This week for Natalie’s weekend coffee share I am inviting you to join Bill and me for a drink in the Ugly Duckling Cafe in Swan Yard in Shaftesbury. Maybe we could have a light lunch as well. We had quiche and salad but they also serve baked potatoes and paninis if you prefer. The weather was dry and warm and we were able to sit on a table outside when we visited last Thursday. We watched rather enviously as people passed by with boxes of plants they had bought from a market stall. We could also smell the fresh fish from another market stall. Shaftesbury holds a weekly farmers’ market in the High Street on Thursdays.

We had come on a day trip to Salisbury and Shaftesbury run by a local coach firm. Shaftesbury is a very old town. It was one of the hilltop fortified burghs created by the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the great in Wessex in about 850 A.D. It is situated in Dorset close to the Wiltshire border, about twenty miles from Salisbury. Due to its location at the top of a hill it never had a railway station and remained rather isolated.

Gold Hill

When British people of my generation think of Shaftesbury they probably think of Gold Hill and a boy wheeling his bicycle slowly up the cobbles with his basket full of freshly baked bread. They might also remember his delight as he freewheels back down the hill with an empty basket. The music is the theme from Dvorak’s symphony number 9.

The Hovis bread advent was voted Britain’s favourite television advert in a poll a few years ago. What most people don’t know is that it was directed by Ridley Scott in 1973 at the start of his career. The two Ronnies made a very funny spoof of the advert with Ronnie Barker overweight and middle-aged still toiling up the hill to deliver a loaf of Hovis.

Gold Hill has found a new popularity with Instagramers thanks to the thatched cottages and views over the Dorset countryside. It also regularly appears on jigsaws, greetings cards and beautiful England calendars. I can report that although it is steep it is not very long. But I was still grateful for the bench halfway up.

At the top of the hill is the 14th century St. Peter’s church and the adjacent former priest’s house which forms part of the Gold Hill Museum.

Shaftesbury Abbey

The steep cobbled street runs beside the butressed walls of Shaftesbury Abbey. The abbey was founded by King Alfred the Great in 888 who installed his daughter Aethelgifu as the first abbess. In time it became the wealthiest Benedictine nunnery in England and after the bones of St. Edward the martyr were transferred there in 981 it became part of an important pilgrimage route. It was said if the abbess of Shaftesbury could marry the abbot of Glastonbury their heir would hold more land than the king of England.

Shaftesbury Abbey was disestablished by Henry VIII and is now in ruins but visitors can spend time in the gardens and a small museum. I also enjoyed sitting in the Rolt Millennium Green garden at the bottom of Gold Hill and looking out over the beautiful Dorset countryside. I could hear goldfinches, blackbirds and a wren.

Thursday doors

Thursday doors is a place on the web where door lovers around the world come together to share pictures of doors they have found and the stories behind them.

Shaftesbury certainly boasts lots of charming cottages

Many of the cottages had gardens full of roses, lavender and hollyhocks.