Today our coach driver is Andy, who guides us competently through country roads as wide as a sidewalk and walled by hedges. I expect to see rabbits in waistcoats jumping out at us. The Salisbury Plain stretches out before us, but not at all on the scale of the plains we know west of us. The sky is ever-changing, and we drive in and out of rain showers the whole day. We start to see amazing little villages with old, old stone churches and pubs, thatched roofs (how do you fix them??) and half-timber buildings leaning artfully as if ready to tumble at any moment.
Avebury is one of these perfect little villages (who lives here, I wonder), but it has one additional strange asset -- it's surrounded by a ring of upright spear-shaped rocks that weigh many tons. The rocks are then surrounded by a deep moat, and these same kind of rocks line an ancient lane or road towards a burial ground. Nobody knows for certain who built them or why, but it was thousands of years B.C., about the same era as the more famous, but ultimately less interesting Stonehenge structure.
Prof. Chapman leads us around the entire ring and answers every question with relish. He tells us how they once found the remains of a man near one of the rocks, dating to the 16th century. They think he must have been crushed to death by a rock falling on him when they were in the process of re-erecting one that had fallen over. He was thought to have been a barber because he had barbering tools in a pouch, including scissors. Chapman gets so excited about these stories that it makes us excited too.
Stonehenge is a bit too commercialized to be the sort of spiritual experience one would expect, but the 700-year-old Salisbury Cathedral retains that magic. One of our students actually starts crying because it's so beautiful. There are bigger cathedrals around, but this one looks enormous because it's so over-sized compared to all the other structures in its vicinity. My husband remarks on the bare interior walls and how few stained-glass windows there are. Prof. Chapman explains that the Puritans smashed the original stained glass windows and destroyed the colorful designs on the walls. Too bad.
We have a little free time, so I wander over to the town. It's stunningly lovely. An old courtyard has been transformed into a pedestrian shopping mall. I get lost, but luckily find the coach before it's too late. We have a system to see if everyone is back, but we need to rehearse a bit more. Everyone has a number they are to shout out in sequence, but it's hard to hear on a 55-passenger coach. Some complain they can't remember their numbers. I tell them to spend an evening memorizing it!
We return to a hot dinner at Wycliffe, and some wander off to bed to rest up for a trip to London the next day. So much to do -- so little time!
No comments:
Post a Comment