A giant excursion

The first full day I had in England, Kitty and I decided to visit Cerne Abbas.  It's a little village near Kitty's lovely town of Sherborne; its claim to fame is a giant carved into the chalk of the hillside.  Obviously, a must-see item that fortunately Kitty had never seen either!  

We were halfway there before we nearly simultaneously were struck by the obvious: all the fields were covered by about 6-12" of snow!  It's rather hard to see something that's covered, yes?

Well, no, as it turned out.  Since we were so far along, we decided to keep going.  At worst, we'd visit a pretty village.  And who knows?  

This is what we saw:

Can you see the giant in the snow?

It was a grand opportunity to have a unique glimpse of the giant; because the thermal properties of the chalk are different from those of the overlying vegetation, we were able to see him outlined clearly!

After oohing and aahing from an icy and rather slippery overlook area, we went down into the village of Cerne Abbas.  It's darling.  Here are a few pictures from the excursion:

There's a little stream running through town!

A view of the outskirts (note the red telephone booth at the end!)

Looking up to the center of town

Isn't this precious?

The "Pitchmarket", so named because the farmers pitched their straw
 for sale outside. And yes, it is as wonky looking in real life!
The walls bulge and angle in rather unexpected ways.

This is the churchyard just outside the Abbey

St. Thomas's well (long legend that I can't quite remember)

The porch of the abbey

The ceiling of the abbey

A closer view of the abbey's windows -- just beautiful!

I couldn't resist this bark!

The house/newer abbey grounds

I loved this building!  There wasn't a marker of any type,
so I can't give any information on it...

A view of the church

A window of the church

Closeup of some text in English

Interior of the church.  Being an Anglican church,
the inscriptions were Bible verses in English,
rather than being pictures of saints.
Interesting note from this one detail: the church builders
rejected Latin and the concept that the Bible
is for the cognoscenti only, and they assumed literacy of the populace.

A view towards the screen in front of the altar

There was the most beautiful red-twigged shrubbery along the road!

We had really lovely scenery all along the drive...

Love,

Alexandra