Stonehenge and Bath

Last weekend CAPA took most of its 150 London students on a trip to Stonehenge and Bath. I had been to both places on a previous trip to the UK, but there was no way I could turn down a free trip to see them again. Also, one of my favorite things about traveling with students is watching them react to things they're seeing for the first time. The only drawback was that going along meant spending several hours on a bus, something that I don't really enjoy, but that's why I brought along a bottle of Dramamine!

Our first stop was Stonehenge. The historian in me would like to begin with an explanation of Stonehenge, but we really don't know very much. (My favorite crazy theory is that Stonehenge was built by an alien civilization as a message to humans, and its meaning will be revealed when we are ready. I'm guessing we won't be ready any time soon.) What we do know is that it was completed about 3500 years ago. It also seems pretty certain that the four-ton stones were brought to the site from southwest Wales, which is about 240 miles away! Maybe it is the mystery that surounds Stonehenge that makes it so interesting to us. Most of us, that is. People react in very different ways to Stonehenge. As we were pulling into the parking lot, one of my students said that the first sight of it gave him goosebumps. On the other hand, I heard a different student say: "There's only so long I can stand here and look at rocks."

Here I am with the Missouri London Program students. From left to right: Trevor, Alex, Beattie, Zach, me, Meghan, and Jeff.

One of many pictures I took. The last time I was here it was cloudy, so I was grateful that it was a sunny day.

After Stonehenge, we got back on the buses and went to Bath. One reason that I wanted to visit Bath again is that when I went there in the summer of 2007 it was so crowded you could hardly move. Unfortunately, it was just as crowded this time. It was a fun day to be there, though. It was the final day of the annual Jane Austin festival. If you're familiar with Jane Austin, you know that she lived there for a while and the city features prominently in several of her books. As the bus pulled into the city we saw several hundred people in the park dressed in early nineteenth century costume. We went back to the park after getting off the bus, but were disappointed to find that they had already dispersed. Fortunately, we ran into small groups of them in town all afternoon. Bath is a beautiful city, but because it is so crowded and very densely built it is difficult to photograph. Here are a few of my favorites.

Two Jane Austin Festival participants outside the doors of Bath Abbey.

This building is called the Royal Crescent. It's so large that it is hard to get it all in a photograph, but the panoramic feature on my camera did a pretty good job.

If you have trouble putting out your torch when you arrive home at night, you should consider installing one of these on your front porch.

Bath Abbey is right in the middle of the city, and surrounded by other buildings, so it's particularly difficult to photograph. In the right foreground is the 19th century entrance to the Roman Baths.

The interior of Bath Abbey.

The Great Bath in the Roman Baths. The terrace and many of the structures that surround the Bath were added in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the bath itself looks much the way it did when the Romans left Britain in the 5th century. 

Bath sits on top of a natural hot spring. This Roman tunnel brings the spring water to the bath. There is a new bath nearby that offers services similar to those available in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but the water in the Roman Bath is unsafe. Not only does it run through 1,600 year-old lead pipes, it is also infectious. A girl who swam in the bath in 1979 died five days later from amoebic meningitis.   

That's me! I probably have this exact same picture from 2007, but how can you not take it?

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