Europe 2009, Day 6: Around in circles. On purpose!

[thewhitelily]

I asked Emma to let me sleep in this morning.  She and our host apparently had a great morning catching up and walking in to Cheltenham to see the race track, the ladies college, and the local Swedish cafe.  I, however, had an even more wondrous morning waking up at 10am after 12 hours sleep!  Yes!  I will beat this cold!

It was thus around twelve when we finally hit the road away from Cheltenham and thus it was quickly decided to drop Bath from our itinerary.  Sad, but the other two items were both comparatively quick must-sees, and Bath sounded like it would take more time.

Gloucester Cathedral was our first stop, and we were so glad we went!  Most cathedrals don’t allow photography, and those that do almost never allow tripods, which makes taking nice photos very difficult indeed, but Gloucester Cathedral just encouraged a three pound donation for tripod and all!

In addition, it’s one of the best cathedrals I’ve seen, comparable to Westminster in beauty if not fame.  We wandered around for an hour or two going snap happy, then—shock horror!—remembered lunch at an almost reasonable time.  KFC, but still, food! 

Our next stop on the sat nav was Stonehenge, but thanks to the technically unrestricted speed limits on a lot of the windy, narrow roads, we got taken a slightly special way.

Many of the British roads are quite scary for a driver used to the wide Australian roads.  Even scarier is the tendency to park on either side of the road facing either direction, and to park on both sides so that even half decent roads are brought down to half decent roads are brought down to half, maybe three quarters of what I would consider to be a lane.  British drivers, on the other hand, being very used to them and very aware of the width of their cars, drive at these incredibly narrow passages with absolute confidence that you feel the same way and the speed to match which gives tourists like us the reputation for diving towards the hedgerows at the least sign of another car on the road.

So, in actual fact, these roads ended up being quite a bit longer than the highway, if also quite a bit more picturesque.

In particular, the approach to one village was lined with thatched cottages (and a master-thatcher’s workshop!), which then turned into the picture on the left.  Remember that Britain drives on the left.

After picking my moment, completely blind,  and ducking out to gun it past the scary!lorry, we emerged in the town square, which was basically a massive free-for-all network of parked cars and mini-lanes in between them, with a classic church at the end of it and… woah.

“What is this place?” exclaimed Emma.  “The little town of ‘This Is England’?!”

Marlborough, as we finally worked out the place was, while not on our list of Must See locations, was certainly a worthwhile experience to drive through.

We continued on our way back on a proper highway, watching the trip meter tick down to Stonehenge to watch for the turnoff.  It was approximately a minute before we were due to arrive when we crested a little hill and it was just there, about 300m from the highway, surrounded by oily bitumen and a constant stream of cars, busses, and trucks.

It was right there on the frigging highway!

Stacks of people must just commute straight past it to work every day, without even remembering that they’re driving past a 5000 year old monument to a civilisation whose traditions we can only guess at. 

It was drizzling reasonably, so we tried to send a text message to G&D to let them know we’d probably be on our way in half an hour or so, then make an equally quick stop at Avebury and be in Woking in time to meet them for dinner.  Unfortuately, the message wouldn’t send, because of lack of signal, so we decided since we were being quick it didn’t matter if we waited until we got back on the highway.

At five thirty, we made it back to the car, having stared at a big pile of rocks for an hour and three quarters.  Wow!  As incredible as we’d hoped, and no less so for the tourists and the sound and smell of the highway barely the other side of the paddock.  The audio guide was unfortunately very missable, but with no way to skim through it, but we listened to most of it anyway for the rare tidbits of interest.

Once we were done, we hopped back in the car and drove by twice more to get a shot from the car.  What can I say?  We’re big geeks!

We decided to give Avebury a miss—it would have been nice to walk among a stone circle close up, but our sat nav claimed it was five times the distance as we remembered from the guide books and we knew which one we’d be taking directions to it from.  Besides, Stonehenge was plenty of awesome for just one day.

On the highway we managed to get a call through to D and agree to go to a English Pub/Thai resturaunt nearby.  A curious juxtoposition of purposes, but the food and atomsphere was excellent even if the Tom Yum soup was incredibly hot Tom Yum soup and there was a very rowdy pool competition on the side.  Choking on Tom Yum aside, I stunned G&D (who I’ve eaten dinner with tonnes of times) with how much food I can pack away when I’m actually being physically active.

Hopefully I’ll even come back with the occasional muscle.  :)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Given your usual morning narcolepsy, a 10AM sleep-in wouldn't normally raise eyebrows, but with what you've packed into the holiday so far, I'm impressed Emma let you sleep that long. One hopes that your cold was suitably chastened.

I think you stole my car-size-awareness skills when you left, because since you departed I've had two close encounters with supermarket trolleys. (In this sense, "a close encounter" can be read as "the trolley shot away in a crazy slalom, almost knocking down an old lady out to buy feed for her pet goldfish"). Anyway, it sounds (and looks) like you need acute driving senses more than me at the moment, so feel free to keep them until you've finished driving on pint-size roads.

It seems to me that there are some striking parallels between some British and Australian sights you've seen. Take Stonehenge and the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road - they are both:

a. very old,
b. major tourist attractions,
c. located near highways, and
d. basically just large hunks of rock.

Admittedly there were a few more crazy pagans involved in the English version, but really, you can see it all without leaving the island continent. Throw in a halfway decent cricket team and there's no comparison! :)

PDA,
Hubby