Into the Countryside

Yesterday may have been our biggest and most exhausting day yet. We began at Stonehenge in prehistory. The erecting of the stones may have begun as early as 3000 BCE and they are breathtaking. Who? What? When? Why? How? Nobody really knows. We put our young St. Ann's school sleuths on the "who" question and they came up with these theories: Emmett, "It was a t-rex." Isabella, "someone who had eaten their vegetables." Clare, "Luke Skywalker using the Force" (alternatively, she also has an elaborate theory that involves these possibly first peoples of England constructing moats and mounds to pull up the stones). One circle of the stones (some of which are 25 feet high) comes from as far as western Wales.

Second stop was Salisbury where we drove past Old Sarum (11th century), had lunch, and walked around the Cathedral, bringing us into the 13th century. The spire is the tallest of the medieval spires in all of Europe.

Third stop was Longleat, the seat of the Marquess of Bath, and a 16th-century manor house. The real attraction here is the safari park where we (in our car) came within inches of wolves, rhinos, giraffes, and lions (among many others) wandering around the park. The girls and I toured the open sections of the house; Lord and Lady Bath were in residence so we mostly saw the formal state rooms, which were spectacular with enough priceless portraits and paintings to fill a museum. The one Tudor-period room still extant was worth the trip with its huge fireplace. The house's weirdest objet was the doublet worn by Charles I at his beheading--brown stains and tears around the collar told the whole story.

Fourth stop was our guest house in Tewkesbury. Mentioned by Falstaff in 1 Henry 4, Tewkesbury is a medieval city, home of a great battle in 1471 and an 11th-century Abbey where George, Duke of Clarence is bured about and hour and a half's drive north in the Cotswolds. We went directly to The Fox and Hounds, a Jacobean pub in Bredon, for dinner and traditional English pub quiz (which we failed miserably) and then crashed at Hardwicke House, a mid 19-century house. All in all, we covered some 4000 years of history in one day.