Yesterday we went to Stonehenge and Avesbury. We left Swansea at 8:00 and took a three hour bus ride to Avesbury. When we were about a half hour away they stopped the bus to show us a few things. First we saw a monument up on a hill as well as a white horse. The monument was to celebrate a winning battle. The horse was really cool because it was actually carved into the hill. If you remove the top layers of soil in this area there is chalk underneath. So these people would carve pictures out of the hill and it would be visible for miles. The next stop we made was by this big sod looking mound. It was a burial tomb for some royal people. It is made completely of chalk but is all grown over with grass and moss now. They said it was made about the same times as the pyramids and is the Wale’s version of pyramids. I wish we could have gone closer but we were on a schedule.
We arrived at Avesbury to the breezy cold! It is such a different kind of cold here. It is not as cold temperature wise but it is so humid that it just gets to you. We went to meet up with our tour guide and then walked around looking at some rocks. They are arranged in a circle with two smaller inner circles. It was cool because we could actually walk up to them and sit on them or jump on them and take pictures. This was also different because there is a town right in the middle of the stone circle. We started at one side and walked through the town to the other side. There was also a couple little museums there that we went into as well as a coffee shop that had delicious cake.
We got back on the bus after that for the hour long trip to Stonehenge. When we got there we saw the stones and a lot of sheep. Stonehenge is in the middle of nowhere! It was up on the top of a hill, which made it very cold! It was kind of a disappointment because you couldn’t actually go up to the stones and touch them. We had an audio tour to tell us about how everything was formed as we walked around the path. We took lots of pictures then went back down the hill to get a little shelter from the wind. We went to the gift shop and got a cup of hot chocolate.
Then it was back on the bus for the 4 hour trek home. I didn’t get as much reading done as I had hoped because it was very hard to read on the bus when it was going up and down hills and around lots of corners.
When we got back the two boys from London that went to Cardiff for internships came to Swansea to hang out for the night. We hung out with them at my flat for a while and then showed them some great places to go out in Swansea.
Today I went and got some groceries and then did some cleaning. Our floors in common areas were disgusting so I put some bleach in a bucket with some water and did the kitchen floor and the bathroom floor. It will be nice to be able to walk in there without shoes on!