Stonehenged

Part 2….the rest of the weekend

After leaving Bath, we made our way to Stonehenge.  It was only about an hour drive so not too bad.  It really is in the middle nowhere though.  Just a bunch of rocks in the ground in the middle of the field, crazy right!?  I paid £7.50 to get in but also got a free audio guide, which explained the history, the types of rocks, and the theories about what it may have been used for, etc.  Getting the audio guide definitely made it more interesting but I really wish it would have been warmer out.  Towards the end of the circle around, I started fast forwarding because I was so cold and just wanted to get back in the car.  As Aaron said, it gave me the true English experience - cold, cloudy and partially rainy.  It is amazing that they still don’t really know what these stones were used for and that they have been there for close to 7000 years!!  In two of the locations the sun sets through the rocks during the winter and summer solstice, so one theory is that it was used to tell the seasons.  You also have to wonder where these stones came from and how they raised them up?!  Some of the stones weight as much as 45 tons or roughly 7 elephants.  I don’t think they just lifted the stone up. 

yep im freezing! 

After the trip to Stonehenge, we headed to a town called Leatherhead, which is one of the suburbs of London (zone 6 on the tube map).  David had left some of his stuff at his buddies house from when he used to live there so we swung by to pick it up.  Because it wasn’t too far from Oxford, we stayed the night as well.  Nothing too exciting in leatherhead, just had a little too much Irish fun.  I did manage to get one of those Guinness hats (the floppy ones they give out for St. Pattys day).  A guy dropped it on his way out of the bar and I managed to grab it, I also didn’t tell him I had it when he came back in looking for it.  Oops J 

Sunday morning we headed to Oxford to check out the college.  David was nice enough to drive there so I could close my eyes and pretend I wasn’t hungover.  Oxford University is much larger than I thought it was, it’s actually split up into several different colleges that are placed all around town.  We toured around Trinity College, which seemed pretty small.  The dining hall (which they still use) only held maybe 100 kids.  The campus was really pretty though and I got to see the library they used for the Harry Potter films.  I learned that a lot of the school filming for Harry Potter was done in Oxford, but the castle stuff was filmed up in Newcastle.  Plan to make a trip up there as well. 

Harry Potters Library - and they still use it!

can i be an Oxford Student?

We left Oxford after our quick tour and grabbing a bite to eat.  We were all worn out of checking out a bunch of old buildings and tired from the night before.  Don’t get me wrong the town seemed quite nice, but seeing old building after old building, they are starting to look the same.  And we weren’t in the mood to pay £7 -£10 to tour the insides. 

That’s it for me now but I have made plans for next weekend.  There is a town about 2 hours away called York and im going to head up there for the day to check it out and do a little shopping.  But sometime between now and then I need to figure out what to do for the Easter weekend.  They have a four day weekend so im thinking about heading to wales but I need to figure it out soon before it gets booked.