It is a Thompson truism that somewhere on a trip a public building we want to see will be shrouded in scaffolding. In this trip it was the church at Stowe which was a shame as it is included in pretty much every picture of the town, although it was only the bottom half of the spire so that wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
Sunset Rock
The most iconic view is looking over the town with the church enveloped in the fall trees and I was keen to get the same shot. I asked ChatGPT where I should go and this is what I got as a response.
We walked the short walk up to Sunset Rock and it was exactly the place I was looking for. If I was Google I would be very, very afraid as there is no way I’d have so quickly and easily found what I was looking for that way.
Result!
After the disappointment yesterday of not being able to do the Ben & Jerry’s factory tour, I continued to check the website to see if I might be able to get a couple of returns. As we were stuck in traffic on the way back into Stowe, some became free for the late afternoon, and we snapped them up.
The tour lasts only half an hour, during which some of that time is taken up with a talk and video. When you reach the manufacturing area, it becomes immediately clear why the tour is so short – the factory is absolutely tiny. There is a single line making one flavour of ice cream at a time, and all the gleaming pipes could fit into the floor space of my house! The line wasn’t running when we were there as there was a problem with it, but I’m not sure we’d have seen much if it was running anyway, with all the ingredients being within the pipes.
We were treated to a small cup of ice cream and an informative talk from our guide, which included lots of cow-based jokes. She went round asking where everyone was from to find out who had come the furthest and when we said England there was a “oooh” from the crowd!
It was a fun half and hour and I’m glad that we got to go.
