Stonehenge to Winfrith Newburg

As the tourist shuttle from Alpha Centauri hovered invisibly over the 3rd, and only inhabited planet, of Sol xf451, the automatic commentary began:

"It is morning on this part of the planet. In the centre of the viewer you can see a large stone rockery. It is not a natural formation. If you look beyond the stones you will see much building activity and many terrestrial vehicles. But look more closely! Look at the humans. Yes - there are hundreds of them. They are performing a strange ritual. At great personal cost, each human takes an audio device, holds it to an ear, and walks anti-clockwise around the structure. At 8 numbered points buttons are pressed. Then each human, having completed a circuit, exits via the commercial outlets. Is this an initiation ritual? Religious service? Taxation? Is it perhaps a punishment? Why? Why? Why?"

From my earthbound point of view the rocks were very impressive. I learned how they were fitted together originally and that over 90 different lichens have been found on the stones. A lichenologist, or perhaps an ethnolichenologist, may have been interested in the latter fact. I wasn't. Dad, you'll be interested to know that the roads around have been redirected. Passing traffic could see little. The direct road, the A31732578655 or whatever, is no longer a through road. Instead they give you a parking permit. There are buildings going up at either end of this road. Access will obviously be even harder soon.

Big lines of people waiting to buy tickets obstructed us until we realised that we could walk straight through with our National Trust pass. I understood that Stonehenge was serious business when I saw that dogs were not allowed - a rare thing in this country.

The audio guide kept saying, "why? why? why?" The answer to Stonehenge is obvious. After thousands of years the ancient Britons had reached the point where they could:

a) pile up mountains of dirt

b) dig really deep ditches

c) stand bigger and bigger stones on end

d) arrange big standing up stones in circles

It was clearly time for some unknown genius to say, "I reckon we could put stone hats on top." Another triumph of the human spirit.

There are two things to note about this pic:

1 It is sunny - our luck is amazing.

2 I managed to frame this photograph with most of the hordes out of shot.

We thought seeing Salisbury Cathedral would be good. We parked at Sainsbury’s to get lunch and discovered that the ATM wouldn't give us any more money. This was disturbing on a day when we were feeling frazzled and exhausted. We were impressed by Salisbury but not really in the mood for this particularly exuberant exercise in stone balancing. 

Salisbury Cathedral had the Magna Carta in a fascinating museum section and lovely cloisters. To get into Salisbury from Sainsbury’s we walked into the ye olde section along the river path. Ducks were in evidence. It would have been great except both of us were inwardly freaking about the ATM situation. I suspect we had reached that exhausted state of mind all travelers reach. All you want is your simple life back in which you knew where the next toilet would be and were not dependent on a Satnav

Finally we reached our new HQ - Winfrith Newburgh on the South Dorset Downs. Lyn missed a pheasant along the way. We really love it here so far. We sorted out our money difficulties and then we crashed - which is why my homework is late.