The GCW Tour, A Few Bits of the UK and Ireland: Rocks, Part 1 of God Only Knows How Many

Note: It's been a rough couple of days, but I'm now scrambling to get caught up. We'll see how far I get, before I again have to pull the plug.


Not to put too fine a point on it, but England is really all about rocks. And following our afternoon in Bath, and with our car in hand, we decided to see the country's most famous rocks: Stonehenge. Ta da!

Now here's the funny part: almost everyone I talked to, and most websites, say don't bother going to Stonehenge. It's crowded and you can't get up next to the stones. And that, in fact, is true. There are some stakes in the ground and a rope running between them that surround the rocks, anywhere from a distance of, say, five yards of fifty (rough guesses). But I actually loved that. Over the past couple of years I've been to a lot of similar sized monuments around the world, and have learned one very clear lesson: I will happily give up "touching" the thing if it means I can get a picture of it without it crawling with people. If Stonehenge let you right up next to the rocks, that picture there would look like the rocks had lice or something. People would be crawling all over it. But with the restriction, I could get that clear picture. 

Plus this one...

And this one...

And this one...

Personally, I love that mandatory distance. I'd pay extra for that mandatory distance (and/or a lower age limit of about thirteen), although apparently there are certain times of the day (month? year?) when you can pay extra to get near the stones during the solstice or whatever. So, if you're a druid, you still have options.

Anyway, before we move on from Stonehenge, I should mention the people. Personally, I recommend avoiding them, so going early has its benefits. But even going early, you won't miss out on some odd human behavior. For example, these people...

It's a little hard to tell from this angle, but this appeared to be a family. Dad, the guy with the blue backpack on the right, noticed the bird, the black dot between the group and the stones, and laid down with his SLR to get a picture of the bird with Stonehenge in the distance. So, of course, everyone else with him laid down to get their own similar pictures. I had to wonder: couldn't they have just exchanged copies? There was a lot of that kind of stuff happening. 

Moving on, I mentioned before that with your entry to Stonehenge they give you a little map to other things in the neighborhood that might be interesting. One such thing is Woodhenge. A mile or two down the road, Woodhenge is a much smaller circle that a zillion years ago would've been filled with wooden posts, but the spots are now marked by low concrete pilings.It seemed like something we should see, so we saw it...

After Woodhenge, we made the previously discussed cowpath-traversing trip to Old Wardour Castle. The guidebook claimed this was the inspiration for the castle that appeared in the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood, but I can't say I saw the resemblance. (Maybe I was just too traumatized by the drive to get there.) But regardless of whether it did, or didn't, provide inspiration to Hollywood, it was still a very nice castle (i.e., organized pile of rocks), that even had its own grotto...

We liked the grotto.

They were also very serious about safety. Which is good, because while I'm not a rock climber and am totally afraid of heights, even I could see the appeal of climbing the walls...

Following Old Wardour Castle, the boys had a choice: another randomly selected nearby castle ruin, or the Haynes International Motor Museum. Any guesses what they picked?

It wasn't a bad look at (mostly) British motoring history. And I love the fact that they stuck most of the red (sports) cars into a single space. 

And that was the end of that day.