North of Bristol Near Chipping Sodbury

Heading north from Bath on the A46 we crossed the M4 which is the main motorway East/West from London to Bristol. Bristol is a key port city right next to Southern Wales by the River Severn; it was for many centuries the second city to London. We took the small back roads so that we could drive through lots of villages. The road are indeed small in the sense that they are narrow, well to us NZers anyway, and it's always a challenge and slightly frightening when a car or lorry (read truck) is approaching from the opposite direction; you just have to breathe in and hope he's noticed you and will squeeze past safely. Our hosts for these two nights are the Tully family of Charfield who are members at Westerleigh but are emigrating to NZ in 11 weeks. Will has a job on the staff at Massey University in Palmeston North. They have 4 young children and are both vets (in the animal sense, not the war!). We took a long walk across a deer park with Louise and the children. The deer are not so shy as in NZ and posed for photos at a range of about 30m. There was a hunting lodge in Medieval style, not sure how old it would be. There were also great views of the Severn and surrounding country. The following morning we popped out to a car boot sale where Peter was able to buy some much need tools as he has a few jobs yet to do on the car; which by the way is going really well. We're so thankful for that. Needless to say I had to be very restrained about purchasing and was just able to pass up a Portmerion serving bowl for which was only asking a pound!