Dolmen Project (Year Twelve) Confessions of a “Guerilla Artist”: The Ultimate Dolmen Project

Stonehenge

Day 25 (8/22/12)

This was the day I had been waiting for. Of everything else we were going to be doing in London, Stonehenge was number one in my book. We got up early to make sure that we were at the meeting point on time. As usual we were early so we spent some time just walking around and checking out the neighborhood. There was a couple from Australia there when we got back and we spent the remaining time talking to them. It was a pretty long ride to Stonehenge and I do mean pretty. Although the early part of the ride was on four and six lane highways eventually we started traveling through rural England. Although the landscape looked somewhat like the hills of Wisconsin there were subtle but noticeable differences. The most obvious is that everything is either made out of stone or brick. Even the fences are made out of stone. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, but there is also very little color in English architecture. Because of the materials they use for building everything is earth tones. The other obvious difference is the lack of corn. You can see oats and wheat and hay but no corn. We also learned that free-range pork is a big commodity in that part of England so you would see fields of grazing pigs like you would see cows back home. We also saw cows, horses and lots of sheep. When we got to Stonehenge we were a little disappointed to see that you could not get in amongst the stones. We had purposely looked for a tour that said admittance into the stones but it was a little misleading. It is still very magical to see something of this age and magnitude. After about an hour and photographing it from every possible angle it was off to bath. Bath is a City that grew on the site of a natural hot spring. The Romans first built a bath house over the spring and then other cultures continued to build over the site. Eventually the original Roman bath was rediscovered and excavated. We had three major goals in Bath. First was too drink Bath water, the second was to hike up to the circus, a circular street at the top of the city, which was supposed to have been designed using the proportions of Stonehenge and finally to get fish and chips for lunch. Like so many tours there is too much to see and too little time. We still had a great time and the scenery was awesome. After Bath we had a long ride back to London which was supposed to take two hours but took three because of traffic. Then another experience with the Underground and we were home.