Marsh-Mel-O's Adventures: stonehenge and bath

4/12/14

This morning I was able to get a good photo of Danielle’s house before leaving. Isn’t it cute!?

We headed off to Stonehenge first. It was going to take approximately 2hrs to get there through the country side. All went well until we got a flat tyre. Thankyou to Matt for teaching me not 2 weeks before how to change a tyre. Of course we were on a downward slope with no emergency lane with mud and grass right up next to the car, on a blind corner, but oh well. I got down and put the jack under the car and raised the car but when it got to taking the tyre off the wheel nuts were on so tight I couldn’t move them. Cue our knight in shining armour, a tyre man drove around the bend and stopped to help. He had a gun machiney thing that took the wheel nuts off in 5 seconds, replaced the tyre and took down the jack, all in the time it had taken me to put up the jack. So we were off again.

We got to Stonehenge just before 11am. We got our tickets, and Danielle and I headed out to the stones whilst her mum went to try and get a new tyre for the car (we didn’t trust the spare). We walked around the exhibition on how the Neolithic people who built Stonehenge lived and worked day-to-day before boarding the bus to Stonehenge.

Halfway to the stones we exited the bus at Fargo Wood to walk the rest of the way. We walked through the woods a bit before entering a paddock. Within this paddock were four Cursus barrows. They appeared as low lying mounds in the paddock, but were actually Bronze Age burial grounds and formed a part of a larger group spanning behind us into the woods we had just walked through.

From there we were able to walk down the paddock, past the construction site to destroy the old visitors carpark and return it to natural ground and up the road to the stones. I spent 10mins trying to find my ticket before we were allowed onto the grassed area on which the stones stood. Danielle was impressed at how close you can actually get to them – approximately 5-6 metres away. I was majorly impressed. We may not know why these stones were arranged like this and we may never know but the feat of arranging them in such a way is incredible. We wandered around the circle of stones for about 45misn before boarding the bus back down the hill.

Down the hill we went through the shop (they always end in the shop!) before meeting up with Danielle’s mum. She had season passes to British Heritage Sites which was what had got us our tickets so she wasn’t worried she hadn’t got to see the stones. We walked through the Exhibition Hall before heading back to the car. Danielle and her mum were both eager to try the Tim Tams I had bought them.

We drove from Stonehenge to Bath and arrived in Bath about 2pm.

First we headed to the get some food and to the Christmas Markets. They were beautiful. Traditional wooden huts which were decorated to the hilt, all selling a huge variety of handmade products. So many Christmas decorations!!

We wandered around for a while before heading to the Roman Baths. It was very well set up in that they had replaced ruins or statues in the places where they would have actually stood. It meant that when you walked around you could see things as they actually would have stood.