The Castle Inn

Quaint Bradford-on-Avon

by Bwana_Brown

The end of our first day on the road from the London area toward Cornwall found us rolling into the town of Bradford-on-Avon, a few miles southeast of Bath, just as late afternoon winter darkness was starting to fall. As soon as we reached the outskirts of town, we began to look for a B&B for the night but had real difficulty in finding one in the darkness and so close (Dec. 18) to Christmas. However, in the end, we did manage to find a place to lay our heads down.

From the little bit of driving we did before it became completely dark, and with a short morning walk thrown in, we found Bradford-on-Avon to be a very beautiful and quaint old English town, nestled in a steep valley with the River Avon flowing through. This is a pretty area of the country with a lot of interesting attractions nearby, definitely worth futher exploration in our view. However, on this trip, our time was limited. So, after our morning walk, we were off again - into 'Somerset' and onward to the Cheddar gorge and Exmoor National Park as we took our north coast drive to Cornwall. By the way, one thing I learned from our February, 2004 trip to this part of England is that there are three River Avons in the country. This one is not the Avon of Shakespeare fame, flowing through Stratford-upon-Avon!