After what seemed endless weeks of sunshine, me with my lockdown tan and the kids chomping at the bit to enjoy more of the great outdoors for two weeks, Storm Ellen decided to grace us for a visit, just when my husband was having his first holiday since, would you believe, Christmas! It was also the first time we are doing a two-weeker in the van so big groans all round.
Staying in the van all day is not an option so we donned our waterproofs and took our British resilience and headed down to Glastonbury. My thinking was if it is truly dreadful we can take some respite in a tearoom (also filling my insatiable need for cream teas when I am visiting the West Country).
First stop was Glastonbury Abbey. The Abbey site is huge and you don't lose the scale on how magnificent the monastery must have been in its day. We wanted to go to the Abbey as that is where King Arthur was buried and accidentally it seems that over the course of the next two weeks there was a distinct King Arthur thread emerging in the places we visited. King Arthurs tomb stands in the middle of the upper section of the Abbey and is denoted by a little wooden plaque.
The Abbey was suppressed during the dissolution of the monasteries during King Henry VIII reign and the last Abbot, Richard Whiting was hung drawn and quartered as a Traitor on Glastonbury Tor.
After a suitable amount of time in the wet we decided to nab that cream tea at Glastonbury Abbey Tearooms. We had the Glastonbury Tea with finger cut sandwiches and scones with clotted cream and jam, with a steaming pot of tea. All was right in the world again.
We then strolled up the vibrant high street and my eldest picked out a bit of Rose Quartz from the Crystal Man shop. A bit further up a brightly coloured busker proceeded to take the quartz and rub it on my husbands temple to open up his heart chakra, I think my husband would have preferred some crystal magic making Storm Ellen disappear to be honest!
We then decided to climb Glastonbury Tor, my eldest has always wanted to climb a mountain and this is the nearest we can get at the moment with a 3 year old in tow! But both boys relished the climb and were really chuffed when they reached the top. The views, given that it was so grey and rainy, were not too bad at all; and for the rest of the week wherever we went we could see the Tor, and the boys had a real sense of achievement that this is something they climbed.
The Tor is mentioned in Celtic Mythology and particularly in myths surrounding King Arthur.
Afterwards I wanted to visit the Chalice Well and as we got there with less than an hour to spare they let us in on a concessionary price, which was very kind. The children actually enjoyed wondering around and drinking the water from the sacred well. It tasted very iron-like which for any women over the age of 40 can only be a good thing!
The well is also known as the Red Well due to these iron deposits and the water is reputed to have healing properties. Archaeological digs suggest this well has been in use for at least 2,000 years.
We respected the peace and watched people meditating semi-jealous that this is something one cannot do whatsoever with a 3 year old, and desperately wishing that there was a little space like this near where I lived that I could periodically escape to.
That was a blissed out way to end our wet excursion but we went back to camp feeling that Glastonbury magic and happy that we didn't let the weather get us down.
