A Martyr To Excessive Sensibility - The Doctor Won't See You Now.

Wow. Winter's gone. The sun is shining and we're heading for the hottest weekend of the year. It's amazing how life looks so much more cheerful when the warmth of a lovely spring day permeates the fuzziness of winter.

All that snow, now just a distant memory. The freezing, finger numbing temperatures consigned to the dim distant days of BC. That is Before Clegg!

Actually, I haven't the foggiest idea whether or not Nick Clegg is going to win the election (well I have but that would be telling). But, since I didn't watch the televised debates as the paint was drying on the wall in the back room and that seemed slightly more riveting to me, I'm dependent on what the papers are saying, and, apparently, Nick Clegg has taken to smoking huge cigars, drinking copious amounts of whisky and telling us that we will fight them on the beaches.

But I digress. Summer is icumen in and life is good. Unless, like Sarah Fletcher, you are a "martyr to excessive sensibility."

The other day myself and Emily (my trusty sat nav) had a brief discussion about where would be a good place to visit.

As I had an appointment in Oxon, the democratic consensus was that Dorchester might be a nice location. So, the appointment over, I cranked Emily up and she told me to drive to the highlighted area.

Twenty minutes later I had turned right along Dorchester High Street and, I have to say, it is one of the most delightful and prettiest places imaginable.

Parking up, I walked along the High Street and paused to admire the George Hotel which has an old coach sitting outside it.

It also sports a brass sign informing the passerby that it is a "Boarding Establishment." How quaint.

Now the George Inn is one of the locations haunted by the aforementioned Sarah Fletcher. Who she? I hear you ask. Haven't you been paying attention - she was a martyr to excessive sensibility. What that? I hear you ask. In a nutshell, she committed suicide.

She is in fact buried in Dorchester Abbey, a lovely little place that I'd urge everyone to visit.

Her tombstone is in the aisle immediately to the right as you enter the Abbey and its inscription is actually quite famous.

“Reader,” it implores, “If thou has a Heart famed for Tenderness and Pity, Contemplate this Spot. In which are deposited the Remains of a Young Lady, whose artless Beauty, Innocence of Mind and gentle Manner once obtain'd her the Love and Esteem of all who knew her.”

The inscription continues with the tantalising remark, “But when Nerves were too delicately spun to bear the rude Shakes and Jostlings which we meet in this transitory World, Nature gave way. She sunk and died a Martyr to Excessive Sensibility.”

Having given a little biographical detail that Sarah Fletcher was the “Wife of Captain Fletcher,” and that she “departed this Life at the village of Clifton on the 7 of June 1799 in the 29 year of her age,” the inscription ends with the wish “May her Soul meet that Peace in Heaven which this Earth denied her.”

Sarah's husband, Captain Fletcher, was a naval officer who was also a cad and a bounder. He was constantly unfaithful to his wife to the extent that one day he proposed to a wealthy heiress and would have married her had not Sarah found out and raced to the church just in the nick of time to stop the wedding and denounce her spouse as a would-be bigamist.

The furious Captain Fletcher set off for the West Indies and the heartbroken Sarah headed back to their house, Courtiers, in the nearby village of Clifton Hampden and there she hanged herself from a bed post.

As a suicide she would not have been allowed burial in consecrated ground. But the jury at the inquest into her death took pity on her and returned a verdict of lunacy.

Thus Sarah was buried at Dorchester Abbey and the inscription on her tomb was composed to suggest she died of her nerves rather than by her own hand.

Having shed a silent tear for Sarah I got back into the car and headed over to Clifton Hampden to pay a visit to her house.

Once there, I couldn't find anywhere to park. So I opted for the car park of the local doctor's surgery and then headed over to Courtiers. As I left the car park I noticed a sign nailed on to a tree.

Do you remember Swine Flu?

This time last year it was going to wipe us off the face of the earth and the Swine Flu Hotline was set up as the government stockpiled vast quantities of Tammy Wynette (I think that's what it was called) to stand by us in our final sneezing agonies.

I must confess I'd forgotten all about it. But nailed on to the tree of the doctor's car park was the stark order - Think You Have Flu? Please Go Home.

Anyway, I found my way to Sarah's old house and, since it was private property, was only able to photograph it from the other side of the road.

But, at least I had acquainted myself with her sad tale and got the desired photographs. So it was back to the car park where another tree bore the stark warning - Think You Have Excessive Sensibility? Please Go Home and Hang Yourself.

Ok, I made that last bit up. But, once back in the car, I started sneezing. Only one thing for it. I'm going home.

Till the next time. Good Hauntings.

It's London Today.

I have decided to look into some London hauntings today, and so am about to go off and visit one of my favoured spooky locations and take a look at London's cursed cobblestone.

I'm particualry fond of this one as it concerns someone who took my London Ghost Walk on Halloween 2005.

About three weeks after the Halloween tour I received a phone call from a lady who has brought her family on the Halloween tour. She wanted to know where the courtyard was where I told a particualr ghost story. Having given her directions I politiely enquired why she wanted to know.

It transpired that, on the Halloween Ghost Tour, her duahgter had noticed that one of the cobblestones in the courtyard was loose. Deciding it would make a perfect souvenir of the tour she dropped it into her back pack and, by the end of Halloween 2005 that cobblestone was enjoying pride of place on a shelf in her daughters bedroom.

The next night, they came home from school and work respectively and, despite the fact the central heating was going full pelt, the house was freezing cold. Try as they might it just would not warm up.

Well, over the next three weeks, thinks kept happening in their house. They got cold spots, thought they saw people, and heard voices. But the night before she made the phone call she'd gone up to turn the light off in her daughters bedroom but could't open the door.

She called her husband up and together they maged to ease the door open. But when they got into the room it had been trashed. Light fittings smashed, bed covers pulled off the bed and dumped in an untidy pile on the floor. There on top of the pile was the cobblestone!

That was it. They decided that ever since the cobblestone had come into their house they'd had nothing but trouble. Hence her call to the office to find the location of the courtyard from whence the dreaded cobblestone had come!

That night I was doing a ghost walk and was in th courtyard and could clearly see the gap where the cobblestone should be. I came back the next night and the cobblestone had been returned.

Funny thing is, that the Corporation of London, keep fixing said cobbelstone with cement, but it always mnages to work free!!

Spooky or what?

Till next time .. good hauntings.

What's In A Name?

I was on my way to another haunted location when I started to notice some of the great street names with which the spectral landscape of Britain is blessed.

My ultimate destination on this leg of my journey was the church of St Peter, in the village of Tewin. So I was poodling along through the leafy byways of Hertfordshire -well given those byways were still very much in the grip of winter they were more stark and skeletal than leafy, which, I suppose, is more in keeping with the theme of Haunted Britain - when, lo and behold, I saw the name Robbery Bottom Lane on a sign.

What a great street to live on! Imagine phoning up a call centre to order something and then when they ask for your address proudly announcing "44 Robbery Bottom Lane." There'd be that brief pause then, "can I just place you on hold Sir whilst I suppress the urge to giggle." Or perhaps I'm just being puerile and Robbery Bottom Lane isn't in the least bit funny? In which case I offer a thousand apologies and promise to grow up. Still here's a photo of it just on the off chance.



Anyway this was a pleasant diversion as I headed through Herts on route to Tewin and, before you could say Robbery Bottom Lane, I was driving up the drive to St Peter's Church where I hoped to reacquaint myself with Lady Ann Grimston.

You approach the church along a fairly long drive, which curves into a circle, that is surrounded by trees, just in front of the church door. This posed something of a problem as I couldn't work out where I was meant to park. So I pulled over to the side of the circle and got out of the car.

The last time that I visited Lady Ann was in 1999 when I was writing my first book on Haunted Britain and Ireland, but since she's been dead since November 1780, I wasn't expecting her to have changed a great deal, and nor did she disappoint. The reason I wanted to visit her again was that the last time I was here I had photographed her grave on film, yes film, that's how long ago it was. So I wanted to update my collection by obtaining a digital image of the grave.

Now Lady Ann Grimston was a Sadducean who lived on Robbery Bottom Lane. I'm just kidding about where she lived, just wanted to try and get it into the blog again. Being a Sadducean meant that she didn't believe in the Resurrection of the dead. As she lay dying, in November 1780, she point blank refused to recant her heresy, even though the vicar implored her to do so. "If, indeed, there is life hereafter," she told the vicar, "trees will render asunder my tomb."

When she died she was buried in St Peter's Churchyard. Now whether what happened next was a divine response to her death bed challenge, or was the vicar's attempt to prove that he had been right and she was wrong, is uncertain. But her tombs has indeed been rendered asunder by several trees that have sprouted and grown up through it, causing the stone to crack and shatter.


So, there I was happily photographing the tomb when a lady with a spade suddenly appeared as if from nowhere. "Is that your car?" She asked. I confessed that, indeed, it was. "You're not meant to park there, it's against health and safety, we need to keep that clear for fire engines," was her reply. I looked nervously at the spade, wondering if she might be the local traffic warden and the spade was the implement by which Tewin enforces a zero tolerance response to parking violations, one strike and you're buried sort of thing. But no, it transpired she was simply working on the churchyard. "And we've got a funeral at 2.30," she said "so we need it to be kept clear for the hearse."

Apparently, when you visit St Peter's you are meant to park between the trees, not on the path - so now you know dear reader.

Anyway, I offered my profound apologies and asked if I could quickly photograph the tomb. So I quickly snapped a few photos as she headed to the corner of the churchyard and commenced tidying around a few of the graves.

As I walked back to the path, I noticed another car reversing into the gap between the trees and arrived at my car just as a very tall, gentleman got out. of the other vehicle. "Is that your car?" He asked. "You're not meant to park there." I explained that I'd already had the conversation with the lady over there and pointed to where she had been standing, except - yes you've guessed it - there wasn't any lady there!

Just as I was contemplating the prospect of making a cameo appearance in my own book, she appeared from the other side of the church. "Hello vicar," she said to the gentleman. Whereupon, I climbed back into the car and head further into the Hertfordshire countryside. Till the next time...

Clibbon's Post - Walter Clibbon

The Strange Tale of Walter Clibbon and Clibbon's Post

I'm beginning to wonder if this winter is ever going to end! When I headed out to Hertfordshire in early January it was a bit of an adventure driving through the blizzards and hiking to haunted houses over snowy fields. Now it's just starting to be something of a bore.


Still, unperturbed by this being the winter of our discontent, myself and my trusty Emily (my sat nav) have been ploughing on through the snows collecting ghost stories and taking photos of haunted houses(well I have as Emily hasn't yet learnt the art of photography - mind you, judging by some of the results, neither have I!

So the other day I headed off to drive through Hertfordshire and Bedfordhsire and, despite the ice covered roads, it was a great and rewarding day.

My first destination was the village of Datchworth which, as it transpires, is a lovely place. Having found it a drove along the road from there to Bramfield as I wanted to find Clibbon's Post. The road was clear, but in sections, was covered in solid sheets of black ice, so I brought my speed down to a crawl and was amazed by how many people overtook me and then speeded up once they had done so. Having passed the village, well to be honest it is more of a hamlet, of Bulls Green I pulled into a clearing in the surrounded woodland and parked up.

A man was clipping the hedges of a house opposite so I decided that a little local knowledge might come in useful. That is one thing I love about these quaint English villages that you find within an hour or so of the centre of London. They are so timeless, so quintessentially English. These villagers are the people that take tea at 4pm, play cricket at the weekends and attend church on Sundays. They also know an awful lot about the surrounding area and can help a lost ghost hunter get back on track. So I went over to this friendly local and asked if he could direct me to Clibbon's post. He replied in a dialect that was somewhere between Polish and Lithuanian and its soon transpired that English wasn't one of his languages. Hoping desperately that Can "Clibbon's Post" wasn't a way of insulting his mother in his native tongue I beat a hasty retreat and began walking along the road, trying to stop myself slipping over on the ice.


After about five minutes I found the post, a nondescript wooden affair, set back from the road and enclosed by creeping woodland and vegetation. Carved into the post, along with the date 28.12.1782 is the name Clibbon's Post and it is at this spot that Walter Clibbon is reputedly buried. Who he? I hear you ask. Well, dear reader (I've always wanted to write that) Walter Clibbon was a pie man who, along with his dysfunctional family of pie men and women, hawked his wares around the fairs and markets of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

But they also had a nice little sideline in that they were using their position to eavesdrop on their customers conversations to work out which of them would be carrying substantial amounts of money on their homeward journey after a good days trading at the market or fair.

They would then change into the guise of Highwaymen and rob these unfortunate farmers as they travelled home along the lonely byways of Herts and beds.

Unfortunately for them, on 28th December 1782, close to the spot where the post now stands, they picked on a lad whose uncle lived close nearby. Having robbed him they let him go. The affronted youth went straight to his uncle's house and, armed with a pistol, they came hurrying back to the scene of the crime only to find the dastardly robbers lying in wait for another unsuspecting victim. A battle ensued in the course of which Walter Clibbon was shot. Tradition holds that he was then taken to the inn at Bull's Cross where the local people tied him to the back of a horse and dragged him along the rough road back to the scene of his crime where they beat him to death and then buried him with the stake of the post through his heart.

Ever since then, people walking here in the fading light of day have sometimes heard a horse, dragging something, moving along the road towards the post beneath which the remnants of Walter Clibbon are still said to lie.

I have to say, it is a very chilling spot. The post itself is somewhat timeworn and a lot of graffiti has been carved into it. But the, who's going to show respect to such a dastardly villain who is very much now a part of local folklore?

Poltergeists and Ice Rinks

I spent a very snowy week in Edinburgh as part of my journey around Haunted Britain. Arriving on the Monday night I checked into my usual Edinburgh bolthole - The Ibis on Hunter Square. I had hoped to check into Robert Louis Stevenson's childhood home in Heriot Row because it's reputed to be haunted by him (an obvious reason for wanting to stay there!) and also in the hope that just a fragment or morsel of Stevenson's abilities might rub off on me. Anyway the upshot was that I actually forgot to book. So, on arrival at Waverley Station, I trundled my suitcase up Cockburn Street, crossed the Royal Mile and checked into the Ibis.

I then made a pilgrimage over to Stevenson's old home, stood outside and admired the gaslamp that adorns the property and about which stevenson wrote in his poem The Lamplighter

For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light,
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him tonight!

Incidently, if anyone would like to sample the hospitality at this wonderful old house for themselves, they do bed and breakfast so why not stay at Robert Louis Stephenson's childhood home?

My pilgrimage over, I headed across to Frankenstein's pub on George 1V Bridge and tucked into a hearty meal of the finest Irish rump steak with chips, cooked for me by a New Zealand Chef, and which I washed down with a fine Australian Merlot, poured for me by a fine Canadian barmaid, Edinburgh's so multi-cultural!

It was now 8pm and outside it was perfectly dark. So I had one more glass of wine to steady my nerves (that's my excuse anyway) and headed out into the night for an appointment with the Mackenzie poltergeist in nearby Greyfriars Kirkyard.

I adore Greyfriars Kirkyard because it is so wonderfully creepy. The moment you step through its gates a distinct feeling of otherworldliness descends upon you. Surrounded by its high walls the sounds of modern Edinburgh become strangely muffled.

Tonight, as I stepped into its enveloping darkness, the aura of unease was heightened by the fact that I nearly lost my footing because the pathways were covered with sheets of solid ice.

Nervously feeling by way over the snow and ice, I slithered and slid between the graves and suddenly the Mackezie vault loomed over me.

I don't know what it is about this sullen, domed tomb, but something about it well and truly creeps me out. It is the tomb of Sir George Mackenzie (1636 - 1691), the advocate who successfully prosecuted many of the Covenanters, for which reason he has ever since been known as 'Bluidy Mackenzie.'

Edinburgh children used to terrify themselves by sneaking up to his tomb and shouting through the keyhole, 'Bluidy Mackenzie, come out if ye daur. Lift the snek and draw the bar.' They would then run off on account of the fact that Mackenzie was known to oblige.

In recent years there have been hundreds of reports of poltergeist attacks on those who visit the vault on the City's ghost walks.

Thus, any ghost hunter worth his salts must visit the vault in the dead of night (well at 8.30pm). Hoping to prove my mettle, I slid over to the door of the vault, stooped down to the key hole and ended up flat on my back. I hadn't noticed that the step itself was covered in a sheet of ice.

Deciding to give taunting Mackenzie a miss tonight, I carefully made my way back to the gates and, with one nervous backward glance, left this necropolis to its memories and its shadows.

Tomorrow I will relate the strange case of the missing Sherlock Holmes.

OMG - I THOUGHT I SAW A GHOST

The thing about old coaching inns with roaring log fires is that they don't have roaring log fires in the bedrooms!

I was at the Unicorn in Stow-On-The -Wold overnight, a lovely old inn with dark corridors, low beams and creaky floorboards. Nice old fashioned sash windows, and boy do they let the draft in. I ended up popping down to reception to borrow a fan heater, which did the trick.

This was a delightful place. There were only a handful of guests there last night, but the night before they'd had two guests booked in at 5pm, and they ended up full as more and more motorists abandoned their cars as the blizzard raged outside.

This morning the locks were frozen on the car and the normal de-icer wouldn't clear the windows. Luckily, I found that at some stage I'd had the foresight to buy some Super De-icer and that did the trick. So, after a few skids, slips and slides, I managed to reverse out onto Sheep Street and was on my way.

All along the road from here to Shipton there were abandoned cars and vans still wating to be retrieved after their owners had ditched them on Tuesday.

Even Emily, my trusty sat-nav, was feeling the cold "recccccccallllllculllaaaaaaaating" she stamerred as I went straight through the lights on the A429, instead of veering left on the A424 as she'd instructed.

Undeterred, I managed to turn round and got back on track.

Soon I was descending into Burford and, there on the left was a sign telling me that Shipton was just four miles away. "What the heck" I thought," only four miles," and headed off on a road that was icy but passable.

Arriving in Shipton Under Wychwood, I suddenly remembered why I knew it.

On the left was the Shaven Crown Hotel. I'd actually stayed there in 2004 whilst writing Haunted Inns of Britain and Ireland. I hate to admit it but I'd forgotten all about this place, which is a pity because it's an absolute gem.

It dates back to 1380 and originally provided accommodation for the monks of nearby Bruern Abbey.

The Abbey was dissolved in 1534 and the building lay derelict for over forty years. Then, in 1580, Elizabeth 1st, having used it for a time as a hunting lodge, presented it to the village on condition it was always kept as an inn.

In (or should that be inn?) which capacity it has been attending to the needs of weary travellers ever since.

Amongst its most infamous residents was Oswald Mosley, who was incarcerated here for six months during World War Two.

The ghost that haunts this venerable old hostelry is, apparently, a leftover from its monastic days, and is a harmless old fellow known to the staff as Brother Sebastian.

So I decided it was time to get an update on Brother Sebastian's spectral antics.

You enter the hotel through a massive oak door to find yourself confronted by a residents lounge that is graced by a double collar-braced roof that is 600 years old. It really is a fantastic place.

Eventually I found the receptionist, who told me that there hadn't actually been any recent sightings of the phantom monk.

She also told me that there had been no guests at the hotel for the last few days.

Which means that, had I pressed on last night and got to Shipton as I intended, then I could have had the entire haunted old place to myself.

But then I might just as easily have ended up ditching the car along with all the others that I passed on my way here.

Oh well, in another 30 years, when they are speaking of the worst winter since the snows of 2010, I'll hobble in on my zimmer frame and hope that there are no other guests.

When I was there in 2004 the owner had told me something that I've encountered time and again at haunted hotels.

Obviously, if you decide to publicise the fact that your hotel is haunted you are walking a fine line between attracting customers and terrifying them into staying away.

Thus, at every haunted hotel I have visited the staff have always been adamant that their ghost is very friendly and is not in the least bit frightening.

Wouldn't it be great if a hotel decided to go the whole scary, spooky hog and advertise that their ghost is "an absolute evil b***d that rips guests livers and hearts out whilst they're sleeping and eats them?" Just an idea.

Leaving the inn, I crossed over to the green and the church looked magical across the expanse of white. So I drove ,or rather slid, down Church Lane and spent a pleasant 20 minutes wading through knee deep snow in the churchyard snapping the church from different angles.

Returning to the car I found a group of local seniors gathered around bemoaning the fact that the news agent's had a notice up reading " Not Times, No Telegraph, No FT."

"No comment," mused one elderly gentleman in exceedingly clipped tones.

Back in the car I coaxed it back up the slight incline of Church Lane and then headed back to Burford.

I parked up by the side of the road just as a local lady was coming out of her front door alongside my car. I asked if it was OK to park there. "No problem, they always do," she replied in a jovial country accent that was either Australian or Kiwi.

Burford Church looked a picture, and having snapped it against a deep blue sky, I made my way over to the wall to take a photograph of the plaque commemorating the three Levellers.

In the wake of the English Civil War in the mid 1600's a group of Parliamentarian Soldiers (the side loyal to Oliver Cromwell) en route for Ireland suddenly decided that England would be a happier society if a policy of equality and religious tolerance was adopted.

They became known as the Levellers, and Cromwell led them to believe that no action would be taken against them until the possibility of a negotiated settlement had been explored.

Now, with England's long history of those in power - be they king's, noblemen, governments - making promises they had absolutely no intention of keeping, you'd have thought that, by the 17th century, your average GI Joe would have learnt not to trust a word said by a despot when you're rebelling against him.

But the Levellers had, evidently, not read the Oxford Concise Guide to English History and, on the evening of 13th May 1649, they bedded down at various inns, private houses and barns in and around Burford to dream of the Utopian brave new world of equality and understanding that would soon envelope England in a warm blanket of goodwill and tolerance.

They were rocked from their slumbers by the approach of Cromwell and General Fairfax (plus of course a few thousand troops) who swept in on them in a pincer movement and, following a brief skirmish, 340 Levellers were taken prisoner and spent three days locked up inside Burford Church.

One of their number, Anthony Sedley, passed the time by carving his name and "1649 Prisner" onto the font, where it can still be seen today.

On the morning of the 17th May 1649 the prisoners were marshaled up to the church tower from where they watched as Cornet Thompson, Corporal Church and Private Perkins, whom the court-martial had decided were the ring leaders, were put up against the church wall - where the plaque now commemorates them - and, according the then Vicar of Burford's later record in the Parish Register, were "shot to death."

Once inside the church I crossed to the font and tried to take a photograph of Anthony Sedley's inscription. Having done so I turned round to take in the splendid interior of the church and there was a white shape hovering in the distance.

A spectre? A Ghost?

Well actually it was a particularly ethereal looking angel hovering over the nativity scene in the church's crib. But for a moment there........

There are several other points of interest to detain you inside Burford Church.

There, is the memorial to Christopher Kempster, a 17th century stone mason, who was for many years employed building the cathedral and dome of St Paul's Cathedral

High up on a wall is a stone carving that shows three figures, one of which rides on a donkey, and which has been known to centuries of choir boys as "The Three Disgraces."

Why? It doesn't say. But that's what the plaque beneath it says and I'm sure whoever wrote it knows what the choir boys have called it for generations.

No-one actually knows what it is meant to depict, nor for that matter how old the stone is. It may be 12th century, it may even be Celtic and date from the 1st century AD.

There's another little mystery on a nearby floor tombstone to John Pryor, Gent who, according to the inscription, was murdered on 3rd April 1697 and was "found hidden in the Pryory Garden in the Parish."

The church information board wasn't particularly forthcoming on this long ago act of infamy as it simply mentioned the murder and then added the enticing "but that's another story."

There's one more macabre sight inside Burford Church in the form of a Memento Mori beneath the effigies of Sir Lawrence and Lady Tanfield on their very ornate tomb.

Caged behind sturdy iron bars underneath the two effigies there is an extremely realistic carving of a skeleton.

Well I think it's a carving.

There is a tradition that Lady Tanfield had a reputation for oppressing the good people of Burford, and that she continued to terrorise them in ghostly form after her death in 1629 .

Well, that's it for this leg of the Haunted Britain journey. On Monday, providing the snow doesn't return and disrupt the railways I'll be heading to Edinburgh and will resume the blog then.

Until then... Good Hauntings.

A Winter Wonderland - But Where Are The Ghosts

The BBC were giving out an extreme weather warning this morning, at least for some parts of the country. Just outside Hereford, where I ended up last night, a good five or six inches of snow had fallen and when I got out to the car it was covered with a thick coating of white snow.

The road outside the car park though had been gritted and the traffic was bowling along at cracking pace.

But, I decided to play it safe about where I’d head today as the snow was still coming down in some parts of the country, notably the South West for which I was planning to head. I opted to delay setting out until around 10am when I could watch the news and see where it would be madness to drive towards.

I trudged over to the neighbouring pub, which served breakfast from 8am to 10am, only to find it was locked up.

The spade that I bought from B and Q yesterday proved a godsend as, not only was I able to dig out my own car, but two other drivers borrowed it to dig theirs out as well.

Then, the pub opened and the day looked a lot more promising following a hearty breakfast and a few cups of hot, strong coffee.

As far as I could make out to go south west would take me straight into the snow. But at the hotel I found a leaflet for Littledean Jail near Longhope, which invited people to come and make the acquaintance of the ghostly jailer.

Although the jail doesn’t open at this time of the year I thought a little peek at the exterior might be worth it just to see what it looks like. So off to jail again.

The A roads were fine and there was hardly any traffic about. But when I got to the turn off it was a narrow B road and the snow was thick.

So I decided to wait a few months, untill the jail opened, and instead I headed for Tewksbury.

The Abbey looked lovely with its covering of snow. There was also an apple tree next to the car park that still had apples all over it, albeit they were all wearing snowy hats!

Although I didn’t catch a glimpse of the hooded monk who is said to haunt the Abbey, I did find out what a Gurney Stove is, since Tewksbury Abbey has two of them.

They were made by the wonderfully names London Warming and Ventilation company in the 19th century and were meant to burn anthracite.

Since they provided a very cheap source of heat, most cathedrals and large churches in England had them. So now you know! If you’re wondering what they look like, that’s one to the left.

Tewksbury has some lovely old buildings, and draped in snow, they looked really lovely. I popped into the Royal Hop Pole, which has what I’m sure is one of the longest and darkest corridors I’ve ever seen.

It is a place of shadowy corners, with a large fire place, although there was no sign of a fire. It was also featured by Charles Dickens in Pickwick Papers.

Then I walked down to The Tudor House Hotel on the High Street. This is really nice beamed place and is reputed to be haunted.

I came across an interesting predicament here, one that I’ve encountered at several properties. The last time I was here was in 2003 and then I met with a lady who told me all about ghostly activity, chairs moving, items being moved that sort of thing.

Today I met with the manageress who told me that she had been there for three years now and had not seen or experienced any ghostly activity. I find this many times when visiting haunted places. On one occasion you’ll meet someone who wants to tell you in great detail, and in hushed tones, “all about the ghost,” on the next occasion you’ll meet someone who thinks it’s all nonsense. Such is life, or death.

This afternoon I headed for Shipton Under Wychwood, which I’ve seen somewhere is incredibly haunted. Apart from a hair raising climb up the Broadway bypass, the gritters had obviously been out and the roads were very quiet. Just past Stow on the Wold the A424 was passable but I was slipping a bit. So I decided it was time to call it a day, headed back to Stow and checked in to The Unicorn, a lovely old inn, which might be haunted. I intend to find out tonight!

Tomorrow it’s back to London and that’s it now till Monday when I’m heading up to Edinburgh. So till then Good Hauntings.