Hope you enjoyed our previous blog post by Robert—his appearance is rare on this blog now because he is simply too busy. He made an exception last night by writing that entry because he figured he had to practice the writing section of his GRE test, so why not write on our blog? I am glad I convinced him. So he was so blog-happy that he kind of skipped ahead and forgot to write about what happened before we got to Bath.
We had three days and two nights. Our route was Our House-Stonehenge-Avebury-Lacock village-Bath-Cotswolds. We left bright and early on Saturday morning, which also turned out to be the first day of the spring break for most schools in Britain AND a three day weekend for the UK because of their May Bank Holiday coinciding with our Memorial Day. Well, we did not realize that it would make such a difference but it did! We headed southwest from our house, counting on a 2.5 hour drive to Stonehenge…and so did everyone else, it seemed. As soon as we got to the major motorway going west of London approaching Heathrow, we were stuck in traffic, for forever…..The problem was that everyone was going southwest (not to Stonehenge) to Cornwall and Devon—to the British coast. So instead of 2.5 hours we were driving for over 4 hours.
We got to Stonehenge, parked somewhere off the beaten track because it was so busy in the official parking lot and walked over to the stones. I had very LOW expectations. Many Americans have told us, “Yeah, Stonehenge is just a pile of rocks and you cannot really get close to them, so it was disappointing”. Because I was not expecting much, I was actually very impressed. It was not just cool to be next to one of the most famous pile of rocks, it was just cool to realize how long they had been there and what people did in that area centuries ago.
It also helped that the entrance for the whole family was free because we are National Trust members (it was free for English Heritage as well, otherwise about 7 GBP-$11). We received the audio guides that helped us understand a lot more about Stonehenge. It took us about 45 minutes to walk around the monument with kids listening to their kids’ version of the guide.
Of course, we took a ton of pictures from all different directions.
Mark’s attention span only lasted about ten minutes. After that he did not want to listen to the guide, but was interested in finding all the numbers along the guided walk.
Katya’s version of “picking up” Stonehenge.
And Alex’s version of “holding” Stonehenge.
Alex, wrong country, buddy. This is not Egypt.
Mark’s Egyptian pose.
I think this is the side of Stonehenge that most people have seen on pictures.
Oh yeah, family pictures at Stonenge.
It was around 2 pm when we finally left Stonehenge. We were off our schedule, and although I know we were going to miss out on some of the things I had planned, I was not stressed. We ate our packed lunch in the car and now headed to our next stop—Avebury.
Apparently, we were passing through some serious military zones because for many miles we saw these signs for “Tank Crossing”.
So, Avebury. Why did we go there? Was one pile of rocks not enough? What’s different about Avebury is that we can actually get close to the rocks and touch them. Avebury is a henge that consists of three stone circles constructed in 2600 BC. The brochure for Avebury states that this is the only place in the world where you’ll find a pub and a chapel inside a stone circle.
We spent some time running around the stones, but because we were short on time, we did not get to go to the Old Farmyard, Avebur Manor or garden (entrance was free for us again because we are National Trust members).
Mark’s favorite part of Avebury were not the rocks—it was rolling down the hill.
On this picture you can see the stone circle better. They were scattered of a large area.
If we ever go back to this area, I would make sure to take a guided tour offered to visitors. Our kids love tours for some reason and it forces them to behave better in front of strangers-hehe.
All right, this is a good place for a break.
No comments:
Post a Comment