Shaftesbury

On the day we were visiting Ed and Ruth, Katherine and Jessica, we stopped en route to take a trip to Shaftesbury, a bustling little town that neither of us had been to before.  We've seen it before on the old Hovis adverts - which had been filmed on the incredibly steep Gold Hill, and we've seen it on lots of jigsaw puzzles too!  It's an iconic English image.  On the day we went, it had been raining on and off all day and we got soaked, although we did dry off very quickly as it was so hot - we were steaming! 

Andy seemed to be in a tearing hurry to walk down the hill and it was only at the bottom that I realised why - there had been a sign (which I hadn't seen) at the top of Gold Hill advertising a pub which was dog friendly and had fabulous views.  Except on Mondays when it was closed.  It was Monday!  How we laughed!  But we had a good old mooch around at the bottom before heading back uphill to find another dog friendly pub which had fabulous views and which was open!

I fell in love with this next house and garden ...

We stopped for a saunter in the abbey gardens - or at least I did.  Finn, sadly, wasn't allowed in, so Andy stood outside with him while I had a look round.

Fabulous place to visit - we found a very good pub and Finn was so well behaved for a change - an old chap in the corner (wearing a very snazzy Fair Isle jumper, unphotographed sadly!) fed Finn some biscuits and I'm fairly sure that Andy shared his pork scratchings (bleurgh!) with him too.  We found a few charity shops and I bought a couple of books of course.  I even found a wool shop but was very self controlled - although it might have been a different matter if Andy hadn't been there!

Yes, we liked Shaftesbury a lot!