Showing posts with label homeschool geography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeschool geography. Show all posts

Saturday, August 5, 2023

Day 11 in England: To Avalon with King Arthur

 

With the whole of Le Morte d'Arthur under our belts, the teenager and I were especially excited for our day at Glastonbury, also known as Avalon, burial site of Arthurus, Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus. 

But first a Full English, then a bit of time exploring THE most epic creation in all of England:

Mini Stonehenge!

Here's our full day:
  • Glastonbury Abbey
  • Glastonbury Tor
  • window shopping in Glastonbury
  • drive the long drive to Devon
We needed emergency crisps and biscuits and Cadbury bars for our long afternoon drive later, so we stopped by a Tesco Express on our way out of Salisbury and the college student found that our favorite biscuit, Jaffa Cakes (or are they a cake? I feel like England has a Whole Thing about biscuits vs. cakes), also sells something called a Jonut. And it. Is. Delicious!


I am currently very sad that my mouth is not full of Jonuts, Cadbury with Popping Jellies, and scones with clotted cream.

With Matt's three full days of driving experience by this time, we didn't actually do too badly in the narrow streets of Glastonbury, especially considering that window shopping along High St. later, we would see SO many near-accidents and drivers screaming at each other. 

Fortunately, we were able to avoid driving on High St.! Apparently the hippies wake up kind of late, because there was plenty of parking available in the one public lot near the center of town, and from there it was just a short walk to Glastonbury Abbey.

The history of archaeological excavations at Glastonbury Abbey is very checkered--the first archaeologist was also a spiritualist who believed that the dead spoke to the living, and he included some architectural features in his site maps that he hadn't actually found... but it was fine, because a spirit had used automatic writing to tell him it was there!

Ahem.

So there's a lot still not understood about Glastonbury Abbey and its history of occupation, but the museum did have some cool artifacts:



These cool artifacts include some contemporary ones, as the museum also displayed stuff they found during a recent dredging of the pond on their site:


And, of course, it had the obligatory several shelves of used books for sale!

I wish now that I'd purchased that Misty Copeland memoir and the A to Z Atlas of London and Suburbs.

Then, out the door to explore!





You know we love our architectural ruins! This is the Lady Chapel, supposedly sited on top of an even earlier "Old Church." There are glass walkways that allow you to cross the ruins at height, and stairs that give you access to the lower levels. Grass and flowers grow on the tops of the stones and in the cracks in the walls.



I love how they arranged site access so you can see and explore these formerly underground areas.

This site was fun to research with the kids, because it is VERY steeped in the spiritual/mystical woo of Glastonbury. I didn't buy the map of ley lines that I saw in one of the High St. shops (a fact that I actually super regret now...), but apparently we're just walking right over all kinds of crossing ley lines here!




Just east of the Lady Chapel is the Great Church, dating from around 1230:






Once upon a time, it was the second largest church in England, but during its construction it fell on hard times and upkeep and renovations got too expensive. Fortunately, monks discovered that King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, long associated with the area by legend, were actually buried on the property! Yay! The monks got tons of money after that, they were able to finish building the church, and they reburied Arthurus Rex in the middle of the Great Church:


We walked around the grounds of the old abbey, exploring the space and admiring the views--




Here's where King Arthur's grave was discovered!



The site also has a surviving plant from two thorn trees that used to grow on a nearby hill. They were seen as holy thorns, possibly originating from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, who local legend has it possibly visited here with a little lad Jesus back in the day. The Puritans, being religious extremists, cut down those original thorn trees, but lots of local gardeners had their own cuttings, and this tree is said to be from one of them:



There was a shuttle from the nearby visitor center to the base of Glastonbury Tor, but it only took cash, alas, so after exploring the abbey grounds, we walked the 1.3 miles from the abbey to the tor, uphill all the way:


The path is that way!

The pedestrian footpath was actually really nice, ranging along wooded paths and through gates that led us across fields and under arches of overhanging ancient trees:



Getting closer!

This was a HARD fucking hike, and my asshole family left me completely in the dust:


There's no place to sit and rest other than in the nettles next to the path, no place to really make it easy to pass someone who's slowly huffing their way upwards, and behind me as I slowly huffed were at least a dozen various UK vacationers taking their kids up the tor for a Saturday afternoon picnic. Not only was I about to die of a myocardial infarction, but I had to keep up my pace so as not to inconvenience the people following me. Also, my face gets REALLY red when I'm hot. Like, REALLY really red, so a couple of times total strangers asked me if I was well. 

I finally made it, quietly weeping and absolutely beside myself with embarrassment and exhaustion. 


But look at that view!




Check out these rats who left me to die, hanging out as happy as clams without me:

To get back to the abbey, you just do the trek in reverse:



But fortunately the ice cream truck at the base of the tor DOES take credit!



It's also much easier to enjoy how pretty the walk is when I'm walking downhill:





We spent most of the rest of the afternoon window shopping along High Street, where they have SO many awesomely woo stores. I particularly liked The Coven, White Rabbit, Goddess and the Green Man, and Speaking Tree, but there were so many little shops with tarot cards, dragon statues, sword letter openers, needle felted goddesses, etc., interspersed with hippies on the street giving away free hugs and trying to sell beaded necklaces. 

We bought sandwiches and crisps from a little co-op grocery, ate them near another thorn tree on the grounds of St. John the Baptist Church, then hopped back in the car for a quick two-hour drive to the sea. 

We landed in an inn in Instow, which on this Saturday before a Bank Holiday Monday was HOPPING! The whole town was bonkers crowded. Matt had to drop us off and park a mile away at a cricket club, then he and I hung out downstairs in the pub chaos for a while before our proper dinner:


Our rooms above the pub didn't have any air conditioning, so we had to leave our windows open (also no screens--does England not have rabid bats?) to the noise below, including a live band. I really wanted my sleep, but it *was* pretty magical to be lying in bed, reading my surfer memoir--

--and listening to the magic that is every single person in the pub below me loudly singing the lyrics to an Oasis song:


I think it's the most British thing I experienced on this entire trip!

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Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Day 10 in England, Part 2: Stonehenge

 

After plane tickets, the first thing that I booked for our England trip were these tickets for access to the interior of Stonehenge--right off the top of the budget, with everything else filled in around it. It's what I was most excited about, a truly once-in-my-lifetime-so-far experience, and I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you right now that it was EVERYTHING I'd hoped it would be. As in, I'd hoped that it would be the most magical experience of my life, the most awesome thing I've ever done, the most special family activity anyone could ever plan, and I'd take the absolute most coolest photos there, and I'd marvel at the size of the stones and the mystery of their purpose and their construction and I would have SO. MUCH. FUN. 

Goal achieved!

We drove straight to Stonehenge from Avebury, and arrived exactly on time. With these evening tickets, you're allowed onto the site an hour before it closes so you can explore the museum, but the site actually closes to day ticket entries two hours before it officially closes, so we had to show our booking to get past the blockade... which may have given all the cars behind us hope, as they all stopped trying to turn around before the blockade and instead got in line behind us and made the security guard have to turn each of them away personally, oops. 

One hour was NOT enough time to see the Stonehenge museum, but I was able to make myself stare at everything more quickly than I usually like to stare at everything, so I managed.

My favorite part of the museum was this set of sculptures that showed Stonehenge during its various stages of construction. It was used from the Mesolithic period, perhaps around 8000 BCE based on radiocarbon dating of giant posts that were constructed then, through the Middle Bronze Age, perhaps around 1600 BCE. For that entire time, people were changing up Stonehenge--adding stones and ditches and barrows and pits, moving stones to different locations, carving the stones, burying people and things, etc. Below is a sculpture of Stonehenge at what was probably its most elaborate formation, around 2500 BCE. In the middle is a horseshoe of five giant trilithons, encircled by a ring of 30 sarsen stones topped with lintels. There's a double row of smaller bluestones standing between the two sets, and some of those bluestones have evidence that something was also on top of them--more lintels, perhaps? More sarsens, now called the Station Stones, were arranged singularly at various points, including that one lying in front of the tallest trilithon.

Important note: I didn't frame the compass rose in my photo, but north isn't at the top. The winter solstice sunset is at the top!

And here's Stonehenge as it looks today. There's a terrific aerial photo in Stonehenge: Making Sense of a Prehistoric Mystery, in which you can actually see the location of the missing stones as "parchmarks," or brown spots, in the grass. The existence of a giant standing stone changed the soil composition so the grass doesn't grow as nicely there!

I got the compass rose in this one! North points right-ish.

Here's another excellent map of Stonehenge, with links that give you a close-up view of every individual stone.

The entire area around Stonehenge was clearly significant, as well, and the museum had an excellent large-screen film that showed the various dates of construction of all the various barrows and cursi and henges in the region, many of which you can still visit, and some of which are on English Heritage property. 

Happily, the outdoor part of the museum (and the gift shop!) remained accessible after Stonehenge closed to day ticket holders, so I was able to keep myself entertained by exploring how the Neolithic peoples around Stonehenge might have lived:


Here are some of the other important sites in the area.

Finally, an hour after the museum closed to day ticketholders, 30 of us got on a bus with our guide to drive across the site to Stonehenge. Included in our group was another family with kids, various tourists from other countries and across the UK, a couple who'd brought several instruments that they wanted to film each other playing within the stones, and a large group, maybe half of the total, who wanted to stand in a circle and meditate and chant together inside the stones. 

One thing that I didn't realize until our bus arrived at the site is that you can actually get a pretty good view of Stonehenge for free. The A303 drives right past it, complete with congested traffic since everyone slows down to look, and there's another small road--Willoughby Road, I think?--that intersects the site, with a walking path to a viewing point that's just outside the fenced-in area.

Also? People were living on the side of this road! There were a couple of permanent tents, and a bunch of campers, all along the roadside, where they just live within sight of Stonehenge. This is very historically accurate, actually, as archaeological evidence points to some type of community that lived around Stonehenge at various times during its original prominence.

I was taking a photo of the Stonehenge Cursus, but you can see a few of the tents and campers on Willoughby Rd. There were a ton more to the left of the frame.

Here's my view of the overall Stonehenge site while we got our lecture on not touching or climbing on the stones:

It was incredibly hard to stay oriented, but I think we're standing southwest of the stones.

We're northwest of the stones, I think. Later, when I'm taking photos of everyone silhouetted by the sunset, I'll be framing them either within that inner trilithon with the narrow gap, or within that sarsen stone with the intact lintel. We're only about a month out from the Summer Solstice!

Selfie mode! I'm a little southeast of Stonehenge, with the tallest standing stone that was once part of the center trilithon of the Horseshoe over my left shoulder. 

Lecture internalized, we were set free to step over the fencing and walk as we wished among the stones!

Trilithon, with a sarsen and its lintel behind it. 

I'm off-center, but this is a view from the center of Stonehenge, through the intact parts of the sarsen circle, to the Heel Stone that marks the location of sunrise on the Summer Solstice. To get the perfect view of the sunrise, you'd want to frame the Heel Stone through the center opening, not the left one as I've done.

I think she's looking at the remaining standing stone of what would have been the tallest trilithon in the inner horseshoe, with an intact trilithon beyond it.

Trilithon from the inner horseshoe, some intact sarsens from the outer circle, and a couple of intact bluestones.

I'm standing in the center, looking northeast towards the sunset. 

The openings in the trilithons that make up the inner horseshoe are quite narrow; they're much wider in the outer sarsen circle.



Looking south, with Bluestones from the inner circle, a trilithon from the Horseshoe, and a sarsen stone from the outer circle.
This stone is very special! See the line of carved graffiti, which probably dates from sometime in the 1600s? Below that are carvings of daggers that date from probably 1750-1500 BCE. There are just a very few examples of original carvings here, and it's theorized that these are meant to be viewed with similar carvings on a sarsen to its north to point towards the southern major moonrise. 

This was formerly one of the uprights of the tallest trilithon in the horseshoe, but it's fallen towards the center and broken into two pieces. It's been extensively graffitied with carvings over the centuries, and it's heavily damaged by tourists who've hammered pieces off of it.

The lintel of the trilithon that Matt is looking at actually fell in 1797, and lay on the ground until its restoration in 1958.

Southeast trilithon, with a seated Julie for scale!

These uprights are really cool, because you can see that the Neolithic people carved the uprights and lintels with mortise and tenon joints. There's even a lintel with mortises carved on both sides, presumably because they messed up the spacing on one side, so they just flipped it over and tried again on the other side!

This is the tallest standing stone at Stonehenge, at 22'7" to the top of the tenon. It would have paired with the stone next to it, now fallen, to make the tallest trilithon at the center of the horseshoe.

The sun is beginning to set behind the northwesternmost remaining part of the sarsen outer circle! The lintel and one of the uprights fell in 1900, and the lintel broke in half. It was repaired and restored in the 1950s. 
Selfie with a southeast Sarsen!

Tallest standing stone, with teenager for scale.

The sun beginning to set behind the western stones was my favorite part of our time inside Stonehenge. You see how many photos I have just of the stones, right? Now imagine about ten times that many family photos, with my patient family staged in various poses and groupings, framed interestingly silhouetted by the sunset and the stones, every time I could catch them. Send thoughts and prayers to the teenager, especially, who was required to utilize the several thousand dollars I've spent on her ballet training to leap and do other pretty dancer things while I photographed her. She can count herself lucky that our luggage constraints meant I couldn't require her to bring a pair of old pointe shoes for additional poses!

Looking northeast at the shadow of the Sarsen Circle.

The northeast section contains the longest remaining intact portion of the Sarsen Circle.


Looking east towards the two intact trilithons on the south side of the horseshoe, with the shadow of the one other intact trilithon and the tallest standing stone. Delighted Julie posed for scale!


Looking southeast towards the A303. I love this photo of Matt in the shadow of the Sarsen Circle!

We wandered the inner circle for about an hour, then finally our Day of Giant Rocks was over. Fortunately, our inn was just a few minutes away, and dinnertime was just a few minutes after that!

Here is a glass of water that is noticeable because of the American-sized portion of ICE!!! The American obsession with ice is because we've always had access to so much of it, what with our Great Lakes to the north that supported an industry of harvesting ice, packing it in sawdust, and sending it south. Countries that didn't have this kind of access never got accustomed to icy beverages, and now they think we're weird.


Actually, it was a running joke during our entire trip that England apparently places little value on hydration in general. The one time that Matt asked for a refill of his Coke in a restaurant the waiter looked so visibly disturbed that as soon as he left the rest of us were all, "OMG that was so embarrassing you can never do that again!" It turned out that the secret was just to order a hard cider instead of a soft drink. Refills of cider are socially approved!

We also had a little lesson in British food that we honestly probably should have already known. Some of us ordered pizza, and it came out looking like this and tasted absolutely delicious.

I demolished this pizza. It was so good! The little container of ranch was another funny American touch. They really wanted me to feel at home!

This, however, is my poor teenager's order of "nachos."


She has tortilla chips, a little bit of queso, a sweet(!) meat sauce, then little containers of sour cream, a kind of guacamole, and a tomato sauce that a nod to salsa. And five peppers sans heat. Her dismay was probably very similar to what European tourists to America feel when they eat at, say, an Olive Garden. 

The serving board was beautiful, though!

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