DAY-05: Stonehenge & Bath

Day - 05: Sunday, May 31, 2015

Starting Location: The Trafalgar Hotel, London, England, UK

Interim Location: Stonehenge & Bath Tours
Ending Location: The Trafalgar Hotel, London, England, UK

This day began mighty early as I awoke just ahead of my phone alarm (strange how that happens), scheduled for 0615, but wait Sheila says, it's only 0515. That's a good news bad news thing I suppose, anyway I did get a few more minutes sleep but still getting up when on vacation at 6 AM is hardly relaxing. We were down for breakfast by 0715 where we packed up some pastries and a bacon+bacon sandwich for me, for good health I also picked up a banana.

As we were now London Underground experts, by 0730 we were off to the nearby station to meet our tour at the Victoria Station Bus Terminal, the same as on Friday but without the taxi. 

Note to File: Beware of signs indicating "subway" to London Underground, that only means a below ground path but can still be a long walk to the nearest station.

Anyhow, after a couple of long walks and a transfer or two we arrived at Victoria Station, initially at the train station but with another short walk of 3-4 blocks we arrived at the Victoria Station for bus travel just on time at 0800.




Our trip to Stonehenge was to be a small group tour, shall we say with 76 of our dearest fellow tourists plus the guide Richard and the driver Robert. We departed the station at 0825 in again, cold, windy and wet weather.



Soon we passed from citified London and past Heathrow and were in the country. Just had to take a photo of "bacon on the hoof".







Actually the countryside is quite nice, a pleasant and relaxing journey of just over two hours to Stonehenge, the rocks. We first saw the rocks as the bus passed by just to the south; about five minutes later we were parked in the tourist center bus lot and Richard had procured audio players for us all and given detailed instruction of their use and the rules of touring Stonehenge, mostly about finding the bus by noon.

After a short walk we arrived at the visitor center transport zone for another smaller bus ride to the actual Stonehenge site. The weather had not improved, the wind was howling and the rain was on and off, actually more on. Today we had brought umbrellas and warm clothing so we would be comfortable, well maybe not.

So the small bus dropped us at the access point for the site.  On arrival we had our first significant bird sighting of the day and trip actually.

We had been told there was a Great Bustard walking the area and sure enough there it was, walking on one of the farm fields adjacent to the rocks. Turns out there's a story behind the Great Bustard; seems they were eradicated from England by hunters in the 19th century but a British bird immigration program brought several mating pairs from Russia for a reintroduction. After limited success and realizing that Bustards, like people, prefer to vacation in warmer climes, meaning the Bustards migrated to Spain and the Mediterranean it was time for a new tactic. The most recent introduction was with Bustards native to Spain and there seems to be a glimmer of success with 20-30 pairs of birds now calling the UK home year-round. (Borrowed Photo)

Okay, enough with the birds, we're here to see the rocks, so here they are. We listened to the history lesson on the audio devices but after a while, I pressed the "Stop" button and just looked, I can make up my own history or speculation as the meaning of the rocks, how they got here and so forth.

To say that Stonehenge is a busy place is an understatement. There was a line of cars and buses all aiming for the same spot on earth, hundreds of people at any given moment are surrounding the rocks. Walking amongst the ruins is no longer permitted and a corded off walk-around is provided. This is actually a good thing as not only does it protect the rocks, it gives better viewing and photo ops without people climbing and crawling amongst the stones.

By 1215 we were back on board the bus, same seats is a rule by the way, en-route to Bath, the ancient Roman city were people bathed I guess.

En-route to Bath the driver came upon a detour; seems that a bridge before us was not rated for our size of bus with 80 SOBs (for clarity "souls on board"). One would think the tour company and bus company would not be surprised by this but that didn't seem to be the case. We detoured and likely added 30 minutes to the ride, but again it was a pleasant ride through the English countryside.

On arrival in Bath, we were again given specific instruction for timing, meeting places and prompt returns to the bus for departure. Once so instructed everyone headed off to lunch. Sheila and I dined at The Huntsman, a proper British pub and eatery. We had the Sunday special of beef, well I did anyway, Sheila opted for the veggie version of the same plate. Again the staff was stymied by the request for an Arnold Palmer, so some variant had to suffice. Let's just say the veggies were good as was the gravy. The puff pastry was bland and the beef, even though cooked for "12-hours" still needed a little more tenderizing before being truly palatable by U.S. standards.

Promptly at 1500 we met with our guide Richard in front of the entrance to the Roman baths; he provided us with tickets and in a few minutes we entered the ruins, reconstruction, etc. of whatever it should be called. Basically a fair number of years ago the locals uncovered evidence of a Roman first century AD civilization in the area of what is now known as Bath. In the first century the place was known as Aquae Sulis situated on what is now the Avon River and served as an outpost for the Roman Empire. Most of what we saw was a 19th century reconstruction that has continued through now. That said the excavations had uncovered basic structural foundations and many artifacts to properly annotate the history of the local Roman town. Like anywhere with an history so old, there are many myths, legends and some degree of fact to what we saw and heard.

So, did we partake in the bath? Of course not, by today's standards the water is considered to be polluted and unfit not only for human consumption but also even to touch. The waters of the bath though fed from a nearby hot spring are considered "untouchable". Nevertheless, I wasn't coming this far without at least testing the water temperature. Sure enough it was warm, probably in the 90-100 degree range, flowing from the spring into the local river.

Once through the ruins and having navigated through the gift shop we were back in the local courtyard where me eyes spied an "Ice Cream" sign. We partook of the David Thayer offerings of ice cream as a delayed dessert from lunch.

By 1715 we were back on the road and though it was a weekend, traffic into London was intense. It took just over three hours to return to the city.

Tourists were dropped at various places; we choose to disembark at the Park Plaza Hotel near the London Eye, the same hotel where we had tea just on Friday. With a relatively short walk we were back in the hotel by 2100 to end the day; well not exactly as I remained up well after midnight working of any variety of things from home to Helium to blogging, etc.