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.