Stonehenge, Bath

Alright, kids. After that last, rather long-winded one, I’ll endeavor to make this one a bit shorter…

We barely made it back in time for class on Monday, and by Tuesday, I was ready to take another vacation…haha. Kidding. Our BLC lecture was about prehistoric Britain, however, which foreshadowed Wednesday’s field trip to Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plan, and the town of Bath. After lecture, a bunch of us (of course) went to the union bar…Kevin, my ‘nacho buddy’, as we’ve decided, split a plate of them and a few beers. Good stuff.

At 8 a.m. in the morning, the tour bus was waiting outside the door…so the sleepy lot of us hopped in, and we ended up with Trudy the tour guide for the day. Now we’ve had her before, and she seems like a lovely person, but she has this weird way of making her voice seem like a squeaky rollercoaster—she’ll whisper in low, manly tones one second, then pitch her voice to this wailing squeal, speaking a mile a minute, all the while calling us her ‘lovelies’ or her ‘little bunnies’ or something else sufficiently strange. As nice of a person as she may be, it’s hard to take for several hours of that on end…but we survived, as you can see.

The countryside on the way to Salisbury was beautiful: rolling hills in the most extreme and almost literal sense of the term, and the sky was (gasp!) actually blue that day, so the grass reflected the light to glow bright green. We passed through a couple of towns with the occasional thatched roof cottage, and at those times the entire waking population of the coach nearly caused it to tip, since we all leaned towards the window…thatched roof cottages are not so common as one might think!

Eventually we got to Stonehenge… It was what I was expecting, and yet not. I suppose I expected to feel more connected to or awed by the monoliths, but I didn’t. I think the fact that the whole thing is cordoned off by a little rope fence had something to do with that: you can’t get close enough, walk among them, or touch them the way you used to be able to some years back; now the closest you’re getting is about 30 feet away. Alas, all of my pictures of the place look more or less the same, from all sides! It’s kind of sad, though…I’ve heard people who’ve gone before that you can sort of feel the presence of the rocks, and sense the power of the site. All I sensed was the cold wind and a bit of disappointment as I tried to snap decent pictures from my distant position. And I’m sure being herded through the place along with all the other young Americans really helped matters, haha! :) Despite it all, though, you can’t help but wonder a little…how the hell did they do it? One of the concentric circles of rocks is made of bluestones which are found only in a certain area of Wales—so not only did they have to carry the heavy stones all the way from the west, by sea and land, they had to stand the things upright and put the heavy lentil stones on top…complete with a rather sophisticated fitting system, like tongue-and-groove. Quite cool.

After we were all funneled back onto the coaches, we drove another hour or so to Bath. The bus took a few turns around the city before stopping at the Roman baths, and we were able to see much of the town that way. Approaching it from the way we did, Bath looks like a very old, stately condominium complex. No lie, that was my first thought. Much of the town is built along a great valley, and you can see rows and rows of identical Victorian homes, contouring to and winding down the steep hillsides like massive Portland stone snakes. We also saw the home-turned-inn of Jane Seymour, or Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I hear you’ve got to pay big bucks to stay there—so it’s just a smidge out of my budget, haha.

The Roman baths were fascinating. I hadn’t realized just how technologically advanced those old Romans actually were! They had sweat baths and saunas, and they’d actually figured out how to make central heating systems: they’d build the floor upon brick pillars, and have air ducts behind the walls, and hot air would be passed through flues and under the floor, to rise through the walls and heat the room from both the bottom and sides. Quite a feat for such an ancient culture! The Romans even had a plumbing system to the baths, and today you can see the lead pipes that run through the floor of the complex.

The baths were more updated than I had initially realized—much additional building and architecture had been added over the years, and today the site is set up much like a modern museum; the students were even given a handheld audio tour phone, so we could learn more about what we were seeing by punching in the appropriate numbers at each site. I didn’t touch the water there, since they told us not to…the water is untreated, and perhaps even slightly radioactive. I saw the hot spring (it’s still working today, of course!) pouring out of a channel built in ancient times, and the steam from the cascading water touched my face, so that was good enough for me, haha.

As I was leaving the baths to explore the rest of the town, I ran into Jeanette, Heather, Paloma, and Stephanie, so we decided to go out and find some grub. We wandered about, and after finding Sally Lunn’s (the oldest building in Bath, and home to the famous Sally Lunn bread) ended up at the Lamb and Lion pub. It was a nice place—not as old I might have liked, but it was humming with locals, so it promised to be good. I ordered a pint of Worthington’s (who says noon is too early to start drinking on a Wednesday? Haha) and a steak and ale pie with chips and peas…So delicious. I just love traditional British and Irish food—it’s so hearty, and when paired with a good beer, can’t be beaten.

By the time we finished eating (Paloma’s one of those slow eaters who actually savors their food—unlike yours truly, haha) we had less than an hour to see the rest of Bath. I should have expected to be rushed, since all of these school field trips tend to be that way! So the group disbanded, and as Heather, Paloma, and Stephanie went into the shops and Jeanette went post-card hunting, I fairly ran about the entire town, trying to take in as much of the atmosphere as I could in 45 minutes. There were plenty of cobblestone streets, and stone arches leading to back alleys and tiny pubs. More than anything else, though, there is shopping—and posh shopping, at that. The area is very affluent, and I get the impression that the wealthy come here as a retreat from London to “take the waters”, as they say. So after snapping as many decent pictures as I could, I finally accepted my defeat and dutifully made my way back to the coaches…

Driving home at sunset after such a blue, blue day was a treat. The wide buses of the windows afforded quite a view, and the wide plains and hilltops burned orange with the sun…quite a memorable twilight. I sat in my seat next to Kevin, and we just chatted and exchanged music while the sun went down. It had been a good day. I hope all of you had as much of a lovely one as I did! Take care!

Cheers!