1 Stonehenge This was my first view. You parked in a parking lot, went through a tunnel by a souvenir shop, and came out on this path leading to the site.
2 Stonehenge Despite the appearance here, you can't get closer than about 20 feet from the actual stones.
3 Stonehenge There it stands. We'd left around 9am and it was just above freezing, and really windy.
4 Stonehenge A path was laid out around the monument; this was about as close as we were able to get.
5 Stonehenge Here's one of the Stonehenge trilithons.
6 Stonehenge This is one of the Station Stones, I believe. You can see sheep in the distance. Aside from the monument itself and the cold wind, sheep were the main feature of the visit.
7 Stonehenge Me, freezing my butt off. I wore my purse under my coat to foil pickpockets, but it lead to the occasional ungainly appearance here if I needed to get something from the purse.
8 Stonehenge In additon to the monument, the wind, and the sheep, the other feature of the visit was explosions. There's some armed services base nearby, and there were intermitten booms the whole time we were there.
9 Stonehenge I'm tyring to ignore the wind, and failing.
10 Stonehenge Here you can see the outy bit that fit with the inny bits on the top stones. There was some actual rudimentary stonework to the thing, it wasn't just rocks piled on top of each other.
11 Stonehenge Aside from the monument, the wind, sheep, and explosions, there were also ravens. They were strutting around like they owned the joint.
12 Stonehenge I always think about the Spinal Tap song. Wikipedia had this to say: "The rock band Black Sabbath featured a Stonehenge stage set for the 1983-1984 Born Again tour that ended up being too large to fit in most venues. This was ridiculed in the movie 'This is Spinal Tap', when the band orders a Stonehenge set but it arrives in miniature due to a confusion between feet and inches."
13 Stonehenge Here's a raven a second before it launched itself into the air.
14 Stonehenge The tour guide told us some of the speculated history and purpose of the monument while we were driving to it. It was neat hearing all the theories about how the stone was worked and moved.
15 Stonehenge another view as we walked around
16 Stonehenge This is called Friar's Heelstone... there's some thought that 'Friar' was a corruption of 'Freya' though.
17 Stonehenge The other side of the Heelstone. I thought it looked like a grumpy old man.
18 Stonehenge Did I mention it was windy? Note the raven sitting on the top of the rock there.
19 Stonehenge One last look before we were herded back on the bus. I really wanted to stay longer; we just had time to go around it once and not even visit the shop or linger. But there were more things to see!
20 Salisbury Our next visit was to Salisbury, and the cathedral there. We found another neat sundial on the wall here.
21 Salisbury Our first view of the cathedral. You can see some scaffolding where they were doing some restoration work.
22 Salisbury The steeple. It was actually starting to lean, and they've added architechtural aid (buttresses inside, etc.) so it doesn't topple over.
23 Salisbury The windows all have this black stuff on them so if someone tries to throw a rock through them, they will not succeed. Fortunately you can't really tell from the inside.
24 Salisbury The outside was covered with statues of a zillion people. Saints or kings, I'm guessing.
25 Salisbury the front entrance
26 Salisbury Looking down the main corrider... all this was done by hand. I was impressed.
27 Salisbury The stained glass was quite colorful despite the prophylactic.
28 Salisbury The scenes depicted were the usual Bible scenes.
29 Salisbury ...which is not to detract from their amazing, intricate beauty.
30 Salisbury The holy water hose was not turned on, else there would be streams of water falling right into the holes in the wooden planks there.
31 Salisbury This was right under the steeple. There were lots of little decorative bits in the intersections up there. The round bit is about as big as a manhole, and it's how builders got up to construct the steeple.
32 Salisbury Here's some more stained glass; it's newer than the other ones, but not the newest- the far end of the main corrider had some modern glass.
33 Salisbury This arch was one of the later-added buttresses that keeps the steeple from falling over.
34 Salisbury This was heading out the side. Nearby is a coffin with a knight carved on the top; he had the typical garb of one of the Knights Templar.
35 Salisbury Looking back down one of the arms of the 'cross'; there is a memorial to some guy who had something to do with the founding of the state of Maine.
36 Salisbury Stained glass heading out the door; I think these are some of the more modern stuff.
37 Salisbury We're heading to the chapter house, which has the best-preserved of the four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta. This copy came to Salisbury because Elias of Dereham, who was present at Runnymede in 1215. Thanks, Wikipedia!
38 Salisbury Looking out into the courtyard... you can see some crocuses blooming. There were contradictory signs inviting you to reflect quietly in the yard, but to keep off the grass. So we just took a picture.
39 Salisbury more courtyard, plus some architecture and scaffolding for good measure
40 Salisbury leaving; more saint/kings
41 Salisbury Here's a cute little gargoyle that also seems to be acting as a planter, though I don't think that was planned.
42 Salisbury We had lunch at a local pub. This is bangers and mash- which means sausages and mashed potatoes with onion gravy. It was actually pretty tasty.
43 Salisbury Eric and I about to dig in. I liked the fancy chargers and real flowers and all that stuff.
44 Salisbury The place had a sort of a mascot, this cat- it was about 4 1/2 feet tall, and looked pretty old.
45 Bath Next, up a tortuously windy road, Bath. I was terribly car-sick so I don't remember much about this cathedral that Eric took a picture of. "Woo! Bonus points for usin..." View Comments...
46 Bath More cathedral... it wasn't hit as hard with the saint/king hose as Salisbury.
47 Bath The temple itself, formally known by it's Roman name, Aqua Sulis- after the Celtic goddess of healing. Which is interesting, because the Roman temple was dedicated to Minerva. Why not call it Aqua Minerva?
48 Bath The Romans built this, and it fell into disrepair but was revived several times.
49 Bath Here's one of the Roman guys now! Though these statues were made by Brits only about 100 years ago.
50 Bath bust of Sulis-Minerva, which is how the Romans addressed the goddess of the healing springs
51 Bath I was still a little woozy, so I'm not sure what this was... Eric says it was part of the building near the terrace around the Roman Baths that he thought was interesting.
52 Bath looking down at the bath from the terrace
53 Bath The bath and terrace from the previous shots are actually only a small part of the whole complex, which has more baths and a lot of exhibits including this mock-up of what they think the original temple might've looked like.
54 Bath This was from the main entrance to the temple, and is called the Gorgon.
55 Bath A close-up of the Gorgon, sacred to Minerva- he had snakey hair, but also wings on his head and what looked like rays- so it's thought he may also double as a sun god.
56 Bath A side shot of the temple's front. The numbers are for the people who have the recorded tour information, which was on a little device that looked like a cell phone. When you saw a number you punched that in and got a message about that particular thing.
57 Bath mosaic
58 Bath more mosaic
59 Bath Lots of things were thrown into the water. Some were offerings (coins as thanks for blessings, and lead sheets with bitches written on them for curse requests) and some were just garbage- like used dishware.
60 Bath several bases of columns
61 Bath Some Roman had this little monument erected to say thanks to Sulis-Minerva for some blessing he'd received.
62 Bath more 'pedestals of thanks' by grateful petitioners
63 Bath steps leading up to the temple entrance
64 Bath A head from a statue of Sulis-Minerva; there were holes around the top so it's thought she had some elaborate headpiece too.
65 Bath Here's the corner of an offering altar. Each corner was carved with gods or heroes; I think this was Dionysus and Heracles.
66 Bath Even if a temple is dedicated to one god, it's common to see carvings of other gods scatttered about. That way everyone gets to participate!
67 Bath This was along a wall, alongside the Gorgon-sun god.
68 Bath Opposite the sun-Gorgon was this carving of Selene, the goddess of the moon. Nice balance, eh?
69 Bath Here you can see little plants growing in the channel.
70 Bath Here's another overflow channel... you could feel the heat coming off the water.
71 Bath More bathwater... notice the steam?
72 Bath One last overflow channel; the little green dots on the right of the entrance are where people have thrown pennies (pence, more likely) that have started to corrode. "Very cool picture." View Comments...
73 Bath Here's a smaller pool off the main one; you can see the water bubbling in the foreground.
74 Bath I think this was one of the channels that lead to a hot bath room.
75 Bath Here's a hot bath room. The floor was on top of these tiles, and the room was heated up by fires between them under the floor.
76 Bath another hot bath room
77 Bath This is a cold bath room. You can see that lots of tourists have thrown coins and even paper money in this pool.
78 Bath ancient Roman lead pipe
79 Bath a channel leading to the main pool
80 Bath Here's the channel from the previous picture and the main pool. There were signs all over saying not to drink or even touch the water.
81 Bath The main pool; you can see the edge of the terrace at the top there.
82 Bath ducks in the main pool
83 Bath another view of the main pool
84 Bath As you leave, you go through a gift shop and a little restaurant. There is the King's Spring, this cute fountain. There, for 50 pence, you can drink a glass of water from the springs (straight from underground, before it hits the funky polluted areas). It was very warm and tasted of minerals, as you could imagine. I had a hard time finishing mine but Eric liked it.
