Ok..so *that* saying..watching for the bad word faerie to bleep me,.,.chuckles.

Sooooooooo..In stony stratford the small town that is just down the road and around the corner from Wicken, there are a few watering holes... (pubs), two of which are named... The C***K and the other just down the way a bit is called The Bull, each has a painted picture of each animal hence you wouldnt need to guess too hard..

Now these two drinking establishments prior to the mid 1600s were coaching inns, as seen by the rather tall and wide entrances, any way, the rule of thumb around here has been to say that rival travellors that would stagger from one of the pubs to the other embellishing stories they had heard in each would be talking a load of rubbish...

So prevelant was this story that it is hard to work out if this is not the case, of course with many things such as this there is little or no coroborating evidence but its certainly kept close by the townsfolk of Stony Stratford!

The town has had a very long history, it was the crossing over the great river ouse for prehistoric man, the romans, famous for their straight roads built a road called Watling Street which runs from London to Holyhead!

Danish marauders were fought here by King Edward the Elder, further kings frequently held their courts here and dear Queen Eleanors funeral cortege also rested here on the journey down from Nottingham to London..

A house still standing here in the main high street was where king richard 3rd did the nasty on poor uncrowned Edward 5th sealing his fate in the infamous tower of london..

John Wesley preached in the town and the tree where he did so is still preserved, although I`m not convinced that its the same tree though....its not far from the pub ( a matter of a few feet) called the Crown where fans of "Withnail and I" will perhaps know that the pub in the film called The King Henry is not in Penrith, but was filmed here in Stony, as was the tea shop, this was filmed in the chemist just opposit the crown pub!

“We want the finest wines available to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them now.”

Hear Hear I say....L

Well I thought I would put a little down about the village that I live in, its name is Wicken, and of course with such ancient villages they did not start out in the way we see today, Wicken was originally Wick Dive and the other Wick Hamon another spelling was Wyke for these two medieval villages, although there has been evidence found of a prehistoric ring ditch, there are also plenty of roman villa remains to be found and indeed dug up in and around this area.

The first mention of the villages was in 1086..from the centre of the village of course there ran tracks one in particular leading to my home, this is now called the wicken road although from the opposite end its called the deanshanger road (dual road name from one village to another)

I live in the portion of Wicken that is called Dagnall or rather laterly called dagnall farm, this was a truly medieval hamlet at the time but like with all things they either shrink or expand with age, Dagnall got smaller, and all that remains is the barn I live in and 3 other homes along the drive, the rest is left to fields.

There are many pages of information about this tiny portion of England, even down to the next village or rather town, but one..called Stoney Stratford..for those that like going to ren faires the history in and around stoney stratford is of great historical interest, including the origins of the saying...

"Thats a c--k and bull story"....

I`l enlighten you next time...when the "Time Team" with Tony Robinson come to wicken and find all sorts of interesting things..but dont find some of the things dug up around here previously!....

So my first post here on a "blog"..you know theres something about that word I dislike... oh well..

I`m almost finding my way around the site, and hopefully wont do anything silly..

So about snow.. the pure driven type.. last weekend..there we all were the days before..all hot and sparkly thinking..Yay..British summer time had been declared..and it was sunny, pretty and all set for spring..so what happens... yes this is Britain..it snows..

Well why not..after all the brits are entirely devoted to the weather...rhe..so to put things into perspective heres two pictures I think not more than 24 hrs apart..oh and theres my little rescued Chick..who is doing very well now.

This next picture is then the next day and look....poor chick didnt want to go out that day I can assure you!