England #23- All Cannings overnighter in The England Chronicles - September 2024

(Wednesday September 18, 2024)

After our fun visit to Swindon, we headed onwards to Avebury. Since we went to Avebury twice on this Wiltshire side trip I’m going to give it its very own entry, so for now I’ll skip past Avebury and go right to All Cannings. Well, I’ll go right to All Cannings after a few pictures of the Hackpen Hill White Horse, which is one of nine white chalk horses in Wiltshire. It was cut out in 1838 to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria. It may be my favorite of the ones I’ve seen, although it’s hard to decide between it and the Alton Barnes horse. We drove right by it on the way to Avebury (and have seen it before so knew where it was). There’s a good view of it from the road, and you can park and walk up to it too. We just admired it from below, and also admired the view from the parking area. 

…this might not be the view from the actual parking area now that I consider it, but it was a nearby view!

All Cannings is a very small village that’s about half an hour south of Swindon, and is between Avebury and the Barge, so it was an excellent place to stay the night. I really liked the Airbnb, which was called The Piggery and looked like it was probably a little converted barn - or ex-pig home. The only drawback was its size, which was teeny. Very very teeny. It was fine for one quick night, and would also be fine for one person, but boy there was NO spare room to be had at the Piggery. 

We stopped by to check in after our first Avebury visit, before going to the Barge for dinner. No one will be the slightest bit surprised to hear that we had trouble finding The Piggery. In this teeny tiny town where you would really think things would be easy to find. Well, it actually is probably around the same population as Chedworth, where we also could never find our Airbnb, but All Cannings at least appeared to be much more straightforward. It wasn’t. The address was for the host’s house, which was on the main street, while to get to the Piggery you had to take a side street and then an alley that ran behind several houses, including the host’s house. Her directions were not terribly clear. Or maybe we’re just hopeless at directions, but I’m sure that could not possibly be the case! Also the road to All Cannings was hard to find. When I look at the map now it looks pretty easy but I blame it on the host’s directions! Finding our parking spot was really confusing too, how shocking. It was on a part of the street that formed a little triangular area and she called it something that made no sense so we couldn’t figure out what we were even looking for. At least we are very used to wandering around hunting things!  

This is the alley we walked through to get to the Piggery, once we finally did manage to find it. It was a pretty long alley and this is looking back at the road- for some reason I don’t seem to have gotten one of the whole alley. 

And this is the little gate we went through to arrive at the Piggery. I won’t mention how we couldn’t even find the gate at first… despite the numbers on it!! Okay, I’ll mention it. It was actually pretty funny at that point.     

And the Piggery, which doesn’t look nearly as tiny in this picture as it is in reality. The bit of building on the very left is actually part of the host’s house which is behind the Airbnb - the Piggery is the probably-once-a-shed on the right and the little addition in the center, which was the bathroom and kitchen. It’s in a very pretty spot with a large yard and a lot of privacy. 

This shows more of the whole thing, host house and all. I’m standing right where you come through the gate from the alley so it has this really nice hidden spot feeling. 

It’s basically one room with a bed and a table, where I was siting when I took this picture, plus another teeny closet-sized room to the right with a tiny bed crammed in, which is where I slept, then a teeny cubby of a kitchen to the left, and the bathroom beyond that. It made our Chedworth lodgings look enormous! 

Still sitting at the table, looking into the cubbyhole kitchen. 

Which was a microwave and a hot plate, with a tiny fridge below. And all our trash piled up there on the sink VERY unattractively! I think this was when we were getting ready to check out. 

  My teeny closet room - no windows but it did have a skylight which kept it from being claustrophobic. It was cozy! 

And the bathroom which was actually larger than the bedroom.

I was very taken with the rows of books and fun little odds and ends. This ran the length of the room, which to be fair was not very long. It was microscopic but it was a fun place. 

Wow, that is a whole lot of time talking about the Airbnb! And I was actually going to cram the Barge in too, but it’s going to get its own entry since in addition to having dinner there we also walked along the canal and went to the Crop Circle Information Center the next day. But we DID walk down to the canal in All Cannings the next morning too, so here’s a gazillion more pictures of things that aren’t the Airbnb:

The main street is actually called The Street, which certainly did not add to our confusion! 

 It was a short and very pretty walk from the Airbnb to the Kennet & Avon Canal, which also goes by The Barge. 

Next up, the Barge - our beloved crop circle/ufo spotting/alien magnet pub!