Stonehenge, where the banshees dwell
Where demons live, and they do live well
Stonehenge
--Spinal Tap
By the way, this post comes straight out of my journal, as will the next one. I usually try not to do that. I like having two separate accounts because then there's always something different interesting in each of them, but sometimes there's just not time for it. And in this case, I have a paper due on Wednesday that I would prefer to not sit up all night Tuesday doing (as is my usual way of doing papers). So anyway, if the post seems at all wordy or off or whatever, that's why.
Well, Thursday was unremarkable, as was Friday. Saturday, however, was an adventure of epic proportions, because if was Stonehenge/Bath day! I hated to have to wake up at 6:00am, but at least Mama did call when she woke me up--almost like being in school regularly, when i used to have her call me on particularly urgent mornings. Bleary and fumbling and dropping things as we came, the thirty of us who came made our way to the Bramber bus stop and stood there, cold and comPLETEly unawake. Most of us did some sleeping on the bus (coach, sorry), which was large enough for most of us to have our own set of double-seats, and which had a TV besides. I brought The Railway Children to read anyway, just so I could get something productive done, but I don't think I read terribly much--nor did I sleep a great deal. Mostly, I looked out the window and wished I could videotape the passing countryside with my eyes exactly the way I was seeing it. Pastures and hills and trees and fences and hedgerows and old farmhousey, cottagey places and little red roofs and quaint villages--it was a page of E. Nesbit come to life, nearly. Many of the houses had two, three, four, even six chimney pots sprouting out above the bricks which seemed to me to be the essence of adorable old-fashioned Britishness. The countryside itself was green and rolling and everything my books have always promised it would be.
Stonehenge itself was full of other tourists, and it was still fairly early when we got there. Around 10:00, I think? It was in a way rather like the Mona Lisa--there are so many people come to see it and SO much history about it, and you already know all about it and its mysterious bits. Then you get there, and you look at it along with a hundred other people, and it's cool but not quite as awe-inspiring as you somehow feel it should be. Even the locations have similarities. The Mona Lisa is a relatively small painting in a huge white room, and Stonehenge is...ok, not small at all, but still in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of green pasture and a lot of sheep.
I'm not saying it wasn't cool, now. It was. I just wish I could have been without the other million people and the ropes cordoning us wayyy off away from the stones for a few minutes. It was sort of eerily gorgeous the way the stones stand just so, especially when you know how long they've been there. These stones have been there for thousands of years, and we still don't know exactly who put them there and did the heaving and lifting and exactly why they did it. And the gray stones and gray skies and green field (with sheep! real ones!) was dramatic and beautiful. We were supposed to be on an audio tour, but half of the transmitters (mine included) didn't work properly, and I didn't want it anyhow. The gift shop was crowded but nice (it was starting to rain)--and I had lemon curd for the first time, which was delicious!
There isn't a Stonehenge Museum, really, but there is at least this one sign, and a few others sprinkled about.
Field. With sheep. This is to give you an idea of the sort of thing that goes around Stonehenge--really, it's in the middle of nowhere.
Our group really was excessively excited about the presence of real, live, baaa-ing sheep. The girls from Denmark and Germany were not really sure what our fascination was. As one of them said with her cute little Danish accent, "Ok, tell you what--my father has sheep, and you can go take care of them for a week and THEN tell me how cute you think they are!"
And this is my favorite picture that I took all day. I like how gray the sky is--cloudiness makes pictures so much more interesting (in my opinion, that is).
The shadows were interesting. I wish we could have gotten closer, but there was apparently some trouble with vandalism in the past, so visitors are cordoned off a fair distance away.
This rock is on the other side of the little path, maybe twenty yards or so from Stonehenge itself. It's good-sized (probably comes up to mid-thigh on me), and I feel as though it does not receive enough attention. For all we know, this could have been a magical Stonehenge rock, and then there was a strike of lightning that shattered the big rock into smaller pieces and this one rolled over here and then got weathered into a gentler shape over the next thousand years. Or maybe the workers finished Stonehenge and this was what was left over and when the foreman said "Hey guys, can we put the leftovers back where we found them?" they told him to take it back himself if he wanted it done and demanded their paychecks and went home.
We may never know.
This rock, apparently, was used to slaughter things way back when. And since my audio thing wasn't working, I don't know what exactly was slaughtered here. Probably sheep; there seem to be enough of them around. But it could have been humans. I could look it up, but I don't really want to.
This lovely little selection waits for you when you finish circling around the big stone circle. You may laugh at the overabundance of hot carbohydrates everywhere in this country, but you come here for a week or two and then you understand it: It's cold. And it always rains. You NEED cheese scones and pasties and sausagey things and miscellaneous bready concoctions. You need them for your soul, and you need them for your skin. Which is cold. Always.
Fortunately, having a Pepsi won't cool you down too much more, because they don't bother to use ice in this country. It really is a different world for me, let me tell you. Actually, though, I took this picture to prove to myself and my brothers that Pepsi products CAN be found in the UK. This makes me happy, because a) I like Pepsi better than Coke, and b) Pepsi was invented in New Bern, North Carolina, and thus I feel we North Carolinians must stick by it (as opposed to Coke, which came to life in Atlanta).
And yes, I realize that I look ridiculous.
Ever read about hedgerows? This is one, the bushy part there. They're EVERYWHERE. I'm sure we have them in the US too, it's just that I never have come across one yet.
Nearly back on the bus, but if you can see that there are some mounds in the distance then it might interest you to know that there are three grassy lumps, all quite large, and that they are actually burial mounds for ancient kings. I personally thought that Stonehenge could have done a better job mentioning that, as it was actually our bus driver who told me that, but then perhaps it was on the educational audio tour part that I missed while I was on the erratic-static audio tour.
Ok now, I reckon that's enough for now. I did find this quote from Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island (I LOVE Bill Bryson, by the way), that I wanted to share, though:
Ok now, I reckon that's enough for now. I did find this quote from Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island (I LOVE Bill Bryson, by the way), that I wanted to share, though:
"I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, 'Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!' Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that."
No comments:
Post a Comment