Yesterday’s adventure was a day trip out of London to visit Stonehenge, Bath and “a secret place”. I’m not normally a fan of group trips, but there are limited options if you want to see Stonehenge, so I picked a 15 person bus that was ranked well on Tripadvisor and hoped for the best. The guide was actually great, she left us alone to roam at the destinations, and having a small bus meant we could take backroads instead of the highway, which was amazingly scenic.
I’d visited Stonehenge in 1997 when it was a pull-off next to the highway and you simply got off of the motorway, parked in a dirt parking lot, walked a bit, and then admired the stones from a few feet away, kept back by a small rope barrier. Things have changed dramatically since then, with the highway relocated, the paths around the stones much farther back, and 1000x the number of people. It was still a really neat place to go; it combines history and engineering, two of my favorite topics, while also giving a druid vibe that I fully support.
Following the visit with the stones we were off to Bath, a city that still feels very much like it must have in the 1600s. I didn’t actually visit the “bath” that gives the town its name – I saw it in 1997, and rather than being a Roman bath it’s actually a Victorian estimation of what a Roman bath might look like – but did roam all over, admiring some truly impressive stone buildings. Our guide did a short walking tour where she shared how the waters from the hot spring were renowned for having “magical” healing properties and how Queen Anne swore that after drinking the water she felt revitalized, but today scientists believe that long ago many people suffered from anemia, so a shot of mineral-rich hot spring water would have simply given them the iron they were lacking and thus a massive energy boost.
For our last stop we were sworn to secrecy on its location, but it was one of England’s best preserved old villages, with rules in place to prevent any alteration of buildings. Doors and ceilings were low, there wasn’t a single beam or roof that wasn’t warped or sagging, the church was ancient, and one of the pubs dated back to the 1300s. I had a pint at a pub that was “only” a few hundred years old before we returned to the bus for our trip home. All in all, spending the day seeing ancient wonders and historical villages made for one of the better Tuesdays a person could have.
