Stonehenge, Bath and Cheddar Gorge

Yesterday I noticed a friend saluting a bird, so I had to ask why she did that. She said 'dont you know about magpies?' As soon as she said it, I vaguely recalled that word from childhood, but couldn't quite remember. She reminded me of the nursery rhyme and said its old superstition to salute a magpie when you see it. And depending how many you see, it means something different (e.g. one for sorry, two for joy, etc). Fascinating. I wonder how many people in England do this?

Today I went to Stonehenge, the town of Bath and a place called Cheddar Gorge. All 3 were fantastic, better than expected. Stonehenge is like a field of dreams. You kinda know what the rocks look like, but it feels different when you're standing there in the field and see how there's nothing around for miles. There's a long line of cars coming in too, which is just like field of dreams. Apparently the rocks are from 3000 BC, craziness. There were two chinook helicopters flying around too, I wonder if thats common.

Then I drove over to Bath. My gps wasn't picking up a signal too well, so I was doing my best to navigate through road signs. That reminds me that we call it 'sat nav' in English, as opposed to gps or navigation. Other word of the day is 'queue', definitely don't use the word 'line' here, its a dead giveaway that you're not local.

Bath is such a lively city. The smells were appetizing and the sounds were jubilant. There's a University of Bath in town, so its a relatively young crowd. I didn't realize it was so Roman in architecture, which is fascinating to think how far away Rome is. I made it to the Roman Baths and they're a must visit, I didnt realize the brilliant engineering behind the flowing of the hot springs into the bath. I honestly thought it was old stagnant water when I had seen pictures :) I was able to catch a bit of a cricket match at the Bath cricket club, which was cool.

Which leads to the highlight of the day, a place called Cheddar Gorge. It's a deep gorge with extremely steep rock walls and a winding road that has a small town at the bottom. Its 274 stairs to the top and a 2 hour hike around the gorge. I did both which gave me some time to think. I'll talk about this more in the next post.