Another stone formation?

We spent our day in Avebury. It is the location of another stone circle like Stonehenge.  The stones here are individual tall stones set into the ground over 4000 years ago.  The circumference of the circle is around 3000 feet and you can walk up and touch the stones.  Sheep farmers use the land so we were passing sheep as we were walking around the stone circle.

There are two other heritage sites in the area.  One is Silbury Hill which is a man made Hill that is 120 feet high and 500 feet wide in the middle of a naturally flat area.   The was also a 5000 year old burial site called the West Kennet Long Barrow a little further away.   We walked about a mile from the parking lot to get to the hill and another mile further to the Long Barrow.

The walk was uneven on an unimproved path.  I made it to the Hill and halfway more to the Long Barrow but once I saw the final elevation climb to get to that site,  I stayed behind while everyone else made it to the site.  That was a 20k step day,  my feet hurt!

More Abbeys

I am conflicted about our current hotel.  Our room is super small,  the bathroom seems put together with spare building materials and the steps to get to our room are steep and narrow and on the outside if the building.  However the place e is clean, the owner is super nice and responsive and he makes great breakfasts.  That’s probably why the place has had great reviews on Booking.com.

After our hardy full English breakfast we packed up and  headed out to see the Glastonbury  Abbey. It’s actually the ruins of the former abbey but some of the towers,  portions of the chapel are still standing.  It was ordered to be closed by King Henry Viii and it’s valuables stripped from the site.

The site is also home to the legend that King Arthur was once buried here. Some historians feel that this was a story made up by the monks in the 1200’s to draw attention to their order,  help increase visitors and thus revenue which provided them enough money to build this once great abbey.

After lunch at a fry shop around the corner which had surprisingly good and reasonably priced fish and chips (4.5 in Yelp) we headed towards Wells and the Wells cathedral.  The Wells Cathedral was impressive and well preserved.  It seemed larger than Westminister Abbey in London but the bodies interred there were not as famous. My favorite feature of the Abbey was the original working clock that had Knights jousting on the 15s. It's supposed to be the 2nd oldest working clock in existence.  The architecture is also different that the other buildings with scissor arches in addition to the regular plain Jane arches you see at most of these old cathedrals.

Finally we drove to our new basecamp for the next few days.  Even though it was listed on Booking.com it a three bedroom townhouse with a well equipped kitchen, and the Waitrose grocery store not too far away.  We’ll be eating in or picnicing for the next few days.

Bath

We spent our day in Bath.  Bath is a 2000 year old city established by the Roman’s and is best known for the public baths set up to take advantage of its naturally warmed spring water.  Later the English felt that the waters had medicinal powers and set up hospitals and of course a big church.  We took a two hour walking tour of the city led my a older resident of the city who reminded me of Julia Child.

Afterwards we found a site nearby that was part of English Heritage.  We had purchased the 16 day English Heritage card which provided access to over 100 sites including Stonehenge.  We visited the remains of a castle build in the 1300s by the Hungerford family.   Over time the family hit hard times and sold their castle around 1700 for salvage,  parts which can be found in another castle nearby.

Stonehenge and Downton Abbey

Our first stop out of London was Stonehenge.  It was about 2 hours away with traffic.  There is an admission fee which covers the two mile bus ride from the visitors center. We were able to skip the long line to buy tickets as I had purchased a 16 day English Heritage membership which allows for free entry to over 100 sites around England including Stonehenge. I also reserved our entry time in advance.

From the visitors center it’s about a 2 mile bus ride to the actual site.  Seeing the pictures of Stonehenge doesn’t compare to seeing it for real.  You don’t realize how large it is till you are standing next to it.  The visitor guide was also well organized.  We had downloaded the visitor guide to our smartphones and learned about the history walked around the monument.

Our next stop was Highclere Castle which was the castle used for the filming of Downton Abbey. It was about 30 minutes from Stonehenge.  If we wanted to minimize our driving we should have stopped at Highclere first but I was able to pre order our admission tickets to the castle and the only time available was in the afternoon.  All Spring and Summer these tickets were sold out on their website but I would still check their website daily to see if anything had changed. Then about a month ago their website had a banner that stated that a limited number of tickets had just become available and one of those dates worked perfectly with our schedule.  I could have bought the tickets on site when we arrived but I read how they sometimes sell out or we would have to wait till later in the day to enter.

Unlike Stonehenge,  Highclere was a disappointment when compared to watching it on Downton Abbey.  The outside was fabulous but the inside seemed worn and much smaller than as imagined on TV.  In any case I was still happy we got to tour the castle.

Afterwards we drove to our B&B which is in a small town outside of Bath.  We picked the place based on the high scores and price on Booking.com. The owner of the B&B must have had all of his friends write the reviews on the website as I wouldn’t have rated it so high.

Driving on the Wrong side of the Road

After packing and cleaning our apartment we walked up a few blocks to the car rental facility at the Paddington rail station.  The rental place was an off-site parking garage operated by Europcar a French company.  I went with them as their pickup was the closest to our apartment and their rates were the best.

I wanted a “large” diesel wagon like what we had on our trip last summer but car rental prices were much higher in the UK and the base gasoline powered “large”sedan was 40% cheaper so that’s what I reserved. One thing I learned over my many years of business travel is that being friendly with whoever is behind the counter usually results in better service.  In this case I was able to get upgraded for free to the diesel sedan which is also a higher optioned car.  BTW "large" in the UK is smaller than midsized at home.  Our car is smaller that an Accord/Camry but slightly larger than a Civic/Corolla.

Getting out of London took extra time due to traffic plus I had to get used to driving on the other side of the road.  I had a tendency to position the car too far to the left of the lane.  My backseat driver sitting in the front was pretty tense for most of the day.  I don’t blame her as I’ve ridden as a passenger many times in Japan and is always odd to sit in the “drivers” seat but not have a steering wheel.

Last Day in London

For our last day in London we took the train out of London for a quick trip to the  Hampton Court Palace.  Rail/tube prices in London are based on the distance you travel so I had pre purchased a 7 day 3 zone unlimited ride pass which allowed us to ride the underground/tube or bus to Wimbledon and pretty much everywhere we wanted to go in London.  Hampton Court was out in zone 6 but fortunately the transfer was from a zone 3 station which we could ride to. From.  There I asked the ticketing agent for the best promotional price which was only an extra £18 for the 4 of us round trip.  This was still much cheaper than purchasing a 7 day 6 zone pass.

Hampton Court was a second palace for Henry VIII.  It was a nice castle with huge surrounding ground and a maze.  We went through most of the rooms and the maze of course and headed back to town as had another stop before our evening event.

Our London Pass included 24 hour access to the Thames river boat line.  The boat stops at various places along the river so we got on at the Westminister pier and rode it all the way to Grenwich and back.  That was a long ride but very educational and neat to see the various sites from a different perspective. It was still raining off and on but we sat outside for the best views.
The cruise took a little longer than expected so we didn’t have enough time to get back to our apartment to change before our tickets to Wicked.  We had already seen Wicked in Seattle but we wanted to see a show we knew we would enjoy in London.  Plus we were able to take advantage some special promotions for the boys tickets, aka as free, so it made the show extra enjoyable. Actually I was amazed how much better the performance was in London.  The performers had better voices and/or the acoustics at the Victoria Apollo Theatre were superior or both.

We didn’t get back to the apartment till 11:30p and we still had to pack and find a hotel for our stop the next evening.

Shard or Eye

Went started the morning with a visit to Londons tallest tower which they call the Shard.  We had to decide between the London Eye which is the big Ferris Wheel or this building, both which have  overpriced entry tickets.  We picked the Shard as we could stay at the top for as long as we wanted and to reduce the risk of spending 30 minutes with potentially smelly or rude tourists in a glass cabin.  The Shard is named for its appearance of shards of glass leaning together to make a tower.  Britons are clever at naming their buildings as other building that were within view of our platform are named the Gherkin , Cheesegrater,  and Walkie Talkie.  The view was good but it was an overcast London day. I swear I could feel the building slightly sway but no one else in the family sensed any movement.

Afterwards we got back on the underground to get to Wimbledon.  We had a 90 minute tour of the grounds which took us to the press areas,  players lounges and eventually Centre Court.  We visited the museum afterwards for a complete history of Wimbledon.  It was cool to see the place I watched on TV.  Not sure if the boys enjoyed it as much as me.

Stamford Bridge was on our way back from Wimbledon so we got off the tube for a tour of the stadium where Chelsea FC plays.  We toured the locker rooms,  press rooms,  sat in the benches and shopped.  It was neat to see a stadium design just for soccer. I also noticed that they don’t overcharge for concessions like they do at our stadiums. I think Stamford Bridge holds around 40k people but you are really close to the action.  This stadium is scheduled to be replaced in a few years to increase the capacity to 60k fans.

After dinner at home we ventured back out to check out the Knightsbridge shopping district.  It was raining pretty hard by now but that doesn’t stop us at home.   When we got out of the tube, you could tell we were in the fancier part of London with the high end shops and the Harrods store around the corner.  While we were walking to Harrods,  we passed by a chrome plated mercedes SLR (almost $500k when new) stuck in traffic with Kuwait license plates and a few Lamborghini Aventadors ($400k) also just idling along in the traffic.  These guys probably just dropped off their significant others at the Harrods as I was amazed at the pricey stuff for sale and the people carrying multiple Harrods shopping bags out.

By the time we made it back home my fitness tracker showed over 20k steps.  That was a long day!