MORE THAN WE BARGAINED FOR!

We had a great service at church, although we were fairly small in number again, but interestingly, I had chosen this last week to memorise two verses from Psalm 16 and Stephen, who preached today, and who didn’t know this, had decided to base his sermon on the same Psalm.  Coincidence?  I think rather a God-incidence!

After church we went out for a drive and although I had already taken a photograph of Stephen’s hands - the middle photograph of my collage, I found several other interesting places to photograph, so we got more than we bargained for! 

We went out of Swindon along the road to Royal Wootton Bassett and then through to Tockenham and at the top left you will see the dereliction we found.  Just down the road we saw two horses, and we think they may be from the Old Farm Animal Sanctuary - one a little Shetland pony and the other a lovely horse - but I couldn’t get that close to either of them because of the electric fencing, so had to make do with photographs from a slightly different angle.  The cat looked at me rather disdainfully, so I had to put that in.

We then wound our way through Dauntsey where we found this Second World War reinforced concrete shell-proof type 24 pillbox, built in 1940 and situated at the former level crossing on the redundant line between Malmesbury and Dauntsey, which had closed in 1933.  During World War II, these bunkers were used for the defence of the United Kingdom against a possible enemy invasion - interestingly, before I started Blipping, we probably would have driven straight past and never even noticed this.

Next is the imposing entrance to Dauntsey Park House, a beautiful Georgian country house on the banks of the River Avon, complete with modern touchpad entry system on one side and a disused GR postbox on the other side.  You can just see the house which is to the left of the church and I understand this beautiful house is used for weddings and for film and location shoots. 

The house stands next to the Church of St. James the Great, built on a site that has been used for worship for over a thousand years.  The church is only one of five churches in England to have a 15th century doom board or tympanum hung in its original position - I think we may have to go back sometime and go inside. 

I have put the sign for the name of a lane near Dauntsey in as an extra - don't think I would want to live there!

As we hadn’t had any lunch, we stopped at the Costa coffee shop next to the motorway, and were served by this young man with colourful hair - and of course, I had a lovely conversation with him - always good to interact with people, especially if they have to work on a Sunday!

For those of you who are interested, here are the verses I learned this week - I typed them out and put copies all over the place in the house - on the fridge, next to the sink in the kitchen - this one got rather wet because it fell in the water several times - on a light switch at the bottom of the stairs - you get the picture!

“You, Lord, are all I want!
    You are my choice,
         and you keep me safe.
You make my life pleasant,
     and my future is bright.”
Psalm 16 : 5 & 6
Contemporary English Version

P.S.  Derek, whose hands I blipped last week has been diagnosed with shingles, but we hope he felt better and managed to get to his granddaughter’s wedding yesterday.