NDBT

Yup, its been a big day. Hung out in the common room last night and finally got to see Cold Mountain, which I’ve been meaning to see forever. My main objection is that when Jude Law finally makes it home, they have a glamorous ol’ hollywood sex scene, when both characters should have been far more emaciated. But otherwise it was good. And I don’t grudge Renee Zellwegger her oscar (quite so much).

This morning I caught the first bus out to Stonehenge. Coming up over a hill and looking down on the field where it rises up was pretty amazing (seriously – first seat on the top of a double decker was a good way to go). It’s very big, and they don’t let you get particularly close to it. Also, despite the fact that 40% of it is missing, there were many more stones than I was expecting. There is the smaller ring of stones, the altar stone, stones that have fallen down (there are only about 5 archways remaining). It had a very good audio guide that walked you around the site, explained that the first henge was actually wooden, and larger, and the 2 stone henges can tell you the month, the solstices, but otherwise no one really knows what it was there for. It was very impressive. Unofrtunately, the bus schedule was not worked out well, because you could either go on a full audio loop and have no time to sit and gaze at it, or you could go on the loop and then gaze at it for an hour. Impressive though it was – I didn’t stick around.

Caught the bus to Avebury, which took about an hour. Drove through some lovely little villages (lots of thatched roofs, some very nice old architecture. Oh! And daffodils – SW England must be the world’s exporter of daffodils – they’re everywhere. AND! This guy got on the bus who looked just like the yes, yes, yes, no guy from Vicar of Dibley). Went in the Red Lion pub for lunch when I got off at avebury. Turns out, its the only pub in the world within a stone circle (on the last few hundred meters of bus ride before Avebury, you start seeing all thesee large stones popping out of the ground). And its supposedly one of the 10 most haunted places in the world. Not sure I believe that – but still cool. Oh – and tartar sauce tastes differently over here – it has a sweeter more citrusy kick to it.

After lunch I wandered around the stones. The tourist office was closed, so it was kind of like when I was at carrowmore – the stones were very cool, but I didn’t really know what I was looking at. Stopped off at Old Sarum on the way back. This was the original Salisbury. It was housed William the Conqueror, and now houses a warren of rabbits. I didn’t get to wander through the ruins of the castle, as it was closing up, but I did get a nice bracing walk around the outside (seriously – gale force winds, I was nearly knocked down, but it was still a nice walk). And I could wander through the ruins of the cathedral.

So – all in all, a pretty amazing day! Tomorrow I’m off to Glastonbury, and staying at the YHA in Holland park tomorrow night before my flight to Dublin (7th-9th).

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 9:38 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.