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On the way to town....The Gun Public House. The Gun is just one of the buildings on the route from Autumn Cottage into town. Although it is not the closest pub to us, This is the place we call our "local". The place that we find friendliest, most welcoming and with hosts that are chatty if you want to talk, but leave you well alone if you don't - and have the sensitivity to know the difference. The sort of place that I would feel comfortable in, with a book and a beer - or a coffee if I did not want alcohol. I am known there, and even if I don't visit for two or three months, I am always welcomed by name and with a smile when I walk through the door.
It is an old establishment, there has been a building on the spot for at least four hundred and fifty years. Close to the fighting fields of the first Battle of Newbury in 1643, it is said to have been used as a field hospital for those soldiers wounded in battle. So though I only drop in for a drink now and then, I am always conscious that this has been a place to welcome passers by on the road to Newbury for many centuries. It is one more thing that makes me feel that I "know my place". I feel that I know where I fit in - to the long line of local history and to my community. I walk (and drive) the same roads that local villagers have walked for centuries, (Many people traveled my route on the weekly Thursday carters ride into Newbury for Market Day), and do much the same as they did, stopping for rest and refreshment on the way. Journal prompt. Do you have a regular stopping place or watering hole on the regular journeys that you make? Perhaps it's a favourite coffee shop that you stop by with a friend when you meet, or a favourite hotel that you always stay in when you travel across country on longer journeys to visit friends or family. Write about the places in which you rest awhile - the people that you know there, the people that you are traveling to meet - the business or the pleasure that takes you there in the first place. |