The Three Magpies, Sells Green

If you fancy a country pub after a hard day learning PHP or Python, we can heartily recommend "The Barge" at Seend or "The Three Magpies" at Sells Green. "The Barge" is only just over a mile from our training centre and Hotel, and part of the way is along the towpath of the canal if you fancy the walk.

A little further along the Canal (and on the main road with buses to and from Melksham too) is The Three Magpies - excellent food (but not "fast" food, they stress), great beer and a real olde worlde setting. If you wish to camp or bring a caravan, they have good facilities too.


inside The Three Magpies, Sells Green

Other pubs are available if you're Walking too. And we've a page of other Eating places too.

The "National Trust" village of Lacock also has some excellent pubs - the George and the Red Lion are the two that I've eaten in - and the setting is charming. Lacock Abbey was dissolved during the reformation by king Henry VIII, but it survived in the hands of various of his courtiers and their descendants and in the 1800s was the site at which Fox Talbot took his first reversal process photograph.


The High Street at Lacock


A Wiltshire road just outside Melksham

A little further across Wiltshire, you find bigger towns like Swindon and Trowbridge and the city of Salisbury. Swindon grew around 150 years ago with the growth of the Great Western Railway ... prior to that, the largest centre of population in that neck of the woods was Wootton Bassett which survives to this day somewhat as a satellite of Swindon.


High Street, Wootton Bassett