoes
• Fried mushrooms
• Baked beans
• Toast
• Tea or coffee

I think we have both avoided the tomatoes and beans, but they have been available at nearly every breakfast we have been offered.  I guess this might explain the fascination The Who seemed to have with baked beans (The Who Sell Out album cover featured it, as did the rock opera Tommy – at about the 4:05 mark, Ann Margaret is covered with baked beans.) There have been some other items offered at times.  Hog pudding, black pudding, and fried bread have been available at one time or another.

The breakfast at the Tintern Abbey Hotel was especially yummy, for some reason.  Perhaps it was the hog pudding (kind of like sausage, but not quite – I also had regular sausage, which was bland compared to the hog pudding).

After eating breakfast, loading up the car and chatting with the front desk manager for a bit, we walked over to the abbey which was covered in morning frost.

View of Tintern Abbey in the morning frost. Note the heavy frost on the grass in the foreground. There was even something coming out of the sky - we weren't sure if it was snow, sleet or rain.

The abbey was founded in the year AD 1131.  Portions of this fabulous building that remain were begun in the year AD 1136.  Read that again – the building of the abbey began in the year of our Lord One Thousand One Hundred Thirty Six!  It was the first Cistercian abbey in Wales, and only the second in all of Britain.  The monastery lasted for 400 years, until the Dissolution of the Monasteries was enacted by King Henry VIII.

The internal ruins have a stark beauty, made even more memorable by the cold, misty morning that we got to visit.

The view from the Presbytery toward the West Front of Tintern Abbey.

After about an hour of visiting the abbey and a stop in the gift shop, we made for the motorway to go back over the River Severn and into England.  Cirencester would be our next stop.

The town of Cirencester was known as Corinium Dobunnorum during Roman times.  We visited the Corinium Museum there, which has some fantastic Roman-era mosaics on display, along with a time-line of the history of the Cotswolds.  The displays were well done, and the museum an absolute delight to visit.  The amount of Roman artifacts on display is truly phenomenal.

The Hunting Dogs Mosaic at the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. This mosaic appears to be a mix of 2nd Century designs (the sea-gods, medusa head and sea panther) and at least a century later, unrelated designs were introduced, possibly due to repairs needed because of a partially collapsed hypocaust. The unrelated designs include the dogs in the central roundel.

From Cirencester, we intended to make a “drive-by” of Stratford-upon-Avon, but we lost the light of day and decided to make directly for Worcester, our destination for a room for the evening at Welland House.