Mon, 16 Jun 2003

author Tim	location Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, Wales
posted 22:23 BST 18/06/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/South England/South England 2 ( all photos )

Stonehenge, Rosie throws a Clutch ( 28 photos )
By all rights, our body clocks told us that Monday morning was time for work. Not so, we had something else in mind - a trip to Stonehenge! To be honest, we had expectations held reasonably low on this one. Plenty of guidebooks have commented about how you are so far from the stones themselves that you might as well be somewhere else. Well, we were pleasantly suprised by it all.
Sure, there were way too many tourists there (it has to be said - the Americans certainly don't do much to fight-off their stereotypes when they travel in large groups, talk loudly, and generally complain about anything they can find), and it wasn't as good we felt as many of the sites we had seen up in Orkney, but we can now say we have done it.
In stark contrast, nearby and relatively unknown Woodhenge we visited earlier had nobody there but us, and we could walk all over it. This was not as visually impressive, however, the visible posts being concrete replicas of where the wooden ones were found to have stood.
It wasn't too far out from Stonehenge, in the rough direction of Cornwall, that I started to notice something was not all right with the Big Red Bus. We lost a lot of power climbing hills, and it seemed to get worse and worse. By the time we had jumped off the main road looking for the nearest town and landed in Yeovil, I had surmised the problem was with the clutch.
We limped in to the centre of town, and both agreed we had made a good decision in taking out Motoring and Travel insurance with the Caravan Club. We rang them up, they found us a local garage and directed us through.
Cutting out a lot of boring detail, we eventually found a garage not far out of the town centre who had the replacement clutch on overnight order. That sorted out, we only had to work out what to do with ourselves! First job was finding somewhere to stay. We stumbled on the less-than-impressive Preston Hotel, which provided average rooms, average food, and above average bills (Well, we have just started getting used to £8 per night caravan sites, so £55 is a big jump). Luckily, this was all paid for under the insurance, but we didn't like the look of the food on offer, so took a bus (number 001 - there's not many bus routes in Yeovil) into town to see what Yeovil was all about.
Honestly, not much. They have a pub called the Alice Springs, complete with over-the-top Steve Erwin-style Aussie-isms, but it was closed. As were plenty of others around town, and we had just missed the coffee shops. Later, as we wandered back to our hotel, we noted that the most lively place in town was the Yeovil Conservative Club. No joke.
In the mean-time, however, we made ourselves the first customers (and, actually, second-to-last) at what must be the biggest hotel in town. Ordering a drink, we grabbed the local paper for a read, and a "what's on" guide. Is it just me, or is it a bad omen when an already-thin guide to a city's night-life is half-filled with jokes? Not even funny ones, just ones obviously picked to fill the space so that perhaps visitors would not notice that there was nothing to do in such a place.
Eventually deciding that since our dinners were being paid for by the insurance, we would order as extravagantly as the town could provide, we went through to the lushly-appointed yet still somewhat lacking Dining Room, where the lights were turned on for us, and the CD player fired up with what we later found was Yeovil's only CD - a dreadful muzak compilation of concert-band mutilations of perfectly good pop music.
We ordered a food, then noticed with amusement that we were the only ones there. Not even a bartender was at the bar, just us and the muzak. We chatted about our poor luck with the van, and hoped that this was to be the worst of it.
The food arrived just as the Only CD finished, so the waited went over to change the CD. Only he didn't - he just pressed Play again. Wonderful. The food made up for the disappointment however, and the thought that we didn't have to pay the bill made it even better.
Somewhere during dinner, The CD finished, and a different bar-person decided that Play should once again be pressed. How we managed to sit there any longer I don't know, but by the time the CD finished again, we left. As we were waiting for the bill, I reached over the bar and pressed Play - somehow, this was what Yeovil wanted.

(customised)