Day 18: Journey to Stonehenge (7/29/2010)

We ate breakfast at 8:30, then packed up, paid Marian, and were on the road by 10:00. We drove one hour north to the Eden Project. It was a bit expensive, 17.50P for an adult ticket, but it was interesting to see the Biomes. The Mediterranean biome was neat because it smelled so much like home. In fact, it had an entire California section! The Rain Forest biome was very hot and humid!! At first it wasn’t so bad, but about half way through the heat and humidity was so stifling that you just wanted to make a run for the exit. We only spent about and hour and a half at the Eden Project because we had three hours of driving ahead of us to get to Stonehenge.


Three hours of Tiesto’s Club Life later, we arrived at Stonehenge. There we ate sandwiches in the parking lot, and then proceeded to view the attraction. Davin was very impressed by the monolithic structure. What most impressed him was that the henge was constructed in three different phases, each separated by hundreds of years. The amount of effort required to complete the structure was exceptional, and yet all knowledge of why it was constructed has been lost. The people who were responsible for its creation abandoned the site for some unknown reason, and left no indications of how or why Stonehenge was built. I was more impressed this time than the first time I visited, but I still find it more frustrating than intriguing that nothing is known of the henge’s purpose or builders.



We then drove a short distance to view another neolithic site, called Woodhenge. It is another henge that is part of the Stonehenge complex. It was built out of wood instead of stone, so the only evidence of its prior existence are postholes that were discovered through excavation. Today the postholes are filled with small concrete pillars to show the size and layout of the henge. It doesn’t look very impressive today, but in it’s original form I think it would have made quite a formidable monument.

Around 6:30pm we finished looking at the henges. We then drove two hours to our B&B. We checked in, so to speak, and set off again to buy ice for our cooler and pizza for our bellies. We decided to try out a British Pizza Hut. It tasted like Pizza Hut, but the Medium pizzas seemed suspiciously small. (We bought two Medium pizzas because the restaurant had run out of Larges!!)

We ate the pizza back at the B&B and finished settling in. Finally we wrote this update, and now I’m going to fall into bed. Yay!

P.S: Davin found a NOT so appetizing snack in the Stonehenge gift shop. You can see his reaction below!