Snagged from... well, latest from cnidarian:

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

I went to Stow-on-the-Wold recently, which was the most deliberately, enthusiastically, Englishly quaint town I've ever seen. OMG, the sweetshop.



It also had the most gorgeous chocolate shop (separately from the sweetshop), and various other foodie places. I'm going back at some point to buy stuff for Christmas.

On the way back, we stopped at the Rollright Stones, a Neolithic stone circle, circa 4500 years old. The stones are weather-worn, some of them so much that there are holes right through them, where the stone was weaker.



Local legend says the stones of the circle, called the King's Men, are uncountable (which may sound familiar to anyone who's read Alan Garner's Elidor). Testing that, I counted them, and A counted them, and yes, we both came up with different totals - I counted 70, and A counted 75. According to a website I looked at, there's approximately 77 stones, but there used to be fewer - some of them are broken.



Nearby, there is a separate group, known as the Whispering Knights - a burial chamber.



And across the road - and technically in a different county, is the King Stone (the circle and the Knights are in Warwickshire, and the King in Oxfordshire). There's a legend about a king and his knights meeting a witch, who challenged the king:

Seven long strides shalt thou take,
If Long Compton thou can see
King of England thou shalt be.

My dad (who grew up around there) remembered part of it. Long Compton is the nearby village, but apparently the king's view was blocked by the Archdruid's Barrow (since ploughed away), and he couldn't see the village. The witch enchanted the lot of them to stone. At midnight on New Year's Day, the king and his men go down to Rollright Spinney to drink.



Okay, I must be off, right NOW.