The Paleolithic Era's Oregon Trail

There is no straight path from London to Cornwall, not least because the British don't believe in straight roads. If you find a straight one, it's probably Roman. But on the way out are a thousand little delights which the typical American in the UK tends to never even hear about, much less stop to see. Their loss, your gain; when the world does know about a place like Stonehenge, the result is a big parking lot ("car park" in UK-ese), a big visitor center ("centre" in UK-ese), a big crowd, and a big admission fee. You wanna see Stonehenge? Well, by all means do. But if you're driving out, think about seeing some of these other sights in addition, or instead.

Salisbury, Stonehenge, and the Old Sarum

Salisbury is a lovely old town, with one of England's great cathedrals. It's a great place for a pleasant afternoon walk, and is just down the road from...

The Old Sarum is the original site of the town of Salisbury, and has a massive Norman motte-and-bailey structure in the center of which sits the palace of Bishop Roger, and just outside of which (but inside an iron-age hill fort enclosure) sits the original Salisbury cathedral, now just a kind of stone outline on the ground. Very cool, and a long-occupied site with a lot of history. Old Sarum was one of the infamous "rotten boroughs," municipalities which for centuries had representation in Parliament but no or almost no residents. And the Old Sarum is just a wee bit down the road from...

Stonehenge: well, Stonehenge is Stonehenge, and very impressive. Unfortunately, its popularity with tourists has resulted in the monument being "tamed" with fences and a paved pathway so that you can't approach the stones, but it is still glorious and worth a detour if you're in the area. It wasn't built by the Druids, but if you show up in a cloak and plan to offer up Druidic incantations, nobody's likely to stop you.

The Uffington White Horse

Why are the white cliffs of Dover white? Well, that's chalk. Lots, and lots, and lots of chalk, and huge parts of the south of England are in fact a big mound of chalk covered with a thin layer of topsoil. Thousands of years ago, some clever person worked out that it's possible to draw a picture just by digging out the topsoil and leaving white lines on the ground where the chalk is exposed, and so the Brits have the phenomenon of the "chalk hill figure." Most of these are modern. At least one (the "Rude Man of Cerne Abbas," who you've really got to do a Google image search on if you haven't seen him before) is of highly disputed age, with some thinking he's from Britain's Roman period and some thinking he was carved by a detractor of Cromwell in the 17th century. But everyone pretty well agrees that the Uffington White Horse is a truly ancient drawing. If you go to visit the old pony, be careful on the pathways. Chalk is slippery!

The Avebury Complex

In our opinion, one of the most amazing places on earth. Avebury is a gigantic stone circle complex, of far greater scale than the better-known Stonehenge. The antiquarian John Aubrey said that it "doth as much exceed in greatness the so renowned Stonehenge, as a cathedral doth a parish Church," and he wasn't kidding. The great stone circle was enclosed in a gigantic bank and ditch; I know that earthworks don't sound exciting, but a good viewing is worth a thousand words and these are really impressive. Approximately one hundred stones, some weighing as much as 40 tons, made up the outer circle, much of which remains intact (the medieval fanatics who pulled these down actually did history a favor by concealing them; later, farmers broke up many of the stones for construction use.) Within were two smaller circles, and extending away were two great stone "avenues." Very close by is the incredible Neolithic tomb known as the "West Kennet Long Barrow," and Silbury Hill, a stupendous earth-mound built out of chalk cobbles. West Kennet alone is worth the detour. Lie on the grass, stare up at the giant stones, and wonder: just what the hell were these people thinking? There's a nice pub in the village of Avebury; get some lunch.

Bath, and the Baths of Bath, and de-Bathification

The Romans didn't just come to England, mine some tin, and get the heck out of town. No, they stayed, and Roman Britain, though one of the farthest outposts of the Empire, was a relatively fancy and civilized place. In few places is this more apparent than in Bath, where the Romans used the natural hot spring to build a huge bathhouse. After the Romans left, it silted up, and was left almost intact until its rediscovery in the 19th century. It was accompanied by a temple--devoted to Minerva, or as the Celts called her, Sulis, goddess of the waters. Spectacular stuff. The photo on the left shows the main bath but there is much more to see there.

Bath also gives you a chance to work out one of those British/American pronunciation mysteries. The British, of course, do not call it "Bath" with the A sound from "cat", and instead say something more like Baahth. Now, Bath has a bath in it. Do you call the town Baahth and the thing in it a bath? Do you call them both a bath because the town is named after the thing in it, or do you call them both Baahth because that's what the English do? And does the fact that some west-countrymen say "Bath" with the American-style A make a difference?

By the way, some of the worst traffic in the Western World is in Bath. Hang in there. The baths are worth the trouble, even though you can't bathe in 'em.

Dartmoor! The Hound of the Baskervilles!

Farther west, in Devon, is the gorgeously austere landscape of Dartmoor, the site of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Since a previous trip of ours was to a house situated just outside of Dartmoor, we have a page about it here. To whet your appetite, we present a photo of the best-named lunch-truck business in the world, which sits in the car park at the base of Great Hound Tor.