Having been sentenced to four nights at the Burnham-on-Sea Holiday Village, we were unexpectedly denied parole on Friday, and allowed to stay another day. I think it was down to Amelie's bad behaviour. And the fact that we bunged them an extra twenty quid.

It meant that we were able to finish our week with a trip to Glastonbury Abbey...


If you compare that photo with the cave painting I published on Monday, you'd be forgiven for thinking that we went on holiday with a cardboard cut-out of Lisa's Mum, and simply posed with it in front of numerous landmarks. Needless to say, you'd be wrong. We didn't visit numerous landmarks.

I should also point out that the structure behind us isn't Glastonbury Abbey. It's the Glastonbury Abbey Gift Shop. It was the only part of the building with free entry. I love history as much as the next man, but I'm not made of money. And besides, you can get the same experience from a keyring and a postcard. At least, that's what I told Amelie.

Among the other local landmarks that we didn't visit was the Glastonbury Tor, a big old hill about a mile from the town centre. I wanted to get the Tor bus to base camp, but the only person willing to climb every mountain with me was Amelie, and I knew I'd end up having to carry her back down, so we decided to stay at sea level.

We might not have experienced the magical mystery of the Tor, but Glastonbury High Street was certainly full of weirdos. I've never seen so many new-age spiritual nutcases. The place was crawling with extra large mediums, clairvoyants and soothsayers. Although oddly, they didn't seem to be expecting us.

We passed some fine establishments with names such as 'The Magick Box', 'Man, Myth & Magik' (that's two different spellings of 'magic' and I don't agree with either of them), 'Yin Yang', 'The Goddess & the Green Man', and my particular favourite, 'The Psychic Piglet'. No, seriously...


It all made for a very interesting shopping experience (even the woman in Oxfam wanted to talk to me about angels), but personally I felt more at home in the cake shop. We spent a very enjoyable five minutes in Burns the Bread, an unfortunately named bakery, the website of which exclaims "Anybody's butter - but Burns the Bread is best!" - a slogan which works on virtually no level whatsoever.

They do, however, sell Torsy Moorsy, a luxury fruitcake which has been "developed from an old recipe found in a niche next to a fireplace whilst renovating the bakery over 25 years ago". Personally I wouldn't trust a recipe which someone had clearly tried to throw on the fire, so I settled instead for a sausage roll, a lemon muffin and a giant gingerbread man for Amelie. It was the size of her head, and she'd eaten it within ten minutes. But it was the quietest ten minutes of our holiday.