Avebury and Bath

Today is Friday

We got up early ready to go intending to visit the Old Serum, however when we got there we discovered it didn't open until 10.30, so rather than waste 2 hours we decided to head for Avebury.

Avebury

This is the biggest and oldest henge in England, per dating Stonehenge by at least 500 years. Sadly much of it has disappeared over the years, firstly to be used as building material when Avebury was built, oddly partly inside the circle. Other stones were removed when the church declared them Pagan monuments in the sixteenth century. However, it is still an amazing place.
The ditch and bank are still awesome features, especially considering it was dug 5,000 years ago with deer antlers and bones as the only tools.
We walked all the way round the circle, there were very few people there when we arrived.

 



Steven got to sit on the 'DevilsChair' one of the more famous stones, then went about photographing every other stone from all angles, when does something become an obsession ?


 

 

After the photographic charting of the circle we went to visit the Manor house, this is the house that featured in 'The Manor, Rebourn' by the BBC a few years ago. It was a great experience with each room set up one of the periods of the houses life.
We were told that we could touch, sit and lay on anything we wanted too as it was all reproduction furniture.
The gardens were absolutely fabulous, to use another BBC term.

After the Manor we visited the church. The original part of the church was built in the year 1000, so it is one of the older ones. It is eerie to stand in a building that old but also a little sad to think that it was probably built out of some of the stones and was also responsible for the destruction of many more, well not actually the building, but anyway.







On the way to the church we saw a man thatching a roof.

After the church we headed off to look at Silbury Hill, 40 metres high and built in 2750 BC for no apparent reason. It's a pretty impressive man made hill.
 
Straight across the road from the hill and a bit of a walk up a hill is the West Kennett Long Barrow, the biggest tomb chamber in England. 3250 BC.
Amazingly it just stands there, open to the public. No gates, no fees, no guards and no tourists.  It's over 5,000 years old. 

 



We had intended to head for the weld open air museum after Avebury but that involved a lot of doubling back and we had already done a fair bit of that, so with only twelve more days of camper an hire left we decided to head for Bath.


 
Bath

Bath has some amazing architecture, lot's of it and it is rather repetitious. The streets are narrow and very busy. It not a nice place to drive a camper an.
We found a parking meter and paid our $8.50 for two hours of parking and wandered off in search of the Roman Baths.

The Baths are an interesting piece of history, the baths themselves being built by the Romans around about the year 700. The buildings are not Roman and built some 200 years ago to look Roman.
Tammy talked to a couple of Romans who informed her that there was no such place as Australia and therefore she must be a barbarian.

 





After the Baths we made a quick visit to the Abbey, which was mightily impressive.
Steven took more photo's for his flying buttress collection. Then we grabbed a coffee and raced for the car to avoid the $200 parking fee.

 




 





 Graffiti from the 1600's






We found a caravan park near Wells, the smallest city in England.

Another good day, 350 photographs, mostly of rocks.
Just over 3,000 photographs in two weeks, mostly of rocks