We had Cathryn's car for Thursday and I had a death wish to go to Stonehenge, so we jumped out of bed early and hit the road. Thanks to googlemaps it was pretty easy to navigate our way out of London, even though my navigator had neglected to bring her glasses, with the result that the driver ended up doing a lot of the navigating.
Stonehenge is a bizarre place; one minute you are driving along a main road, and the next minute there is this ancient and wonderful sight right ahead of you. We stayed for a lot longer than I thought we would ~ I imagined that at least two thirds of the population of the back seat of the car would have started to plead boredom after 10 minutes, but that was far from the way things turned out.
Each of us had our own audio guide, and they were brilliant. The kids listened intently to all of the information, and then Cole repeated a lot of it for the rest of the day.
I had no idea that the stones for Stonehenge came from so far away ~ 350 miles in South Wales. How on earth did they transport those stones?
We walked around for a good while, and sometimes we stood in the same spot for 10 minutes or so and started. And wondered.
How did they do this? Why?
Here's Cole giving a demonstration on how to use the audio guide.
And still fascinated with the audio guide.
Then we came back to modern day times with a quick ice-cream for the 3 kids. It was back in the car and on to Bath. The drive takes you up through an area marked on the map as the Danger Zone, so that was ... interesting. We did watch out for danger, and I think Carys in particular was disappointed that we didn't see any.
When we arrived back in NI, my dad told us that we had been to Stonehenge years ago, but we'd never been to Bath before and it was worth every minute on the motorway to get there.
We didn't ever taste the water ~ other than tap water. But, I guess you can push the little button on the bottom right and water comes out of the jug. We saw a woman filling up her water bottle that way.
You had to have good eyesight to find out where to fill your bottle though ~ that wee man is now almost hidden in behind Carys and Cole.
The cathedral is gorgeous.
We walked over toward the baths, but by this stage it was so late in the day that we didn't really have time to go in and see them. I compensated by telling the kids they could google information when they got home.
So far, no-one has bothered.
Cole with Charles Dickens's head. Kind of.
After all that education, we really needed a cup of coffee. We searched for Sally Lunn's house (and then ended up going somewhere else).
Some of us had a latte.
After all that sightseeing, we got back in the car and drove up to The Circus and The Royal Crescent before heading back to London and a Chinese carryout for tea.
