Oct 7: Stonehenge

Getting out of bed on October 7th was NOT easy, since I was not adjusted to the time change, so even getting up at 9am felt like 1am... ugh! We finally left the city around 11am and headed out into the country. In my mind, getting OUT of the city was the best part of the trip! :-) They sure don't make it easy though, I'm not sure how anyone manages to navigate a way out of London.

The weather was gorgeous that day, sunny with big puffy clouds, not too warm, and not too cold. Much better than the day before!

It amuses me that familiar things have different names. Well, then again sometimes things are a little different. What we would call a "rest area" they call a "welcome break." And it's not just the ole toilet-and-vending-machine stop, it has a restaurant, shops, gas station, and hotel! Lots of other things have different names, let's see if I can think of a few...

elevator=lift
detour=diversion
exit=way out
yield=give way
chips=crisps
fries=chips
cookies=biscuits
biscuits=scones

Anyway, back on topic... so we left the city that day, and the first destination was none other than Stonehenge. The countryside is SO beautiful, and SO green! Right here right now it's brown and dusty, so it was pretty amazing to see all that green. And I saw some horses! No Gypsy Horses (darn it!) but a Belgian and some ponies and several regular size horses (no idea what breed, they were far away anyway).

A few views along the motorway, taken from the car.




This made me laugh... yes, those are cows crossing an overpass! An overpass made just for the cows!


These cows looked happier than the happy California cows. Saw a lot of nice looking cows in lush green pastures. No idea what all the breeds were.


And here are some sheep.


So we made it to Stonehenge, it's hard to imagine that the whole area used to be surrounded by trees. DP says much of England used to be forest, and it was cut down for firewood hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Some has regrown (naturally or otherwise) but there is a lot of open space. There were a fair amount of people at Stonehenge, but I can imagine it must be a lot worse at times. You can't walk right up to it anymore. It's amazing, even from a distance. I can't imagine that it would be like to walk through it, I think that would be some sort of spiritual event... and I don't tend to say stuff like that.

Nevertheless, Stonehenge from all angles...





And to prove I was there:



Next stop: city of Bath. More later...