Touring Salisbury, Stonehenge and Bath
Rise and Shine! After another satisfying night’s sleep (I’m never taking 8 hours shuteye for granted again) courtesy of Mr Earplugs and Mrs Eyemask, we departed the hostel at 8am sharp. We were to meet our tour group in the centre of London for a 9am departure. Upon arrival at our point of exodus, we were greeted by 100’s of fellow site see’ers all heading off on various tours around the countryside ‐ courtesy of the same tour company. We filed onto our designated bus until it was full to the brim and were away ‐ first stop, Salisbury, 90 mins West of London.
Our guide was a knowledgeable chap who was very linguistically learned ‐ fluent in 4 different languages. He was the ideal tour guide and combined humour with facts throughout the day for a perfectly enjoyable commentary. In Salisbury we visited a gothic cathedral that was an impressive spectacle, particularly on the inside ‐ the scaffolding on the exterior reduced the visual impact slightly. As part of the tour, we visited a local Salisbury Pub for lunch and our tour guide David talked me into the vegetarian offering ‐ a leak and cauliflower dish which I thoroughly enjoyed … much to David’s delight!
We shared a table with two Americans, also on the tour, who were on a 10 day trip in England and Ireland. They were from a town near Washington DC (the name escapes me) and were happy to be avoiding the suffocating heat of the American summer. After another 15 minutes on the bus we arrived at the revered Stonehenge. My guidebook described the monument as an underwhelming experience but I beg to differ and enjoyed the experience profusely. The enormous pillars sat in a lush green field on the top of a slight rise with nothing else of note in the vicinity. Icy winds buffeted us as we took in the stone arrangement, pondering the history of it all. Why would people go to the trouble of moving such massive rocks and arrange them in such a way?
The rocks were not from the area in which they are located today which leads historians to hypothesize that they were transported many miles to arrive at their final resting place. We’re talking stones that weigh between 5 and 20 tonnes here. One of the types of rocks used was bluestone ‐ so named because of its blue interior. The theory goes that ancient English descendents arranged the rocks into a primitive form of a calendar to assist with farming decisions such as when to plant crops. A more sinister belief purports that the stones are arranged for pagan worship and human sacrifice. Whichever theory you lend yourself to, there’s no denying the energy surrounding Stonehenge ‐ there’s definitely something eerie about it.
Always short of time, we made tracks again, now en route to our final destination for the day ‐ Bath. An hour later, our chariot rolled into Bath. The tour took us to the roman baths…no prizes for guessing where the town name came from. The natural spring baths were used by the Romans for socialising and also injury / illness therapy during their occupation of England.
After taking in the baths, we occupied our remaining 20 minutes with a stroll around the scenic Bath streets which were filled with beautiful old Georgian architecture. Combined with the surrounding lush green countryside, Bath was a truly spectacular place which was very hard to show a clean pair of heals to. The guidebook accurately labelled Bath as England’s ‘most handsome town’. In fact even celebrities are catching on with Nicholas Cage recently splurging 4 million pounds on a humble Bath getaway. Our tour ended with a 2.5 hour commute back to London with the bus driver kindly dropping us very close to our hostel. We’ll be up early again tomorrow for a trek northward for a few nights in the historic town of York!
‐ Ben Spencer
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