Stonehenge & Salisbury Cathedral

In late January, Meridian said "the next thing I want to see is Stonehenge."  Good enough for us!  We quickly planned a day trip and took off that weekend, on Sunday the 24th. The drive is a little over an hour, mostly West and a little South.  Not a bad drive at all, easy peasy with our GPS navigator.

It IS right by the side of the road, but we knew that going in, and were pleased to find a decent parking lot there.  There's chain link around the field it's in, but you could just walk up and put your camera lens through the diamond shape in the fence... but we wanted to get closer so we paid our £s and went through the tunnel under the road to the henge.

We had watched a National Geographic documentary before we left the states, so the kids were more interested in looking around the grounds than I think they would have been otherwise.  The day was cloudy, and it was cold out.  So cold that we decided to come back another time to explore the grounds more, like where the wood circle was built and whatnot.  Here are the pictures:

Cambria was having a hard time with the sun... this is the best of the bunch.  :) 

The sun was out, but I don't like how I'm hiding behind Scott.  :)

Fun with Photoshop.  :)

We wanted to go see Avebury too... it's supposed to be really quite interesting since the stone circle there surrounds a village, and you can walk right up to the stones.  But since it was so cold, and we knew the weather might be an issue, I had a back up plan.  After we left Stonehenge, we drove the short distance to Salisbury, where alas, we found no steak.  :(  But that was ok, because we really came to see the cathedral.

We had lunch at a pub in Salisbury (shown behind us), it was nothing to write home about.  Unfortunately, the pub we wanted to eat at didn't serve food at 2:30 on a Sunday.  2:30 is between lunch and dinner, silly Americans! 

We walked along the river on our way to find the Cathedral.  

We thought this arch over the road was interesting... you can just drive right under it!  You can see the spire of the cathedral peeking over the top, but we didn't realize it at the time. 

Close up of the roadway arch

And here it is, Salisbury Cathedral! 

Fan-freakin-tastic.  Built in 1258!  Yeah, no power tools back then, you know.

Scott and Cambria check out the top of the spire (Britain's tallest!) with a telescope.  

 

 

 

 

Meridian asked me to take this picture, because the guy is missing his head.  :) 

This is inside the cathedral walls - there's a courtyard (ahem, graveyard) to the right, the cathedral is to the left.

So there was some service going on (we didn't see anyone other than tourists) and they had a sign out saying we weren't allowed to take pictures inside because of it.  Boo.  The inside was really fantastic, click here if you want to see it.  

We were surprised that people (famous and/or wealthy people mostly) are buried right in the cathedral, under the floor tiles.  Sometimes, there was no path between the graves, so there's no way around stepping on the graves.  This was odd for we Americans, who have been taught to never, ever step on a grave.  Meridian was a little wigged out that there were "dead people" in there, she'd jump over them when she could, and whimper Eww and jump when she accidentally stepped on one. Silly.

Also interesting is that it's not just one big room with pews.  There are many smaller praying areas off to the sides, some with their own walls even, that don't reach up to the ceiling.  It was quite surprising.  

In the courtyard, after touring the inside.  

We missed seeing the Magna Carta... one of the original copies is stored in the Chapter Room at Salisbury Cathedral.  The Chapter Room closed an hour before the cathedral itself.   If you don't quite remember (I didn't) the Magna Carta made the King accountable to, and not above, the law.  Pretty cool. 

I didn't bring my tripod, so these night shots aren't as good as they could have been.

 

All in all, an interesting and fun day trip, taken on a very very cold day.  :)