Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Avebury

I've been in England for a little more than two days now. Classes at Oxford start tomorrow and the jet lag has finally started to recede. If only I didn't have a few thousand pages of reading to finish. Still we have been having a lot of fun. Yesterday the Fellowship took us on an excursion to see Stonehenge, Salisbury, and a little town called Avebury in the hills of Wiltshire. As glad as I am to be able to say I've been to Stonehenge, it was a bit underwhelming. Hordes of tourists, all taking pictures of a ruined grouping of relatively small rocks stacked on top of each other. I guess it was worth the visit, especially since it was for free but high profile tourist attractions just never seem to do it for me. I still got some nice shots although the grey day didn't do much to add drama to the stationary rocks.

The mound of earth on the left of this last shot is actually a burial mound erected by the ancient Beaker people who supposedly erected Stonehenge. Apparently, the closer you were buried to the anciet stone circle, the more important you were. The next stop on our journey was the town of Salisbury, the location of a very famous cathedral.

Does anyone else find it ironic that the Alzheimer's Society forgot a few letters?

The next place we went was Avesbury. It is also the location of a huge mesolithic stone circle but we hardly payed any attention to the history. We were much more concerned with the free range sheep and climbing the stone pillars as you can see.

This picture is for Sheena - she really likes butts, pictures of butts, and especially putting her butt on things.

Well, this is the first of what will hopefully be many more posts concerning escapades at Oxford and beyond. I better get back to that reading...