A trip out with good friend Mike and abandoning the idea of a very wet walk we settled on culture. This time to the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. It’s many years since I’ve been there and in the interim they’ve had a massive upgrade. Terrific place, light and airy and with loads of fascinating stuff to look at hear and read. We only got as far as the Romans and plan another trip to delve further.

Cirencester is well known for its Roman ruins and ‘finds’ but this coin featured here and found in the area came from well before the Romans wandered into the area with their mosaics and underfloor heating. What have the Romans ever done for us? Quite.

This tiny coin with its superb rendering of a horse came from the Iron Age Dobunni tribe, well before the Romans and was found in the Cirencester area. About the size of a pound coin it was just one of hundreds of artefacts and bits in the collection. What a story it has to tell, the thought of it being in the hands of someone all those hundreds of years ago was really quite breathtaking.

If you get a chance, go there and see the place, you won’t be disappointed, and you might run into Mike and me on one of our return trips as this place needs more than one.

Incidentally outside the Museum we walked past something that is also becoming increasingly rare: an original Butcher’s Shop.