Garden Visit: Chalice Well

I've wanted to visit The Chalice Well in Glastonbury since I was a baby pagan. I'm not going to pretend I was the only 14 year old planning a visit to Glastonburyno,notthefestivle but, let's face it, we are few and far between. Anyway, like many trips I planned as a 14 year old it didn't happen. But last week we where driving slightly east and passed The Well. I did a bit of googleing to check that it was open in winter and seeing that it was I begged that we stop on the way back.

The Vesica Pool in the Chalice Well gardens

I turned the phone off, and we paid our entrance fee and walked into the garden. I was struck by the peace of the place and we walked through, talking quietly weaving our way to the well. There where some gorgeous plants on display. Some unseasonal crocuses where pushing through the paving and slightly more seasonal (but not by much) snowdrops where bowing their heads in clusters under bear trees.  We loved these little purple berries (ID anyone?) we saw as we walked up to the meadow.

Stunning winter colour

Then we came to the well with it's stunning cover. A very tame robin preened itself on a tree behind us looking adorable and distracting us from the water. The wrought iron Vesica Picsis is just gorgeous though. And the wood behind has a stunning colour in the January light.

The Well Head

To collect our water we walked on down to the Lion's Head. We drank the water, it had a strong, but not unpleasant, mineral taste and, of course, a strong iron taste to it. We took a bottle of the water home (Chalice Well sells bottles for you to fill) although I haven't yet decided how to use it. 

The shock of bathing in healing waters in january

On our way back out to the Vesica Pool we found the healing pool and never being one to say no to getting wet I decided to walk in. In January. It wasn't unpleasantly cold actually. I bathed my feet in the water, which felt lovely. We walked to the Vesica pool, looked round the shop and I said a quick thanks before heading back out to the car.