The Road Trip to the Old Stones
We'll get to the stones soon enough, but one of the requests I had was that I really wanted to see some of the older churches. And there's one now out there in the distance:
Now at this point we've put in our first 50 miles of driving down the wrong side of the road with some new variation on the roundabout every few feet. Maya was an excellent navigator. Charlotte was keeping her wits about her. I was going to be really relieved to park this thing and get back on my feet.
Ok. More flowers. Wait a minute. We found Waldo!
Out of the car and walking down the street. This is different than Brighton. It's Salisbury. And we're heading to the very old Salisbury Cathedral.
Ok. We walked through this stone arch into the old gated part of the city and in the central part of this area stands the cathedral. Awesome.
Ok. It's big. It's old. Now lets go inside. Yup. Impressive.
I can image, here I am, it's fall. I've been out cutting the grain harvest all week. It's 1506. Sunday. Kneeling in a pew. Latin echoes reverberating. My mind wanders. Everywhere I look there's some sort of architectural awesomeness. Frankincense? I'm thinking this is an amazing time to be alive.
Whooo. What happened in there? That's powerful stuff for a sixteenth century peasant. Back outside now. Still impressive.
My sixteenth century mind has a hard time believing this was build by mortals like myself. Much easier to believe there is some higher power, way beyond me. If they tell me something, I don't have to think twice, I'll believe it, I'll do it, whatever.
No picture, but inside was the oldest working clock on the planet. Getting close to a thousand years old. It was a big one. Use to keep the clock on the steeple going and rang the bells every hour. It was amazing. You had to look at it a good while to see what was going on. Then piece by piece you could figure out that this part or that part did. You could see how that piece welded to the big gear would eventually come around and hit that bar and lift it up and that would make that other big gear pop into action and pull that big rope going up to the ceiling where the bell was attached. And then there were those delicate weights attached to the suspended rotating clicker that could be fine tuned if the clock was running a little fast or slow. Somehow it's right that this device is in the Greenwich time zone. Ticking right now. Even as your computer tunes into the Greenwich atomic clock and stays accurate to within 2 nanoseconds per day or one second in 1,400,000 years.
We couldn't take pictures here, but the cathedral's library contains the best surviving of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta. It was really cool to read that original document that lead to the individual freedoms we take for granted in the US.
Ok. So now I feel like I've been to church. It wasn't as impressive as the billions of stars in the nights sky, but it does take second place nicely.
About those billions of stars. A short drive north takes us to Stonehenge. Here we're going back a few thousand more years. Our first view.
Put your head back several thousand years ago. There aren't any real buildings anywhere around here. At least you nor anyone you know have ever seen anything more impressive than a big hut. And then you come out on the morning of the longest day of the summer and watch the sunrise here.
These stones are so big! Who knows what they looked like back then. They've been majorly rearranged at least three times since the original builders placed them. There are stones that have been stolen, others chipped away for souvenirs. Many people talk about the mystery of Stonehenge. You know, I think it served about the same function in its day as the gigantic cathedrals did in its day. There is the totally unfathomable mystery of the grand universe and then there is the humdrum of everyday drudge life. And there sit the Stonehenges and the Cathedrals as some part-god-part-human meeting ground. The human urge for transcendence goes back very deep.
Charlotte took over 100 incredible pictures here. I think we know that we are all genetically connected to Stonehenge. The mystery of Stonehenge is within us too. And it might be more important to acknowledge and appreciate the mystery, than it is to solve it.
Have you ever heard of Woodhenge? We had. It's only a few miles away and there was still a bit of daylight so off we went. Found it we did. You know, if you are going to build something to last through the ages, wood might not be the best medium. Don't expect to find three thousand year old poles here. Their locations have all been replaced with concrete pillar stubs.
But we were on a mission to get henged. Soon we were seeing it. Behold Hayhenge:
And you will just have to imagine the sillouettes of Cowhenge and Sheephenge. Just as we were about to get totally unhenged, we made it to Avebury. If you haven't heard of it, this little village has been seriously stoned. Not many lodging choices. Like about a choice and a half. We picked the $150 pound per night bed and breakfast. You get to wake up right next to the stones.
Avebury is surrounded by huge placed stones. How and when did they get here? Mystery again. Here you get to walk right up to the stones and touch them just like the sheep. Watch your step. Sheep doo. We headed off into the morning determined to hike several miles of these stones.
Once you get out beyond the circle of stones there is an Avenue of Stones that goes on for about a half of a mile. What was that about?
We were getting out there now. As we cut across over a long hill, a young deer bounded out of a small clutch of bushes. We noticed some other wildlife too.
And some wild daisies:
We got over the crest of the hill and whoooah. What is this? They call it Silbury Hill.
This is the biggest manmade mound in Europe. It's about 4,500 years old. It use to have spiral levels. You know, there are a lot of wheat fields around here and I just learned that this is a favorite area for some of the most amazing crop circles. Here's one that showed up two years earlier about this time of year in a field right near the hill
Here now we've hiked beyond Silbury Hill and we are about to make it up to West Kennett Long Barrow, a large stone crypt that we'll go inside of and investigate.
Maya inside the crypt. Contemplating.
This tomb was made 400 years before Stonehenge was built. It was used for about a thousand years and at least 46 people, some young, some old were buried here. Hmmmm.