Phase II — defiantly enjoying decadence

I’ve spent the last two and a half weeks (about a week and a half longer than I had planned) trying desperately to turn off that annoying midwestern alarm that I should be doing SOMEthing useful… and just enjoying the opportunity to explore southern England, eat tasty home-cooked meals every day, and relax by a fire in the evenings. Here are some highlights from my time in Salisbury:

1. Hike to Stonehenge in the snow: we hiked the 10 or so miles from Salisbury to Stonehenge, mostly along country roads through various villages, but ending with a long straight path that was actually an ancient ritual pathway to arrive at Stonehenge by. There were burial mounds on either side, sheep in the fields, and rising over a slight hill I saw Stonehenge in the distance. It would have been magical if there hadn’t been a major highway running right between me and the megaliths. We continued along that path, crossed the highway, and came nearer through a sheep pasture but before we even neared the fence marking the outside of Stonehenge, a security guard was already walking towards us in his bright outfit, waving us away unless we would pay and enter through the front gate. Despite not getting near the site and the busy road nearby, I do feel good that I am along a small number of people who have seen Stonehenge in the snow.

2. Avebury — a more hands-on megalith experience: Avebury is a bit further from Salisbury than Stonehenge, so we decided to bike there. After talking casually about it for a while, we finally decided we’d have to get up early and decisively make the journey. So we got going by 7:15, equiped with chicken sandwiches, carrots for friendly horses, and water. Within about 15 minutes I was freezing cold and my knee had randomly decided to begin hurting. After less than 2 hours (which felt like about 5) we realized we didn’t really know where to go, my fingers were about to drop off my hands, and hills were already beginning to hurt. I don’t mind if I am in pain biking back from a long trip, but when I am cold, hurting, miserable, and knowing that every second takes me further from home, that’s when I decided to wuss out and call a halt to the adventure.
Anyhow, two days later we decided to drive…. we parked along the main road and decided to walk the 5 miles into Avebury, first stopping at an ancient burial chamber that has been opened up so we could walk inside a bit of it. We already knew it was getting late, the hike to Avebury was taking longer than expected, and we took a wrong turn so finally arrived among the village and surrounding stone in the dark. With a full moon, it was actually maybe even better than if we’d have been there during the day. Basically, Avebury is from a similar time period and idea as Stonehenge, but much larger, much cruder, and less well intact. There is a village in among the stones, and we stopped in for a beer before heading back to the car.

3. The New Forest aka ponies to play with everywhere! So the New Forest is kind of like a national park near here… it was created by William the Conqueror to be his private hunting ground but since then has evolved into an area of mostly natural heathland vegetation, a few villages, and grazing rights stating that people can put their horses and ponies out free to eat as they please all year long. So basically, it’s like being in a huge free candy-store…. I can just wander down the trails or through the woods and come across all these different types of horses and ponies; some friendly, some skittish, some big, some tiny, all different colors, all different personalities, all there for me to talk to and cajole into letting me pet on them….. Not to mention the landscape is very nice with low wet vegetation interspersed with forests of giant trees interspersed with little villages and grassy lawns and fenced in horses and cows and sheep.

4. Walked to and around Corfe Castle: Corfe castle was used by the Normans (eg William the Conqueror) as a stronghold against Anglo-Saxon resistance and then was a flourishing castle during the medieval period. It was destroyed during the English Civil War in the 1640s by Cromwell’s men, and basically has not been changed since besides a bit of reconstructing to be sure it’s safe for tourism and not degrading too much. It’s pretty impressive to look at (I’ll post pictures sometime…). It’s only a few miles from the coast, so we walked a bit along the coastline path, but it was getting dark so I couldn’t fully appreciate the sheerness of the cliff faces since I was getting worried I would stumble and fall off them….. but I didn’t.

5. Tour of the Salisbury cathedral spire… we went on a tour up into the spire of the Salisbury cathedral which at its highest point (we didn’t go to the highest point) reaches 404 ft. It was fun before we even got to the spire just to go up into the crawl space and rafters above the cathedral and feel the tremendous amount of stone surrounding me and realize that where I was walking was built in 1200s. They built the cathedral first and then added the spire later, so it is also impressive to realize the building wasn’t made for that amount of stress on that particular point, but they managed to make it last all these years just from a system of interior and exterior support bars. The entire cathedral is built with just 4 ft of foundation, with the average water table reaching to 5 ft below ground level. On the day we were there, the water level reached up to 3 feet below ground level! Continuing up we saw the gears turning and shifting in the bell clock and saw the mechanism by which the bells are chimed. Later we stood in the tower and heard the clang as the bells chimed right in front of us. From the base of the spire, probably 100 some ft above the ground, we could go out on each side and look down at the city and off in the distance see the surrounding hills and Old Sarum (site of some sort of fort since Roman times, during the Norman period Old Sarum was a significant stronghold and civilization; when it could no longer contain all the people the new cathedral in Salisbury was built).

Next destination is Alhaurin el Grande in southern Spain… about 100 km from the straits of Gibraltar. We’ll be helping a lady to fix up her house a bit and get a good veggie garden established from spring!