(Written June 24, 2009)
We spent today with my very favorite English brigadier general uncle, eating good food and visiting the archaeological sites of the Salisbury area. Uncle David really is a good match for the Andersen clan. I think he may be the only person I've met who plans trips and excursions even more obsessively around food than we do. On our last visit, the description of our itinerary was clearly siteseeing as filler around the important framework of his favorite cafes, tea rooms, pubs, and chippies. We constrained him a bit more this time with specific requests to go to stonehenge and Avebury, but he gamely rose to the occasion, bringing us to what was his favorite pub in when he was stationed in the area five years ago. (Dinner was delicious)
The prime activity of the afternoon, of course, was exploring the ancient mystical sites of deepest Wiltshire. Avebury is the remains of a huge stone circle, with a tiny English village nestled in the middle. Silbury Hill is a man-made mound the size of a small great pyramid rising out of nowhere in the middle of the courntryside. West
Kennet long barrow is an ancient tomb with surprisingly high ceilings.
And then, of course, there's Stonehenge. Stonhenge really is as amazing as the non-naysayers say. It's huge and grand and mysterious, even with the nearby road noise and the crowds of tourists (including a van full of Buddhist monks, orange robes and all). I continue to be impressed with the English Heritage's curation of their historic sites. While the audioguide didn't have too much revelatory information concerning a place as famous as Stonehenge, listening to it forces you to slow down and contemplate the monument at a more relaxed pace. There really isn't too much to 'do' at the site, and it would be all to easy to treat it as something just to get out of the
car and snap a photo of, which robs the site of much of it's power. Instead, it was the perfect capstone to a day immersed in the monuments of this mysterious ancient culture.