Autumn Holiday Part 1 Cirencester & Swindon

The end of October came two weeks of annual leave. I always try to take some time off, then I'm ready for the onslaught of Christmas preparations that comes afterwards. Its the busiest time in retail, and if you have a bad Christmas, you have a bad year afterwards. And nobody wants that! 

We headed up to Cirencester, somewhere I'd not ever thought about visiting before, but I'd seen online its quite notable for its Roman history, so we headed up to check it out. You all know how much I love Roman history!

Saw this fun monument in the shopping area. Possibly the first statue of a Ram I've ever seen? We saw it on our way to the Corinium museum. The museum is small but really interesting, and the selection of Roman Mosaics was expansive. Some of them were as good as the day they were laid!


Absolutely love this one! I'd be afraid to walk on it though if I had one like that at home!
They were also getting ready for Halloween, with these fun decorations dotted about the place.

They also had some Roman board games for you to learn, this is me and James playing Tabula. It was a bit fiddly to pick up, but we played a couple of games and quite enjoyed. I'm tempted to buy it and add it to the selection of games we have at home. I'm going to practice and then hopefully I might actually win for a change! Entry was £7.90, and was well worth it. For us, this was the highlight of Cirencester.


We had a wander through the town centre, browsing through the antique shops and deli's before popping into the church of St John the Baptist, which had the loveliest floor tiles and some beautiful vault fanning on the ceilings too!

We then headed down to Swindon, where was had a wander round the Swindon designer outlet. It was a nice little place, in the old steam engine workshops, and they had preserved so many of the original features, it was really a rather charming place to wander round. And next door there is the steam museum of the Great Western Railway too, with some beautiful engines and carriages preserved there.

Also, how fabulous is this? I would have loved to be on one of these trains, what a beautiful bar. You don't get that with Great Western Railway anymore! 

Tickets for the steam museum start at £13:10, but if you live nearby or plan on visiting a couple of times, you can double the cost and get a season ticket. Its obviously not as big or has as much as the National Railway Museum in York, but its still a fun place to wander round.

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