Day 16 – Bath / Stonehenge / London - Saturday, January 18th 2014

The Hostel at Bath is best forgotten. Sometimes things are basic and that is indeed the word for where we were in Bath. My room was so high up the birds had nose bleeds and I felt  rather like Quasimodo (The hunch back of Notre Dame) all that was lacking was the bell rope to pull!

However after a good breakfast were able to have a tour around the city of Bath. This city began life during Celtic times as a sacred place where the water goddess came to the surface as hot mineral springs. The Romans set up an R&R resort using the water to supply baths that they built.

It was during Georgian times that Bath gained its current look when they began also “taking the waters”

 A typical Georgian street in Bath

Because the “hot” new building style was to emulate the classical and all thing Italian, they decided to build their own copy of the Ponte Vecchio from Florence. So Bath has the only other bridge with shops on it in the world.

The Bridge over the Avon in Bath

Another “classic” thing to see in Bath is the Royal Crescent. This beautiful set of buildings is also constructed in the honey coloured stone that makes up the majority of the buildings.

The Royal Crescent

The students listening to the Guide as we stood in the gardens below the Crescent.

While we were listening to the guide, we happened to see a bunch of Squirrels bounding around on the lawns. I set of in hot pursuit and snuck up on one of the little “blighters” to get a picture of their cuteness.

A Squirrel (the students found them very interesting)

Soon we were on our way to that ancient and important monument to the Neolithic, Stonehenge. We drove out to Salisbury Plain, an open and wind swept area, and boy was it wind swept. As soon as we stepped out of the bus it hit us. The air temp was about 5 deg C. With the wind chill it would have been well below zero. However no one wanted to miss out on this sight so we bravely went onward. Stonehenge never disappoints. It is a powerful statement of what humans can do if the work together whether it be today, or 5000yrs ago.

Stonehenge. (Boy it was COLD)

We had a very good audio guide for the site and it gave us a lot of useful information about what we were seeing. I was listening and walking, took a picture of some students there before finally realising I could not see many of the boys. They were …..gone! It seem a quick circuit a few photos, and they had snuck off back to the bus. No stamina at all! Only 1 managed to stay with it, and that was Christian.

Christian at Stonehenge

The Key stone that helped frame the sun at the winter Equinox

At the interpretative centre there was a very good museum and displays about the construction of the site. It also has a replica stone to try and pull.

Christian trying to pull one of the Sarsen Stones. No contest really!

We were the last back to the bus as all of the less hardy members of the group had “wimped out”.

Salisbury was our next stop for lunch. We found some nice food shops there, the Sausage rolls and yeast buns from the bakery were a firm favourite. The shops were very quaint in places.

I have not seen the word Ironmonger on a shop for a long time.

Our next stop was London. We are in the accommodation and it is a very nice hotel located right in the heart of this city.