Monday, 15 September 2025, Stonehenge, Bath (Hotel Indigo)

Written 13 November 2025

The rain held off pretty well today. We were able to make the several-block walk to the bus (pardon me, we're supposed to call it a coach; once again driven by Mick) without getting wet, and the promised rain didn't come until later in the afternoon. I notice many more plane trees (Platanus sp., what we call sycamore) in and around Oxford than we saw farther north, where most street trees were lindens.

On the bus, headed for Stonehenge, our first stop for the day, I still saw many, many hawthornes in fruit; they must be gorgeous when they bloom in the spring.

In case anyone doesn't know, Stonehenge is a circle of huge standing stones on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. It was constructed from about 3100 BC to about 1600 BC and served as a sort of calendar, marking the solstice. The photo of a photo at the left shows its overall configuration.

The first time we visited (ca. 1986?), we were allowed to walk right in among the stones, touch them, lean on them, etc. The second time we were there, the stones had been fenced off, and you couldn't get any closer than about 50 yards away. This time, they've struck a happier medium. A new visitor's center has been built, farther away, and shuttle buses move visitors to the stones and back (or you can walk either or both ways if you prefer). The fenced perimeter circle has been flattened on one side, so that you can you can get as close as is shown in the photos. The rain held off, but it was chilly and, as always seems to be the case on the Salisbury plain, the wind blew about 40 mph the whole time we were there.

Also visible in the surrounding fields were barrows—burial mounds. You can see three of them here, a little darker green than the surrounding grass and silhouetted against the even paler field and dark trees behind. Scattered all over the surrounding fields were grazing sheep. You may not be able to make them out at this scale, but just below the right-hand side of the right-hand barrow is a cluster of sheep being herded together by a black and white sheepdog.

Written 15 November 2025

That dog turned out to be an advance party for a pair of guys who came over the hill a couple of minutes later on a small four-wheel ATV with a second dog on the back. Under their direction, the two dogs rounded up all the scattered sheep into a single pack, then held up the shuttle-bus traffic briefly while they herded them across the road to our side and into a fenced enclosure with fresh pasture. We got to watch the whole operation while we waited in line for the shuttle bus back to the visitor center.

The museum in the visitor center was really interested, besides a "cyclorama" style video, where the viewer stood inside the circle, which was projected on the circular walls of the room, they displayed aerial views of many other stone circles and other formations in southern England. David and I once visited a stone circle so large that almost the entire village of Avebury was inside it! We could still walk among and touch the stones there, even after Stonehenge was fenced.

We didn't get to see everything, though, because the fire alarm went off, and they shooed us all outside, so I went and took pictures of the outdoor exhibits instead.

Stonehenge is built of two kinds of stones, samples of which were standing near the museum for close examination. The larger sarsen stones (at the left in the photo) are from about 20 miles away on the Marlborough Downs. They form the larger standing structures and lintels. The smaller bluestones (at the right in the photo) are from over 150 miles awau (from the Preseli Hills in Wales) and were used for subsidiary rings. A single large altar stone is yet another type and also cames from Wales.

The hypothesis is that, for at least part of the distance, the stones were moved on wooden rollers by guys just pulling them with ropes while others picked up the rollers left behind and ran forward to place them under the leading edge. They've set up a real stone on such a rig, and visitors are invited to give it a try! Chains limit its movement, in case some team of weight-lifters shows up and actually gets it moving. The rollers rest on a smooth concrete pad—moving it over ancient roads must have been muchmore difficult.

Because the circle was constructed over such a long period, peoples of many different generations and cultures worked on it. The museum staff are currently constructing different types of huts the designs of which have been recomstructed from archeological work. In these photos are the first I came to, from the exterior and from the interior.

Here's another style, from the front and from the back.

A third style and, at the right, a hut still under construction. Behind a screening row of bushes a young woman was kneeling on the ground tying reeds into bundles to be used as thatch.

Near and among the huts were trees that would have provided food for the workers. At the left, almost leafless but covered with fruit, is the Prunus domestica, the European plum (prune plum), and at the right is Hippophae rhamnoides, the sea-buckthorn or seaberry. It's not in fruit here, but in the spring it apparently bears bright orange edible berries.

Back in the bus, we headed on toward Bath; Stonehenge is in Wiltshirt, but Bath is in Somerset.

Out the bus window, I got this shot of a pig farm. Each pig, or perhaps each sow and her offspring, gets her own little quonset hut to live in.

As we arrived in Bath, Stefano consulted with Mick and announced that we had so far traveled 1200 miles since leaving Edinburgh.

Taking photos out bus windows is always tricky, because you never know what sudden obstacle is going to photobomb your shot. Here two gentlemen in period dress are consulting a local-area map, but an unfortunate traffic light has obscured their heads. Still, you can see their magnificent outfits. Some sort of Jane Austen anniversary or convention had just ended, and surprising numbers of the people on the street were dressed for her era.

Written 16 November 2025

The Romans came to bath in 43 AD and chose this site for its hot mineral springs. They built a massive complex of baths to take advantage of them. As aways happens to Roman ruins with the passage of time, that complex is now well below current street level.

We left the bus at our hotel for the next two nights, the Hotel Indigo Bath, which occupied a whole row of townhouses on South Parade. They still look like a row of separate houses on the outside, but inside they function as a single large hotel with two restaurants. I hope this collection of mounted insects came with the house—evidence that someone who lived here participated in the golden age of natural history. Most of them are butterflies, but I think this largest specimen is a beetle.

Without even checking in (or having time to change or to bring my tempest-tossed hair back under control), we walked from there to the famous Pump Room for an elegant afternoon tea. On the way, we passed the King's and Queen's Baths, one of several establishments in town where you can still "take the waters."

At the right is the façade of Bath Abbey.

On this walk also, we encountered costumed Jane Austen fans, quite a lot of them staring into their cell phones.

And here, at the right, is the Pump Room. Despite having read Jane Austen, much of it more than once, I had never caught on to why it's called that. At tea, someone asked, and Stefano pointed accross the room to a small fixture, maybe the size of a small juke box, that is the pump that brings water from the springs below up into the room, where it can be dispensed into pitchers for serving!

Once we were seated, we were serve an appetizer of excellent smoked salmon with horseradish sauce. With it cam individual pots of outstanding tea (I copied down the name, in case I ever get a chance to buy any) and, for each two people, one of these triple-decker plates of munchies.

From the bottom up: Lower plate: finger sandwiches of ham, cucumber, and egg salad and little tartlets of peas and cheese (apparently a combination very popular in Jane's time). Middle plate: raisin scones, clotted cream, and strawberry jam. Upper plate: raspberries and cream on shortbread, lemon meringue tarts, and little squares of chocolate ganache topped with chocolate pastilles with silhouettes of Jane Austen on them. Can you make out, in the top left corner, our waiter (wearing and orange time and gesturing with both hands) holding forth on the subject of the food?

We were each poured a half glass of water from the pump, supposedly packed with health-giving qualities. It wasn't obnoxious (better than San Diego tap water, for example), but neither was it terribly palatable. I didn't finish mine, and most at the table didn't even taste it.

All the while, live musicians played first a long medley from Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe, then one from My Fair Lady, and finally some light operetta that I didn't know. Lovely tea.

From the pump room, we went straight into a self-guided tour of the huge, well-preserved Roman baths, which are right in the same building. At the left here is a plan of the area that has been excavated and opened to the public, much of underground and much more extensive than when we last visited, decades ago.

At the right is the view down from modern street level to the Great Bath, the largest of the three rectangular pools you can see on the plan. Information panels explain who all the statues are meant to represent, present diagrams of the path hot ground water takes to emerge at the surface, the architecture of the Roman buildings, etc.

The model at the left here shows how the bath complex would have looked in Roman times, with some sections cut away to show what's inside the buildings.

Only after our feet gave out did we climb back to modern street level and make our way back to the hotel, where our luggage was waiting for us in our rooms.

Adapting historic structures to hotel use resulted in some interesting configurations. at the right here, I'm standing by the bed and looking back (past the bathroom and the closet) toward the door to my room. The butterfly motif was continued on the lambshade.

On the bed's throw pillows, the theme changed to ornamental birds, and over the headboard, you can see a sample of the style of art displayed throughout the establishment—classical portraiture with the faces obscured by random splashes of paint.

After resting our feet or a while, David and I had supper at the hotel's lesser restaurant. The label on the bottled water doesn't make it sound especially appetizing, but I suppose it's better than the "Vitalis" we were served in Portugal.

The smoked salmon on this trip was uniformly outstanding, and David took advantage at every opportunity.

I, on the other hand, jumped at the chance to order this gorgeous pan-roasted skate's wing with brown butter, capers, tiny shrimp, and a roasted carrot on the side. Excellent!

For dessert, we had a green crême brulée (pistachio?) that we ate before I got a photo.

The only fly in the ointment of a lovely day is that, on preparing to go to supper I couldn't account for my pocket recorder! You can clearly see it in the photo of the salmon above, so the hotel staff are calling the Pump Room to see if I left it there. Here's hoping . . .