Stones, you say…again?

I'm sure I'm risking friendships by going on too long on any given topic, but my excuse is that this blog is as much for our own sake as anyone else's. There is so much to process, and I don't have good self-editing skills or instincts. So I apologize and urge you to check out when I bore you. Just come back later when you can bear another long essay.

So we had left Stonehenge, gone through the small village of Upavon, and then we came to one of the sites of the white horses; this one at Pewsey:

And at the same time we made friends with another horse:

The next major stop that day was at Avebury, another World Heritage Site that is just as mysterious as Stonehenge, but bigger and much more accessible still. We could walk the henge (basic general definition: a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area) and step up close to the stones, as demonstrated by Cindy.

Here's a small section of the henge at Avebury:

And this is some of the conversation we heard as we walked along the henge:

Those sheep had a lot to say, but I didn't get the impression they knew the secret of the stones.

And we came across this complicated root system on the henge, which was so beautiful we had to add it to our photo collection:

We retired to a pub for a spot of tea for me and a half pint for Cindy, where we continued to contemplate the henge and stones of Avebury, which do feel really powerful.

Piling on to our bus again, we headed to Silbury Hill, another World Heritage Site. It's a prehistoric hunan-made chalk mound that, at 129 ft high, is the tallest prehistoric mound of its kind in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It's similar in volume to contemporary Egyptian pyramids. Again the mystery persists, with no answers to the questions posed by this 5,000-year-old hill and other smaller hills in the area.

From here we stopped ever so briefly at Cherhill to see another chalk horse cut into the hill:

Then on to Lacock, a village owned by the National Trust and preserved pretty pristinely so that it has become a favorite filming location for some of the Harry Potter films, some Downton Abbey scenes, and numerous other productions. It's a wondrous place; because it's owned by the National Trust it hasn't been modernized in most ways (no electric or telephone lines in the air, no street signs, etc.). Sean imparted a lot of information about how places were built and used in their early days--and how they changed over time. And how they continue to change even today.

Always, it seems, there is a beautiful old church that sits at the center of the town.

On to Castle Combe, which was once an important center of the wool industry.

The last original door in Castle Combe--it's only 600 years or so old. It's held up pretty well.

And the main street:

This was an exhausting day, moving through the millennia and centuries of England's Salisbury Plain. Upon our return to Bath, we had dinner at Sally Lunn's, a restaurant/bakery with a long history and huge buns that is housed in reputedly the oldest house in Bath.

Sally Lunn buns, for some reason that escapes me, are world famous. Our dinner was fine but certainly couldn't have gained world fame.

We marched up the hill to fall into bed after our first full day in Bath--but we weren't actually in Bath that day, so that tale must wait for another chapter.

My advice for this day's account: just look at the pictures. I think they're adequate for a few moments' entertainment. In reading back over this, I think it's one of those afternoons where you needed to be there...