Stonehenge, Salisbury and Kitkats
Now that it's the second week here, we're starting to get in the habit of work, homework and fun. The second Friday Field Trip was a trip to Salisbury and one of the most sought-after tourist attractions in the world: Stonehenge. It was quite a rainy day, most of use were clutching to our umbrellas, which became a problem one we were in the windy fields behind Stonehenge.
It wasn't a terribly long drive. It's about 2 1/2 hours west of London. The beginning of our day was spent at the amazingly spectacular cathedral, Salisbury (pronounced Salsbury) cathedral. The cathedral is truly spectacular, if only for it's height: it's steeple is the highest in England. It was so high that in the 18th century (I think that's what the guide said, don't quote me) it began to shift, and they had to put flying buttresses on the inside of the building so the thing wouldn't collapse. It was raw and spectacular and the pictures really don't do it justice. It looks much more dark than it really is. It's actually quite light in there, and it doesn't use much electricity.
See my album here.
It is early gothic style of architecture. Statues, tombs and picture absolutely litter the place. It's interesting that each tomb as we went by seemed to house a statue of a soldier, and, as the tour guide pointed out, the statues' armor got increasingly complex.
Something sad was that the ceiling and walls used to be covered in paintings, medieval paintings, and when the place was "refurbished" in the 17oo's they whitewashed the place to make it appear more lit. They also took out many stain glass windows.
The thing is absolutely huge.... standing where a regular person would have stood seemed to me to be half a mile away from where the bishop would sit....
Ah. So get to Stonehenge. After the cathedral, we ate lunch at a quaint little pub. I had my first real meal of fish and chips. Andrea's dad was right. The chips, fish, and peas all tasted the same. I don't know how it's possible.
It was a cute little town, but we didn't get to spend enough time in it, I think.
Alright, alright I'm getting to it! We drove through miles of stuff like this:
And then there were big rocks. Really big rocks. At first, I thought that the place was a touristy hoopla over nothing, despite the hour-long explanation about it on the bus ride, but then I got closer.
See my album for stonehenge.
You're not allowed to actually stand inside the ring, or touch it, because a random person in a pick up truck a few years back nicked off a hunk of the blue stone and ran away with it. Now they get nervous about tourist touching it, so there is a ring of a walk-way on the grass outside of the ditch that tourists are allowed to hang around. There were a lot of us. It took away from the experience seeing so many people not care about it.
So when I first got there, I saw a bunch of tourists and then rocks and I said, Oh, whatever. We walked around, took picture on the east side, and it started to rain. The side where you first come in (and I'm sorry, but I have it in reverse order on photobucket, again) is the least put together and in the most disarray. And to be honest, it is really not remarkable.
But then I began to walk around it. And on the opposite side, it is a bit more put together.
A little bit about history first. I had seen a program about it on the discovery channel a few years prior. And adding that to the barrage of information on the bus ride, I can summarize:
About 3000 B.C.E, Stonehenge began to be built. Think about it. I was told by the tourguide that the Romans actually were told to journey just to see the sight, which had been old to THEM. Stonehenge was build in three stages:
1. They dug a ditch. A really big, circular ditch.
Consider, though, they were doing this with antlers and bone, and the ditch has still lasted 5000 years.
2. They constructed a circular ring made out of wood, which has been nicknamed by archeologists, "Woodhenge".
This was carefully established and aligned with the summer solstices, the stars and so forth.
3. They constructed what we now know as "Stonehenge"
From the start of the ditch to the final stone in Stonehenge, it was finished in about a thousand years.
A thousand years.
A... THOUSAND... years.
A thousand.
Whoa.
It's hard to tell what it was used for. Most think it was a religious site (not unlike the cathedral???!).
So basically. Without going into explicit detail, I'll describe what I was told and what I've heard about the construction.
The nearest location that these ancient peoples could have found rocks the size of the sarsen stones (i.e. foreign stones) was twenty miles away. Twenty miles. So these ancient peoples had to lug these monstrous rocks (about 15 tons in weight) twenty miles across hilly and treacherous land. Using only man power. That is pretty awesome in an off itself. And a lot of them, too.
Also, these people used sophisticated carpentry to build the rocks. They fit in together like pieces of a puzzle, and the only way they had to shape the rocks was by bashing the larger one with other rocks.
Go to wiki for more info about Stonehenge...
In any case, my point is that as I began to walk around, to see the part that was more put together, more like a wall or a circle of massive rock, like how it originally was, the more I had a very strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. As if this was really a sacred site. As if this will be here thousands of years after my grandchildren. As if some great, arrogant being was staring me in the face. As if this civilization wasn't actually simple-minded and wasn't something to be looked at like a child and we the adult... but as one that is complex, with hierarchy, power and influence...
I walked a little bit faster, because to be honest, it made me a bit uncomfortable. It was a circle. You are either inside or outside of that circle. Basic humanity tells me that being outside of that circle might have been a bad thing. I don't know.
It was at that latter half that made me much more impressed and a much more sheepish. It's not a big pile of rock. It made me consider the scope of human ability.
And then we went to the gift shop. I forgot everything. I bought a patch.
Alright, to be honest, Stonehenge was like a delicious bit of lamb covered in cheese. The cheese being the gift shop, gay circle that we can't cross, and the road that wooshes with the sound of trucks passing nearby. If you expect a life- altering experience, you'll get it... you'll just have to deal with the commodification and the Japanese tourists and the initial why-did-I-think-this-was-cool factor... and the rain.
Regardless, It was neat.
Then I went to the British museum on Saturday. Saw the Rosetta Stone. Totally going back. It was flippin awesome.
Mom. Here are the kitkats. These are DARK chocolate.
It wasn't a terribly long drive. It's about 2 1/2 hours west of London. The beginning of our day was spent at the amazingly spectacular cathedral, Salisbury (pronounced Salsbury) cathedral. The cathedral is truly spectacular, if only for it's height: it's steeple is the highest in England. It was so high that in the 18th century (I think that's what the guide said, don't quote me) it began to shift, and they had to put flying buttresses on the inside of the building so the thing wouldn't collapse. It was raw and spectacular and the pictures really don't do it justice. It looks much more dark than it really is. It's actually quite light in there, and it doesn't use much electricity.
See my album here.
It is early gothic style of architecture. Statues, tombs and picture absolutely litter the place. It's interesting that each tomb as we went by seemed to house a statue of a soldier, and, as the tour guide pointed out, the statues' armor got increasingly complex.
Something sad was that the ceiling and walls used to be covered in paintings, medieval paintings, and when the place was "refurbished" in the 17oo's they whitewashed the place to make it appear more lit. They also took out many stain glass windows.
The thing is absolutely huge.... standing where a regular person would have stood seemed to me to be half a mile away from where the bishop would sit....
Ah. So get to Stonehenge. After the cathedral, we ate lunch at a quaint little pub. I had my first real meal of fish and chips. Andrea's dad was right. The chips, fish, and peas all tasted the same. I don't know how it's possible.
It was a cute little town, but we didn't get to spend enough time in it, I think.
Alright, alright I'm getting to it! We drove through miles of stuff like this:
And then there were big rocks. Really big rocks. At first, I thought that the place was a touristy hoopla over nothing, despite the hour-long explanation about it on the bus ride, but then I got closer.
See my album for stonehenge.
You're not allowed to actually stand inside the ring, or touch it, because a random person in a pick up truck a few years back nicked off a hunk of the blue stone and ran away with it. Now they get nervous about tourist touching it, so there is a ring of a walk-way on the grass outside of the ditch that tourists are allowed to hang around. There were a lot of us. It took away from the experience seeing so many people not care about it.
So when I first got there, I saw a bunch of tourists and then rocks and I said, Oh, whatever. We walked around, took picture on the east side, and it started to rain. The side where you first come in (and I'm sorry, but I have it in reverse order on photobucket, again) is the least put together and in the most disarray. And to be honest, it is really not remarkable.
But then I began to walk around it. And on the opposite side, it is a bit more put together.
A little bit about history first. I had seen a program about it on the discovery channel a few years prior. And adding that to the barrage of information on the bus ride, I can summarize:
About 3000 B.C.E, Stonehenge began to be built. Think about it. I was told by the tourguide that the Romans actually were told to journey just to see the sight, which had been old to THEM. Stonehenge was build in three stages:
1. They dug a ditch. A really big, circular ditch.
Consider, though, they were doing this with antlers and bone, and the ditch has still lasted 5000 years.
2. They constructed a circular ring made out of wood, which has been nicknamed by archeologists, "Woodhenge".
This was carefully established and aligned with the summer solstices, the stars and so forth.
3. They constructed what we now know as "Stonehenge"
From the start of the ditch to the final stone in Stonehenge, it was finished in about a thousand years.
A thousand years.
A... THOUSAND... years.
A thousand.
Whoa.
It's hard to tell what it was used for. Most think it was a religious site (not unlike the cathedral???!).
So basically. Without going into explicit detail, I'll describe what I was told and what I've heard about the construction.
The nearest location that these ancient peoples could have found rocks the size of the sarsen stones (i.e. foreign stones) was twenty miles away. Twenty miles. So these ancient peoples had to lug these monstrous rocks (about 15 tons in weight) twenty miles across hilly and treacherous land. Using only man power. That is pretty awesome in an off itself. And a lot of them, too.
Also, these people used sophisticated carpentry to build the rocks. They fit in together like pieces of a puzzle, and the only way they had to shape the rocks was by bashing the larger one with other rocks.
Go to wiki for more info about Stonehenge...
In any case, my point is that as I began to walk around, to see the part that was more put together, more like a wall or a circle of massive rock, like how it originally was, the more I had a very strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. As if this was really a sacred site. As if this will be here thousands of years after my grandchildren. As if some great, arrogant being was staring me in the face. As if this civilization wasn't actually simple-minded and wasn't something to be looked at like a child and we the adult... but as one that is complex, with hierarchy, power and influence...
I walked a little bit faster, because to be honest, it made me a bit uncomfortable. It was a circle. You are either inside or outside of that circle. Basic humanity tells me that being outside of that circle might have been a bad thing. I don't know.
It was at that latter half that made me much more impressed and a much more sheepish. It's not a big pile of rock. It made me consider the scope of human ability.
And then we went to the gift shop. I forgot everything. I bought a patch.
Alright, to be honest, Stonehenge was like a delicious bit of lamb covered in cheese. The cheese being the gift shop, gay circle that we can't cross, and the road that wooshes with the sound of trucks passing nearby. If you expect a life- altering experience, you'll get it... you'll just have to deal with the commodification and the Japanese tourists and the initial why-did-I-think-this-was-cool factor... and the rain.
Regardless, It was neat.
Then I went to the British museum on Saturday. Saw the Rosetta Stone. Totally going back. It was flippin awesome.
Mom. Here are the kitkats. These are DARK chocolate.