Stonehenge, Glastonbury, and Bath

Another of my weekend trips was organised through the same tour group that I travelled through London with for my orientation. With them, I saw Stonehenge, Glastonbury, and Bath, England. We left early in the morning and traveled by coach to the beautiful town of Bath, called so because it was founded in the 1st century by the Romans who would drink and bathe in the healing waters.

The baths themselves were beautiful and rest of the city had such a feeling of history- that isn’t something you see all over the US, just because everything here is so OLD.

One of the actual baths- still in use today!

We were able to tour the baths and learned a lot about the history of the city. Bath used to be a gathering place for the royals in the 18th century- THE place to “see and be seen” by members of the upper class. The city was beautiful and after we walked through the baths we got to sample some of the healing water. Full disclosure: it tasted a little bit like sulphur. Although, when I first came to England, I thought that all of the water tasted weird (something to do with high mineral content, I think?) but I’m used to it now, so I guess if you grew up drinking “Bath” water, it would be fine! It’s supposed to cure any number of maladies, and one of my friends who came on the trip as well, who was sick, said that the water did help a little- she was better in two days! So I’m not sure how much of that was a placebo effect and how much of it was being out of university housing where you aren’t sharing space with 8 other people and their germs, but there you go.

That night, we traveled to Glastonbury and stayed the night in a hotel. It was really nice to have a relaxed night with some of the other international students I don’t get to see as much. One of the girls I met during the week of orientation, a student from Western Australia, is just one of the coolest people I’ve met here. She seems like she’s got her whole life figured out and she’s also nice and down to earth. That’s something I miss about the Holy Cross community- everyone seems like that on the Hill! I think it’s a very self-selecting group who choose HC, and that creates a very tightly knit campus, whereas (I think) due to the size of my uni here, it’s not as close and there’s a lot more variety in terms of how dedicated people are to their studies (or to partying, as the case may be).

The next morning, we woke up bright and early and got back on the coach to head to Glastonbury. We toured the Glastonbury Abbey, a beautiful ruin of an abbey that was destroyed to be used as building material for other houses. If you stand at one end, you can see a house in the background that looks suspiciously similar. The family who built that house (and picked apart the abbey) is the same family that’s responsible for bringing rabbits to Australia and destroying the ecosystem, because they didn’t have anything they could hunt. Some family, huh?

The house in the background is built from stones taken from the abbey.

The ruins themselves were absolutely beautiful, and we had a gorgeous day to explore- no English rain, for once!

You can see the intricate stonework, which is even more impressive considering that it was built in the 14th century without power tools!

Walking into the Lady Chapel.

Our next stop on the tour was Glastonbury Tor, but first we walked around for lunch. This may have been my favorite place because I found a natural foods store that sold GLUTEN FREE GNOCHI. I have never been so happy to see gluten free pasta in my whole life! They sell plain GF pasta in the grocery store here but it isn’t anything special, and I have to say, I’m getting pretty sick of having soup for every meal (perils of cooking for yourself- you make a huge batch of one thing on the weekend and then eat it for every meal for the next month). So stumbling upon that was amazing, and I bought about six kilos of GF gnochi. It makes me really miss the allergy kitchen in Kimball!

Anyway, Glastonbury Tor is basically this huge, steep hill with a castle type tower on the top.

The castle-thing (Tor)

So we climbed up the hill and ate lunch up there- the view was absolutely gorgeous. It was clear enough that we could see all the way to Wales! We could also see Stonehenge, but I couldn’t get a picture clear enough.

The view looking out from the top of the Tor

It just drops off at the edge like a cliff! It was a really nice spot for lunch, though.

Looking past the Tor.

Some of the group posing for a picture!

Our final stop was Stonehenge: mystery and history in one! We took a guided audio tour that explained the history behind Stonehenge as well as some of the myths associated with it. I’ll leave those for you to read up on, as this post is getting pretty lengthy, but here are a few more pictures to enjoy!

xx Michaela

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