Bath and Stonehenge

Friday we had a fun traveling day. We left London early on a bus headed for Stonehenge and Bath.
Stonehenge was our first stop. I was snoozing on the bus when Keith nudged me and said, "Look, it's Stonehenge."
It's always weird when you see something in person that you've seen all your life in pictures. It looks so familiar but there's something about seeing it for yourself. As the song says, "Ain't nothing like the real thing."
We parked in the lot and approached the entrance to Stonehenge. Just outside are two rocks that are almost as tall as me (5 feet). One of them (the one on the left) feels like any other rock. The other one is quite cold. This is one of the strange things about Stonehenge. The rocks all appeared in this field about 5,000 years ago and they're not at all native to the area. Nor are they all from the same area.
After you walk in the entrance, you walk through a covered walkway, then up a ramp and you're at the rocks. There is a walkway around the stones - you never get very close to them. Apparently you could do so years ago, and people started chipping off pieces of the rocks as souvenirs.
As you look at these enormous rocks, you wonder how in the world they got there. Even today, with cranes and huge trucks it would be a feat to put all those rocks out in the middle of the English countryside. But how in the world did they haul those enormous rocks back then? Some of them may come from Wales, about 150 miles away.
And why are they there? No one knows for sure. There are lots of theories, including that the rocks are some kind of primitive calendar or calculator. Some believe they have religious significance.
Walking around that circle gives you plenty of time to contemplate it all. Friday was a clear but windy day, and it was good day for thinking about the how and the why. I guess in the end, I think that it's kind of neat that we don't know everything about Stonehenge. The mystery adds to the interest.
After you walk around the big circle, you've done about all you can do at Stonehenge. The gently rolling hills surrounding Stonehenge are full of black-and-white cows and sheep, quietly grazing in the shadow of this iconic site.
So, it was back on the bus, and an hour's drive to Bath, a real charmer of a town. Bath's been around since 1st century A.D. The Romans settled the town because they found healing warm springs there. They stayed about 400 years but those bath remain. We toured the baths and they are fascinating. Water continues to bubble up, 100,000 gallons or more every day. The water there now was probably rainwater 10,000 years ago.
But aside from the baths, I found so much to love about Bath. It has a gorgeous Abbey (around 500 years old) built by a man named Oliver King. His signature can be found on the front of the Abbey - an olive tree and a crown (Oliver King - get it?) He also designed the ladder on the front of the Abbey with angels crawling toward Heaven.
Bath has cobblestone streets and a beautiful river, the River Avon, running through. Across the river is the Pulteney Bridge. This river and bridge mesmerized me - they were so beautiful. Is there anything more soothing than water? What was really nice was that people were using that river - I saw a couple of gents fishing on the banks, a dog pulling out a stick and lots of people eating their lunch on benches along the river.
We had lunch in Bath too. Keith and I ate at the town's oldest restaurant, Sally Lunn's, which happens to be in the town's oldest building. The restaurant opened in 1680, but the building dates from the 1400s. The specialty of the house is the Sally Lunn Bun, a laughably huge piece of bread. We ordered Welsh rarebit for lunch and it was great - a super-rich cheese sauce with a bit of zing poured over a toasted bun. Sally moved to Bath in the 1600s from France where her father ran a bakery. She brought the bun recipe with her and rest is history.
We didn't have nearly enough time in Bath. We're already planning to go back for a day because we were so charmed by this sweet town.
Coming back to London was an adventure. A trip that should have taken 2-1/2 hours ended up clocking in at nearly four hours! Traffic was beyond horrible and our bus driver had a really heavy foot on the brake so it had the feel of a thrill ride. I am so glad I don't drive in London. And at the end of the day, I was so happy to be back home. London really feels like home now.