Month: March 2021

Back in 1983 when Mom and I made our first real trip together to London, we had booked a couple of day trips as part of the package. The first one was to Stonehenge & Bath.

We were picked up at our hotel by the tour company taking us on the coach trip. This was when we discovered the phenomena of married couples from the US not wanting to deal with a pair of women. That sort of thing has gotten better over the years, but I can still come across it when dealing with US couples of the same rough age as me. Back then, it was Mom’s age group that snubbed us.

Most couples from other English-speaking countries (Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) don’t seem to care if you are another couple, two women, or a single woman. More women travel these days without being one half of a couple. So I usually have several choices for people to sit with at lunch or dinner. On this day trip, there was a very nice fellow from Vancouver, British Columbia who joined us for lunch.

In preparation for the upcoming summer solstice, at Stonehenge, there were several caravans (called campers in the US) parked on a nearby field. There were also tall chain-link fences around the site to keep folks out of it. So all of my photos from that trip were from a distance. I have included just one of them here. It was a quite beautiful day with lots of fluffy clouds.

Back in those days, there wasn’t a visitor center as of yet or much in the way of fencing normally. People could get pretty up close and personal with the stones. The stones could also be seen from the motorway. But things have changed over the years, including re-routing the motorway.

Now the henge and its stones cannot be seen until tickets have been purchase and collected and you are taken by tram to the site from the visitor center. It is possible to get closer than I did back in 1983 on just a regular visit (as I did in 2016). However, if you are willing to pay a bit more and take a tour there in the middle of the night (the one I had planned to do in 2020 meant leaving London at around 5:30am to get there by the time the sun would be rising), it is possible to actually walk among the stones. Still and all, I was absolutely thrilled to be able to see Stonehenge.

From there, we headed off to Bath. Originally called Aquae Sulis (“the waters of Sulis”), Bath was built c. 60 AD when the Romans decided to build baths and temples there. The hot springs were known to the ancient Britons long before. Bath Abbey was built in the 7th century and enlarged many times since.

We were dropped off in the center of town and led to first Bath Abbey and then the baths themselves. As my first real trip anywhere, I have never seen Roman baths or Roman ruins of any kind before and was absolutely fascinated. Mom and I ventured underground to see the remains of the Sacred Spring, the Roman Temple, the Roman Bath House, and a museum containing artifacts from when Bath had been Aquae Sulis.

I remember there was a head from a statue of the the goddess Minerva in the museum. Unfortunately my photos from underground were not at all good. But then very few interior photos that I took on this trip came out at all decent. So nice now to have digital cameras that can take great photos in low-light situations without flash.

We had lunch at the Pump Room and then walked around a bit in that part of town and near the River Avon. Some of Jane Austin’s novels were either set in Bath or had some scenes there.

I had taken architectural design and drafting as an elective in school. We had studied Bath’s architecture, especially the Royal Crescent. That was our last stop before heading back to London. I was just as thrilled to see that as I had been to see Stonehenge and the Roman Baths.

Next time — a day trip to Oxford and Stratford-Upon-Avon.

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