Day 8 - Stone Circles!

Last Day. Sadness mixed with excitement. Today we’re going to see the stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge. I feel like we’ve been taking a trip back in time. We’re now going back about 2,600 years (Avebury) and 2,800 years B.C. (Stonehenge) to the transition between stone and bronze age. Because at Avebury we could get right up close and touch the stones (and because it was nearer to our start point), we began there. It was amazing before we ever reached the stone circles; we’d been completely unprepared to come upon a huge white horse carved into the hillside. How I’d missed hearing about the famous white horses is beyond me, but it was quite a wonderful surprise.

And Avebury? Wow. I mean WOW! When you consider the weight of these stones (measured in tons) and the distance they were transported…not to mention what it took to dig a more than six meter ditch surrounded by a rise to separate the sacred world from the mundane…well, I’m a fairly enthusiastic person, and I can’t think that I’ve ever believed in anything that much.

Anyway, talking about a sense of power there might be overstating the case, but a sense of awe, a sense of “I can see why the people who created the stone circles would have chosen these spots” — that I will comment on. There was a quality to the landscape, but most especially a dramatic element to the sky, that might justify a sense of something mystic here.

Because we had to be 40 km away (and not as the crow flies!) by 1 p.m. to drop off the rental car, Stonehenge was me raising the camera above eye-level over the chain-linked fence that separated the circle from the road while Pete paused the car. I got off one shot, which, sadly, turned out a bit blurry, before our mad dash for the finish line (Basingstoke), but still, the thrill of seeing one of the wonders of the ancient world was awesome.

Thankfully, one of the nice guys at Avis (after the other did his best to get Pete lost), offered and delivered on a ride to the train station, and we were able to hop a train to London within walking distance of our hotel.

Once there, we dumped the bags and double-timed it to Buckingham Palace, which we’d missed the first time around. We strolled the outskirts of St. James’ Park, which was lovely, and made it just in time (completely unplanned) to see the changing of the guard. Had we planned for it, the event itself might have been a bit of a disappointment, but since we’d simply lucked out, it seemed something special and a fine note on which to end the trip of a lifetime.

It’s kind of sad, but as amazing as it will be (if we get the chance) to travel to our other dram countries – Egypt, Austria, France (me), Poland and Spain (Ty), Japan and Iceland (Pete), I don’t know as much of the history anywhere else, I it won’t be quite the same sense of “coming home.” Guess I’d better pick up some books in the coming years and dream some new dreams.

Day 7 - Where's the Beef? More importantly, the baths!

Still in search of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Still not king. (Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.) However, I now know something I didn’t before – that a roast is traditional Sunday lunch and difficult to get any other day. Of course, we’re leaving on Sunday. Sigh, maybe at the airport (shudder-twitch).

Anyway, we began the day at Farleigh Hungerford Castle, the very picturesque ruins of a castle built in the 1400s by Thomas Hungerford – not even nobility, but a merchant! – though his family was raised up later. It was fortified without the permission of the king, for which Thomas had to pay the very stiff fine of one mark. That’ll teach ’em! The family had a colorful history. One member married a servant who’d killed her husband to make way for her new marriage. Her noble immunity lasted until the lord’s death, at which point she lost her head. Another imprisoned his third wife – one wonders what happened to the first two – in the Lady Tower. When she refused to eat for fear of poisoning, the townsfolk raised food up to her. The family lost the castle when one of the offshoots had to sell it for £56,000 to pay his debts. It seems that shortly thereafter, the villagers began raiding it for stone for their own houses. Farleigh Hungerford Castle had a nice hunt set up for the kids where they had to find the hidden knights and squires and could design their own coats of arms. Whoever hid the knights and squires (Em, we were told) was a devious bugger – up trees, in a fireplace, under a storm drain! When the heavens opened up, we ran for the car, me forgetting even to return our audio tour! (The very nice proprietor of Hatt Farm, where we stayed that night, graciously offered to take care of returning it for us.)

Off to Bath. Aside from the fact that you can grow old getting in or out of the city, it is remarkable. Coming in from the south, the views were breathtaking, gorgeous houses arrayed on the hillside looking down on you. And the Roman Baths! Words just can’t express. Having studied the Roman Empire in Latin class and, of course, reading all those Regencies, I was most looking forward to seeing the baths, and they didn’t disappoint. It was amazing to see the reconstructed mosaics, stone carvings, and, especially, the Roman engineering still in place. Their drains and piping (copper and lead) were still working and their hypocaust system of heating the floors and walls was absolutely brilliant. There were street performances everywhere – classical, Native American in full costume but with a Celtic feel to the music!, a chalk artist amazingly recreating a Renaissance painting on a cobbled street. We took it all in, had some dinner, walked – okay, I walked, Ty ran, Pete watched from above – in the gorgeous park alongside the river. The flowers were stunning and the sense of peace…I could happily have stayed there forever.

We never did get our Sally Lunn bun, though we heard from a couple coming out that they were amazing, because they didn’t have a kids’ menu and weren’t polite when I said that we could give Ty a protein bar (since he wouldn’t eat anything on the menu) and stay ourselves, so they lost out on our business entirely. I’m trying and failing to see the sense in that. Trying. Nope, still nothing. It wasn’t even as if at that time – before the dinner rush – they couldn’t spare the table.

The Bizarre Bath tour was fantastic. We were promised no history, just humor. Well…we did get a smidgeon of history, but really it was just a ton of fun. Highly, highly recommended. Kids will miss out on some of the jokes, but they’ll enjoy it as well. In fact, some of the locals threw open their windows so that they could hear the tour when it came by and a couple (one on a bicycle and one homeless man yelling “I am Sin!”) got into the act.

Day 6 - Caves, Trains and Abbeys, oh my!

Scones, wonderful scones! (Think ‘Food Glorious Food’ from Oliver, substitute scones and you’re good to go.) I won’t quite say that it was the height of my day to finally get my scone with clotted cream and jam, but I’m not sure I’d try denying it while hooked up to a lie-detector. Last year in Scotland (see blog at www.scottishadventures.blogspot.com) I was disappointed to find they didn’t clot their cream, but this year my results were way better. And not even at a fancy-schmancy tea shoppe, but in the snack bar at Clearwell Caves. I’m still in my happy place.

Oh, the caves? Ty had taken to picking up rocks everywhere, to the point that he’d yank our arms out of their sockets dropping suddenly while still holding our hands to shove two or three more into his pockets. We decided that if he was going to collect rocks, we’d turn him on to the good ones, minerals et. al. And so, we were off to Clearwell Caves because a) we thought he’d like them and b) they had a shop. The caves were interesting, all about mining, including backbreaking child labor and the free miners of Dean, who became so by blowing ‘thine enemy to bits…in his mercy’ – sorry, Monty Python moment – when they camped out in the Forest of Dean preparatory to mounting an attack. The skeleton on the wall wasn't put there to commemorate any hardship or death, but painted by some partying college students!

On to Perrygrove, where they have a small steam train and treasure hunt set up for children. We had to do the abbreviated version, since it was raining cats and dogs, but Ty had a good time scavenger-hunting clues to the box containing his treasure, which turned out to be chocolate coins, a pin and a balloon, then running around with the kids in treasure village.

Next was Glastonbury Abbey. There just aren’t words for the majesty and the beauty. The nearby tor was said to be the “island” of Avalon, surrounded at the time by water on nearly all sides. King Arthur was supposedly buried there. The basics can be read at http://www.glastonburyabbey.com/. Sadly, it was also one of the Catholic sanctuaries Henry VIII destroyed in his king-sized tantrum and determination to destroy the church that wouldn’t give him what he wanted – an annulment. Ty was livid that the king would destroy anything so beautiful and decided that he was a very bad man .

Glastonbury Abbey was remarkable not only for the peace and beauty, but because they went out of their way to do things for the kids. They had brass rubbings and an artifact scavenger hunt, where kids could find various objects in the museum and be rewarded with a pin of the Abbey. He also found some very nice girls (of course) to run around with while we chatted with the equally nice moms.

Happily, they had brass plates for adults as well and since my good husband had bought me a rubbing kit for my birthday, I went to town. It was nirvana.

Scones and Glastonbury Abbey all in one day. Life just doesn’t get much better.

Day 5 - Warwick and Stratford

Warwick Castle is so worth the price of admission, especially with a barely-six-year-old along for the trip. It’s like an authentic, informative Renaissance faire with the most gorgeous backdrop you can imagine. There are still jousts and sword fights with witty repartee, but interspersed with information about pieces of armor and how they were attached, what “retainer” meant and how jaquets were notorious for smelling so badly from the sweat and BOan of their bearers that they were banned from being worn in pubs. They had a half-hour talk and demonstration of a trebuchet, which was really awesome. I didn’t realize that if they’d been encamped for so long they’d eaten the oxen and horses that pulled the equipment, four men got inside what looked like giant hamster wheels and wound the rope themselves. The Ghosts Alive tour was brief d corny, but I screamed anyway the first time someone jumped out, and it was Ty’s favorite part of the trip.

We missed the bowmen and the birds of prey show, sadly, but we did get to see the birds – a huge bald eagle, falcons, a vulture, etc. More mundanely, there were ducks and swans swimming picturesquely on the river. Best of all were the peacocks everywhere! Absolutely gorgeous peacocks. But the best moment came when we visited the gardens and conservatory and spotted four baby peacocks staying close to mum (or at least the designated sitter of the day). They were the most darling things ever.

From there we took a short trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. It was fine, but I suppose, being a sort of pilgrimage for me, I expected the clouds to peel back and angels to sing. (Foo on anyone who says he was too low class to have written the plays attributed to him. Some of the arguments have a bit more weight than others, but the people of his time and the notaries who came later to raise money to turn his childhood home into a monument certainly seemed to think William Shakespeare was their man. I find it difficult to believe that someone would write under the pen name of an actual person who could be associated with the pieces. And if Shakespeare was a front man somehow, I can’t believe it never came out. As the saying goes, two men may keep a secret if one of them is dead – or something like that. But I digress.)

Having been through the house where William Shakespeare was born, I can say with absolute certainty – yup, that’s a house. The town itself was cute, with a sand-castle clock amidst an island in the center of traffic. There was some good shopping, and we all got warm shirts for tomorrow when we plan to explore some caverns. They also had a very nice Italian Restaurant, Bella Italia, that knew how to treat kids – a coloring and activity book, a puzzle and a balloon. Ty thought he’d won the lottery.

On the way back to our B&B we stopped off for desert at a place that had a kids’ area, and Ty had a blast running around with three very nice kids – two girls and a boy (just guess which he approached first). Later, feeling guilt over all the sugar we’d consumed, I did some stretches and the kids wanted to know what else I could do, so we all ended up in a field (no adults but Pete looking on, thankfully) doing yoga and gymnastics – or, in the boy’s case, breakdancing. I’ll gloss the part where I nearly put my hands down in a cluster of rabbit droppings.

As I write, Pete and Ty are out in the back of Swan House jumping on their huge trampoline amidst very pretty gardens with a bunny named Dazzle looking on. The children who live there taught Ty a game called ‘crack the egg,’ where he curls up into a ball hugging his legs and someone bounces on the trampoline until he ‘cracks’ and spreads out willy nilly. Pete and Ty came up with their own game as well, Sasquatch, where the ‘monster’ pretends to be asleep until the other person wakes him and gets scared out of his wits for his trouble.

Ty has decided that the people of Swan House are the nicest in the world. They’ve been very warm and extremely helpful with directions and what to see where.

Bonus! Family interest photos.

The first one is Ty and me in the Magdelene College Botanical Gardens where we were pretending the goat on the urn wanted to eat his hair.


The second is the family photo taken at the Tower of London.












The third Ty took! It's self-explanatory, but includes the amanthus, my favorite of the flowers in the gardens.

Day 4 - Contemplating Douglas Adams

It seems perfectly natural to me that an Englishman would write novels in which a man’s most important possession would be his towel (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, etc. and so forth). He’d need it to dry off after the sky spits ten times a day, playing peekaboo in between.

Anyway, we did some more of Oxford, the City of Dreaming Spires, beginning with Oxford Castle’s Unlocked tour. There’s no longer an actual castle there, mind you, just Hotel Malmaison, made of the 18^th Century prison that was built on the site of the former castle. Still, it was interesting because the crypt dated back to 1071 (in wood) or 1074 (in the stone we saw) following the Norman invasion and may also have included part of the Saxon wall. From there we learned an awful lot about crime and punishment, complete with cartoonish illustrations of how prisoners were dissected for medical research after they’d been hanged, which I tried to stop Ty from seeing and only made him want to see all the more.

We learned more about the Civil War, since, as the city Charles I made his center, Oxford was a big part of that. Particularly, we learned about how Charles’ gaoler treated Cromwell’s men who were captured – sixty to a room the size of a closet where they were stacked on top of each other, some dying of smallpox, their corpses left to rot and stink up the place after they shuffled off the mortal coil. Yup, war – humanity at its finest.

From there we walked the Christ Church grounds and learned the “Harry Potter” dining hall would reopen at 2:15, so until then we jumped a sightseeing bus to the botanical gardens at Magdelene College. There were some really gorgeous, unusual flowers, all with names far too complicated for me to remember, except that I think my favorite was called amanthus. The water lilies – pink, magenta, white and yellow – were stunning, as were the huge swans bathing themselves and flapping their feathers back into place.

Then it was back to Christ Church. The dining hall didn’t look as impressive without the streamers, Dumbledore, the gowned students and CGI effects, but the portraits looked as if they should begin speaking and moving in and out of frame. The stone staircase and cathedral were impressive, though with a bored six-year-old who’s very happy to let you know it tugging at you, it was hard to feel the proper awe.

On to Swan House in Newnham-on-Severn. The people who ran it couldn’t have been nicer, the grounds sported a pretty garden with a fountain and, further back, a trampoline! Also, the scenery on the way was breathtaking -- stone farmhouses picturesquely crawling with ivy or coyly revealed through the greenery flanking the streets. As much as I loved all of the ornate beauty of Oxford (gargoyles and flourishes everywhere) and London’s historic sights, this was like soothing visual sorbet.

We had dinner that night at the Red Heart Inn in Awre, which made Ty happy because there were two dogs, one who seemed like he might want to play and an older cocker spaniel, Magdalene, who had belonged to a member of the royal family, who’d given her up when he found he couldn’t breed her. She was a cute little thing. She’d sit and look soulfully up at you while you ate, too polite to make a single sound. Unfortunately, we seem to be cursed when it comes to roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. So far, every place has been out! There must have been a run on them right before we arrived.

Day 3 -- London to Oxford

The reconstructed Globe Theatre – let me just say “wow.” Okay, Shakespeare would have done a helluva lot better in iambic pentameter and the whole nine yards, but this is a blog and, besides, it’s past my bedtime. I had this weird cognitive dissonance sitting there within the theatre, thinking both “Whoa, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre – awesome!” and “Hey, that’s where Judy Dench stood in Shakespeare in Love.” It was sort of my retro and modern geekdoms meeting up with each other. The talk was very interesting, from the part where Shakespeare & Company caught the loophole in their expiring lease at their old theatre that the landlord seemed to own the land but not the building itself and so dismantled it to use in the construction of the Globe to the part where the rain and a pigeon both came through the open roof. I would like to have stayed for about a century or so, but we were off to Oxford.

The journey took far longer than anticipated by virtue of slow buses, a very local train and the fact that the woman who’d arranged our accommodations placed us a £10 cab ride out of town. (Planes, trains and automobiles, oh my.) However, once we finally made it to town and convinced our now-cranky child to shape up or else (meaning no souvenirs, which, for Ty, is a fate worse than death), we found the city well worth the trouble. It was too late to actually get in to anything, but simply walking around was rewarding enough. Radcliffe Square alone, with the Bodleian Library, St. Mary the Virgin Church, the Radcliffe Camera et. al. was almost too much beauty in one place. The sense of peace in the square was like a balm to the soul.

We took the ghost tour – of course! – from the least theatrical guide on earth. Still, Ty was impressed because of the conviction that he saw two ghosts (oddly glowing lights) behind some windows at Merton College. So he felt the tour was well worth the money. Hopefully, we’ll get to look around some gardens and see Oxford Castle on the morrow.

Oh, cute Ty note: he decided out of the blue today to call me a mannequin, since we’d passed some odd ones earlier in the day, but then he changed it to womanequin.

[For Rosemary (she knows why ): We actually saw a building before we left London marked “The Texas Embassy.” (Okay, it was a bar and grill.) Anyway, this one’s for you!]