Advertisement
Published: February 9th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Hiya Everyone
Today we headed off nice and early from the hotel so we could get a bit of travelling done. We was all packed and breakfasted (is that a word?) by 7.30am and headed of to Stonehenge. We made better time than we thought, so hung around in the village of Amesbury for an hour until the rocks opened. What a lovely little village. The pub was opened in the 16th century, and all of the doors leading into the shops around the place were so low that I nearly had to duck to get through them!
We went to the stones and had an audio tour around them. What a great place. The history is all speculation, they don't really know how they got there or what their purpose was but the amount of work involved is really quite something. Mark and I have figured it all out though. They was building a giant calendar (you can tell the time of year from where the sun comes up through the stones) and by the time they got all of the stones from hundreds of miles away, put up the first few and realised just how hard it
was, they said "stuff this", packed up their stone age tools and headed home, leaving it as it is now. Good theory huh? In days gone by, they used to give out little rock hammers to the tourists so they could take a peice home with them. Now you can't get within 40 feet of them.
We got back in the car after having one of the worst coffee's of the trip and headed for a place called Warminster. No particular reason for it, just that it was half way to Bath. We haven't seen many road signs like ours telling about animals and stuff crossing the road, but one we saw today took the cake...... will leave you to find the picture to see what it was!
We made it into Bath (pronounced Barth if you are a posh person, Bath if you are common) and were nearly floored by the housing in the area. It's all the same! Everywhere you look there is terrace houses. Talk about high density housing.... we've decided we wouldn't like to live in Bath. The amount of traffic was scary.... even I was glad to get back on the motorway!
Stonehenge Pictures
This is how they joinded the Sarcens to the Lintels
Sarcens are the upright ones and Lintels flat
They carved holes in the lintels for this little bump and joined the lintels together with a crude tongue and groove joint We went to the Roman Baths in Bath. These have been used for thousands of years, but the romans were the ones to build temples so the people could make offerings to the gods. The people would throw something of value into the waters and make a wish..... or curse their enemy, depending on the mood of the day I guess. Some of the things they have found in there over the years is truly amazing. We wern't allowed to touch the water because of all the health and hygiene laws these days (but I did ). The water comes up from underground at 46.5 degrees C all year round, and 13 litres per second is pumped away. They still throw in offerings, but in the form of money, not jewelry. The more money they get the more they can do up the place. We offered 40p..... we didn't need to wish for much you see.... LOL
We walked back to the car and headed for Wales. We got onto the Motoway, which was very busy today.... maybe they have POETS day over here as well cos it seemed like every man and his dog was on the road.
We crossed the Severn River at the first Severn Bridge and had to pay 5 pound 30 pence for the priviledge, but what a huge bridge! We drove around for a bit trying to find accomodation, seems the Welsh haven't cottoned on to the idea of B & B's like the Brits have. The NavMan sent us on a bit of a wild goose chase (first stuff up from her) but we finally found this nice little pub in Tintern Parva.
We've decided to stay away from most of the big cities and are heading to the Welsh coast tomorrow. We are going to travel up the coast for a few days before heading over the Yorkshire to see the rellies.
Hope you all are enjoying the blog....
Love to all
Julia & Mark
Advertisement
Tot: 0.095s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 13; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0501s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb