England Road Trip Part 1: Cotswolds, Stonehenge, Salisbury

This summer we visited the British Isles.  We booked a cruise to go to various ports around Britain but before we departed on the cruise, we wanted to tour various sites in England.  We rented a car and I did my best to prepare for driving on the left hand side of the road for the first time in my life as well as deal with England's narrow roads.  Many of the small country roads we traveled on were about one and a half lanes wide with tall stone hedgerows (plants growing out of rock walls) lining either side, with no shoulder.  It was nerve wracking as you could rarely see oncoming traffic until it was right there due to the winding nature of the roads.  Another painful factor was the very frequent roundabouts and never being sure what lane I wanted to be in.  I'm not too proud to admit there were many tears shed and momentary freakouts, but we got through it.

Our first day after picking up our luggage and rental car at London Heathrow Airport, we drove through some of the small villages in the hilly country of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire.  The Cotswolds have an interesting history.  This is sheep country and at one point before the Industrial Revolution, wool was the primary fabric which made the wool merchants here very wealthy.  With the Industrial Revolution concentrating jobs in cities and the price of wool falling as cotton became more common in Europe, the villages here were somewhat left behind.  However, with all their buildings constructed from stone, it didn't rot or fall into too much disrepair.  Today, the charm of the area is undeniable and the proximity to London makes it a fashionable place for the wealthy to have vacation homes, for people to leave the city behind for a long weekend, etc.

Our first stop was Stow-on-the-Wold.  It started as an Iron Age fort on a hill and settlements continued to be established in the area.  In 1107, King Henry I established a weekly market there and those were expanded into fairs in 1330 and 1476 to establish Stow-on-the-Wold as a consistent market town and alleviate the unpredictable nature of traveling traders.  There was also a battle here during the English Civil War in 1646 where the royalists were defeated and surrendered at the town square, the same place that had housed the market.  We ate lunch at the King's Arms pub right on the market square, a 500-year-old pub where King Charles I stayed during an earlier Civil War battle in 1645.  I get a little excited with the history behind our travel destinations if it isn't obvious.

Here are some pictures of St. Edward's Church in Stow-on-the-Wold.  The yew trees framing the doorway are ancient as they can live 3000 years or more.  This doorway is commonly known as the Tolkien Door because a local legend holds that J.R.R. Tolkien visited the church and took inspiration from this doorway when he designed the Doors of Durin.  Unfortunately no evidence has confirmed that legend so far and we didn't see any dwarves inside.

 

 

The church itself as it stands now was built in the 13th century with the tower added in the 14th century, though a church has been on that land since at least 986 AD.  The interior is bright and airy and I appreciated the exposed beams in the ceiling and the beautiful stained glass windows.

This is one of the narrow pathways in Stow-on-the-Wold.  I believe they were designed this narrow so sheep were forced into a single file line when coming in to market to make it easier to count them.

The other main highlight from our first day in the Cotswolds was the town of Chipping Campden.  This was another old market town; their Market Hall pictured below dates to 1627.  It sheltered merchants and farmers while letting in light and customers through the archways.  The rough cobblestones and old wood beams are an indication of its age.  There were plans to sell it in the 1940s but locals raised funds to purchase it and then donate it to the National Trust as a historic landmark, so now the Trust maintains it.

We walked around on a Rick Steves walking tour; Chipping Campden is noted for its High Street with all the limestone buildings.  Most of this section is a conservation area/historic district.

More of the High Street, I like the half timber on some of the buildings.  I think Lydia had splashed some water on herself to cool off or something.

The history of England is quite long.  While our first day of touring hit sites dating from the Renaissance, our second day we went even further back in time to prehistoric Stonehenge.  Stonehenge was constructed between 3100 and 1600 BC making it ancient long before Ancient Greece was in its heyday around 800 BC.  I'm amazed at the ingenuity of the ancient people and their ability to maneuver and stack these massive stones.  Each of the large stones in the outer circle are about 13 feet tall by 7 feet wide and weigh roughly 25 tons.  The stones on top are held in place with mortise and tenon joints - basically an early Lego set with the tenons sticking up and the mortise holes on the top stones fitting over them.  You can see one of the surviving tenons in this picture below on the tallest stone.

 

Stonehenge is designed as a series of ever larger circles surrounding the center.  This bird (might have been a rook or a crow) posed on the top of one of the outer circle stones for us.  We had to walk around the stones along a path; no one is allowed to get terribly close to Stonehenge any longer.

The builders of Stonehenge did not leave any written record or explanation, so we are left to infer the purposes of its design.  It was likely site of multiple uses over the centuries ranging from burial grounds to religious worship to astronomical observatory.  There are particular stones aligned such that an observer standing in the center would see the morning sun pass directly over the particular stone (the Heel Stone) as it rises the morning of the summer solstice.  There is a corresponding stone on the opposite side that on the evening of the winter solstice, the sun would set directly over that stone.  These days would have had particular relevance for the agrarian society to help set their calendars to know when to plant and harvest, celebrate long days in the summer with warmth and daylight and know when the shortest day of winter has hit to know that days would be growing longer from there.

 

Here is one of the common views of it.

As luck would have it, we managed to visit Stonehenge the day before summer solstice.  We made sure to get there early before it got too crowded.  The day after we toured, around 25,000 people were there for sunrise on the solstice.  I overheard one of the guides talking about solstice and how difficult it can be to get the weather to cooperate enough to see the sun rise over the Heel Stone.  It is England and cloudy or rainy days are very common, so the guide I heard had been going for eight or nine years before he finally got a good picture of the sun rising.  Based on the news coverage while we were there, they had a good clear morning and saw the sun this year.

Surrounding the site, they had a few exhibits.  Different stones likely came from different quarries; the largest ones are believed to have come from hills roughly 20 miles away.  This may have been how the people managed to get the stones from the quarry to the site - pulling them on a rolling platform.  Spoiler alert: despite pulling as hard as we could, we were unable to move this massive sample stone.

The people might have lived in something like these huts.  We explored them to see how the people might have lived.

After Stonehenge, we went to Salisbury.  The biggest draw there is Salisbury Cathedral, built between 1220 and 1330.  Salisbury Cathedral has Britain's tallest church spire at 404 feet (which meant I had to lay down on the ground and use some camera tricks that ended up stretching the picture and Karina's legs) in order to fit the whole church into a single picture.

 

We had a cool surprise there.  Because the tall spire is on the same scale as tall cliffs that are natural nesting sites, Salisbury Cathedral is home to peregrine falcon nests.  I still remember in elementary school we had to do a research report on an endangered species and I picked peregrine falcons.  These animals are the fastest animals in the world (when they are diving at least) and aerodynamic marvels.  They can dive at 200 miles/hour or more dive bombing their prey, then stunning/killing them like a bullet in mid-air, snagging their stunned prey, and taking it somewhere safe to eat.  These beautiful and fascinating falcons were almost driven to extinction because the pesticide DDT wound up in their food chain through the insects or small birds that were eating crops sprayed with it that the peregrines then ate.  DDT had the side effect of making the peregrine falcon eggshells too thin and fragile which meant their chicks couldn't survive.

Peregrines have nested at Salisbury Cathedral since at least 1864 and a local conservation organization had spotting scopes trained on the nests and the falcons as they perched on the spire.  It brought me back to my elementary school self watching the falcons and I was very excited.

Another view of Salisbury Cathedral. 

This cathedral is famous for holding one of four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta.  Sealed by King John of England in 1215, one of the key takeaways from the Magna Carta is that no one, even the monarchy, is above the law.  Many other legal concepts, such as due process and a trial by jury, are derived from ideas codified in the Magna Carta, and it was foundational inspiration for the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Due to the age of the document, this copy is kept in a controlled environment within the cathedral and photography is strictly forbidden, but I wanted to make sure I wrote about it (though I was probably more excited to see it and the associated exhibits than the kids).  Here's Derek outside of the Magna Carta exhibit within the cathedral.

The other historical artifact within Salisbury Cathedral is this medieval clock said to be the oldest working modern clock in the world (though other similar clocks also make that claim).  Constructed from iron in 1386, there is no face and a system of weights, gears, and spinning barrels with ropes spin the gears until once an hour a hammer strikes a bell the count of the hour (once for one o'clock, twice for two o'clock, etc.).  I was impressed with the ingenuity and the design.

Here are some pictures from inside the cathedral.  The tall ceilings definitely drew my eyes heavenward.

Stained glass is pretty.

This was one of the more ornate memorials (possibly tombs) within the cathedral.

 

The cloisters around the cathedral made for a scenic and peaceful courtyard.

 

I liked the steeple framed in the decorative arch in the cloisters.

We then left Salisbury and drove to Avebury.  Avebury is home to another Neolithic stone circle like Stonehenge.  While far less famous and iconic, it is massive as the world's largest stone circle (roughly ten times the diameter of Stonehenge).  Many of the Avebury stones have been repurposed for building materials over the centuries or are otherwise missing and they are smaller stones.  Also whereas Stonehenge prevented visitors from getting close to the stones, there were no ropes or fences at Avebury which made it a popular and pleasant place for locals and tourists alike to picnic and enjoy an afternoon.  Because of the solstice the next morning, there were many New Age/hippie types wandering around this ancient site.  It was fun to people watch, though the amount of smoke from cigarettes, etc. was a bit much.

 

Here we are in front of some of the Avebury circle.

 

 

A broader view of a part of the circle.

 

I like the thatched roofs we saw throughout our trip through the British Isles like this house in Avebury town.

 

 

Nearby to Avebury is the West Kennet Long Barrow.  This is a Neolithic burial mound constructed around 3650 BC.  Here's Derek sitting on top of it.

 

 

Inside was a cool man-made cave.

 

 

Outside the barrow and part of the same historic complex as Avebury is Silbury Hill.  It is the second tallest man-made mound in the world, built in prehistoric times whose purpose is unknown.  Here's Karina with the hill in the background.