The Fat-Bottomed Girl's Guide To Travel

Part I: Stonehenge and Lacock

Only about an hour and a half away from London, Stonehenge has been on the bucket list for a while. I booked a tour through Viator that was a special access tour, which meant we could get beyond the ropes and get up close to the stones. It also meant that we were in a cab to our meeting place at 4:45 a.m., as the bus left promptly at 5:30 a.m.

In stark contrast to how bad our guide was on the Giverny tour, Carol was so knowledgeable, funny, and made the time pass quickly. It was a very modern coach, driven by her partner Neil, who was a great driver – assertive, knew the roads, and certainly knew his coach – several turns I thought for sure the mirrors would be gone, or the front end, but he managed, with inches to spare.

I let Carol know that I was a bit prone to travel sickness, and we were able to sit right behind the driver. It helps, but still, the wobbly back and forth on country roads and not being behind the wheel caused me some queasiness. Once you get out past Heathrow, the countryside opens up and you can see the slight rolling hills as you go from shire to shire. We spent most of the day in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, crossing into Hampshire briefly.

Carol gave us plenty of wonderful history and prepared us with THE most important rule about visiting Stonehenge. Can you guess what it was? Yup. DON’T TOUCH THE STONES. Much like how people took chips and chunks of Plymouth Rock before it was protected, in the 19th and early 20th centuries people were encouraged to take scrapings and chips on their visits.

An English couple went to an auction, thinking they were buying some antiques, when in reality, they bought Stonehenge. They immediately bequeathed it to the British government, who then set up a conservancy. It’s now one of the over 400 Heritage sites in the UK.

We arrived and parked in the lot, heading down to the visitor’s center. Again, the British weather had outwitted me and I was freezing; Sean too. We purchased some obligatory “Stonehenge” knitwear and headed to the shuttle bus, where a very cheery and fun Cecilia told us some more about the site.

In addition to not taking chips, etc. from the stones, the touching destroys the lichen that covers them. There are over 90 species and sub-species growing, including an extremely rare one that came from ALASKA. A bird must have brought it.

We were in the first group to go in – they split us in half – the better to watch our movements but also to save the ground. It’s been raining a lot. Funnily enough, I was very moved while driving up in the shuttle, but completely overwhelmed when we walked into the stones. There was definitely an energy in there, it made the top of my head tingle.

Once there, it was almost like I didn’t know what to do. I took a bunch of pictures, but mostly I just wanted to be present and think about what this place meant to the people who lived here 5000 years ago. You can see in some of the photos the ‘dovetailing’ that they did, with a bump on one that would fit into a hole in the other. The largest stone in the center goes down about 8 feet into the earth, the rest are between 3-5 feet buried.

There are a ton of jackdaws making their nests up in the ruins. They are hilarious. If one of the pair doesn’t like how the other made the nest, they will completely destroy it, throwing twigs and wool from the nearby sheep all over the stones and the ground.

Our 15 minutes in the stones was up, and we changed places with the other half of our group, relegated to the outside to take any more photos. There was a group of 8 who had two children, about 3 and 5, and the 5 year old was romping all over the “Slaughter Stone” outside the main ring so I asked the parent/grandparent to correct him and get him off. She just turned away. I went up to him and gave him “the Maeve” look, saying, “what part of ‘don’t touch the stones’ did you not understand?” He looked guilty, and got off. For the rest of the tour, he wouldn’t meet my eyes. But he didn’t misbehave again.

After Stonehenge, we went to a small town called Lacock for breakfast at the George Inn, one of the oldest pubs/inns in the country. They had a ‘dog wheel’ (much like a hamster wheel) where a Jack Russell would run to make the spit turn over the fire to cook the meat. We sat next to a couple from Texas, who were very fun and had good conversation.

Not a lot of time to explore, but I bought some bath bombs and home-made jam. Then back onto the bus for our last stop, Bath.