Left Amesbury on Thursday morning 9/10 with bright sunshine and cool temperatures. Judging by the consistent stories we're hearing from our various hosts, this wonderful weather is a huge piece of good fortune - apparently August was cold, cloudy and torrentially rainy for almost the entire month and July not much better. We are thanking the bike touring gods!

The bike to Devizes (pronounced Dee'-vizes) was very relaxing and relatively flat - and only about 27 miles. We saw some wonderful vistas such as "Strawhenge", and one of the many White Horses etched into the hillsides. Apparently this White Horse phenomenon is fairly recent (20th century) and the thin topsoil of the hills has an abundance of chalky rock underneath, thus the idea was born. They are fun to see looming up on the landscape!

"Strawhenge" - a lesser-known historic site

White Horse, one of many

We arrived at Rosemundy Cottage in Devizes (http://www.rosemundycottage.co.uk/ - a lovely, lovely place we would highly recommend to anyone), but too early to check in. As we were less than a mile from the town center and it was Market Day, we rode into the thick of things - the tourist info center was extremely friendly and accomodating, and gave us a secure spot to lock the loaded bikes and do the town with good maps.

We walked about and settled in the only pub with Wifi just to snack and send off emails. We also visited the Shire Horses kept at the Wadworth Brewery stables, Devizes' local brewery - amazing creatures, huge and beautiful! We got the lay of the land well enough to see that our B & B was located right on the Kennet and Avon Canalway, and the towpath serves as part of the National Bike Route - so charming! We decided then and there to make up our own loop for Friday to include seeing the Caen Hill Locks (amazing set of canal locks - 29 of them rising 237 feet in 2 miles!).

Caen Hill Canal Locks

We had tea at the B & B, a wonderful Italian dinner in Devizes, and of course a delicious English breakfast at Rosemundy Cottage on Friday morning. We set off west on the canal towpath as planned and loved seeing all the interesting canal boats. It is obvious that this particular waterway is somewhat a Mecca for canal boaters - lots of them tied up the whole 8+ miles we biked of the towpath!
Our destination was Bowood House (http://www.bowood-house.co.uk/) - we wanted to see as many grand manor homes as the route would allow so we "made up" a route to get there which inclded one absolutely epic climb! Thank goodness we left the packs at our lodgings, would have never made it with them on.

Bowood House

Bowood was a great contrast to Longleat House that we described a few days back - built in the 18th century versus the 15th, and much more understated in its setting and presentation (think Longleat as "Disney Channel" and Bowood as "BBC Drama"). We toured the rooms that included the room/laboratory of the man who discovered oxygen (he was a tutor to the resident sons of the lord), and also really enjoyed an extrodinary collection of paintings and drawings. The gardens were beautiful and Peter had a great sketching break before it was time to ride back to the Cottage.

My favorite Bowood garden sculpture

Peter sketches the Bowood profile from the gardens

Tired but happy we arrived back with about 36 hilly miles under our saddles, plus with another plan to modify tomorrow's route to include more of the canal towpath - loved that ride! Time for dinner and a good rest before tomorrow's ride to Tetbury and the start of the Cotswold portion of our route.