We have been staying in Castle Combe a beautiful little town with a medieval flair. We have walked all through town and a few of the trails going out and around town. There is our hotel the Manor House Hotel and Cottages. We are in the cottages. The Hotel has a restaurant and casual dining center n the lounge. One other small hotel has a restaurant and there is one pub. There is also an enterprising lady that puts out brownies and cakes on her stoop every morning with a slot in her door to pay. So not much to the town but a nice place to be.

Castle Combe has a nice old church, St Andrews which surprisingly has a 1270 tomb of a knight. He was an early lord of the castle who went on two crusades as signified by his crossed legs. (Who knew there were tomb codes)

The town was used for the movie War Horse and there are pictures from the movie in all public buildings including the church. The original Dr Dolittle was also shot here but no pictures to mark it. Again that was only in the guide book.

The castle is long since gone but the newer by a few centuries manor house was built in the 14th century. It has been modified since then but still still has some original charm.

It claims to be the birthplace of the blanket. The Blanket brothers developed a new weaving technique for a new warmer covering and the blanket was born. You had to buy the 5 pound guide book to get that story along with a few other amazing facts. Including that one of the early lords lost a battle to Joan of Arc and was left in prison in France for two years.

Our first night in town we did not have dinner reservations so we decided to take off on one of the walks mapped out in a brochure provided in our room. We headed out of town and into the woods and did what we thought would be a big loop and come back in on the other side of town. The brochure said things like through the woods and around the mill house and then down a small road then a less small bit still small road before rejoining the trail with a straight walk through the woods back to the village. The guide said nothing about the half a mile straight up hill we had to do or that you had to climb over a few stills along the way. But the worst part is that it didn’t show the many trail options that you were not supposed to take. We chose correctly once (but that lead to the horrible hill) the second time we chose wrong and ended up back tracking and redoing our walk through the woods. This added almost another mile to our already long hike. We made it back to town just before the sun went down which is a good thing – not only trip hazards after dark but our handy new guide book claimed the woods are haunted. Supposedly back in the day the Saxons had a big battle in this area and on of the knights stayed behind to guard the river crossing and is still there running people out of the woods.

I have really enjoyed the stay here and wish we were staying longer. Although I am looking forward to moving to Bath tomorrow.