Immediately after pulling out of Windsor Castle we got stuck in traffic, because apparently it was race-day at Ascot! The famed Ascot racecourse is only a stone's throw from Windsor Castle, and the current Queen is an avid horse racing fan.
The road was packed with attendees, and from what I could see through the bus, most of them arrived in time to take out a picnic lunch and eat it before heading into the racecourse. (But they were very British picnic lunches, with hampers and wine bottles etc.). And, as you will note in the pictures, everyone was dressed up much more than they would be for a racecourse in the states, not a pair of jeans in sight!
The road was packed with attendees, and from what I could see through the bus, most of them arrived in time to take out a picnic lunch and eat it before heading into the racecourse. (But they were very British picnic lunches, with hampers and wine bottles etc.). And, as you will note in the pictures, everyone was dressed up much more than they would be for a racecourse in the states, not a pair of jeans in sight!
After getting out of the Ascot traffic we passed through some very picturesque British countryside, complete with some cows and sheep, on our way to Stonehenge.
Stonehenge itself is surrounded by a chain link fence, so you have to pay the fee to walk past the chain link fence and get an unobstructed view of the ancient stone circle. A little bit grasping, if you ask me, but definitely worth paying, as the up-close views are truly astonishing, and the audio tour is very informative. On the way in you can see an artist's rendering of what the stone circle would have looked like intact, when all of it was still standing.
I won't attempt to repeat the entire audio tour here, just to say that Stonehenge was believed to have a profound, and probably religious meaning in the lives of the people built it and the people who maintained it for hundreds of years. The following photos are various views of Stonehenge as you walk around its perimeter.
Stonehenge was constructed in three major phases, anywhere from 3000 to 2000 BC, based on the available archaeological evidence. Each phase altered the structure in dramatic ways, until, at it's height, Stonehenge was believed to look like the drawing in the first picture above. The fabulous weather ensured that we got some of the best Stonehenge pictures a tourist ever took!
The size of these massive stone slabs helps you get perspective on just how challenging it would have been to transport them from the quarry in which they were mined (possibly as far as 25 miles) and then raise them to stand upright. And that's not mentioning how on earth, with only simple tools available, the people managed to place the massive stone slabs that lie across the upright pillars. Perhaps this is why one version of the tale holds that Merlin himself was the architect of Stonehenge.
The notch you see on the top of the tallest stone would have fit tightly into a hole cut out of the stone slab that laid across it (now no longer there) in a joint system still used in carpentry today. Below you see pictures of where we tried some magic of our own to give Merlin a run for his money!
Well, we were last on the bus this time, and off we went to the final stop of the day, Oxford.
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