stones and flowers

Not really that big...

With the epic Spinal Tap song on repeat on my ipod (watch this clip it plays part of the song and the best scene of the movie)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpaG-L0zTJ4

our class took a two hour bus ride to the legendary Stonehenge! When we first passed the giant stones it took me a moment to register that they were real! They are enormous and when one considers that they were moved from Wales, about 300 miles away in a time before the wheel was invented they seem to grow even larger! I was a little annoyed we couldn't get up close and personal with the boulders but I still managed to take plenty of photos in all different angles. The green countryside is lovely and it is dotted with trees and white sheep who don't seem to mind the tourists one bit. Stonhenge isn't just the basis of a great rockumentary song, it also plays a role in one of the most tragic and dramatic scenes of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I mimicked Thomas Hardy's great literary heroine in my own special way.

Being Tess

But no one really knows what Stonehenge was for. Its purposes are everywhere from a calendar to directions for aliens. But the henge is surrounded by burial mounds which makes its creation appear to be for spiritual reasons.

My opinion? The sheep are the aliens and they built stonehenge back in the day. Now they reside by their monument biding their time.....

After an hour, we left and drove off to Stourhead gardens where us girls were delivered to cinema heaven when we found out that the almost snog scene from Pride and Prejudice was filmed here!

We are such fangirls

If there is ever an opportunity to visit these gardens take it. They are simply divine. Every five seconds I would stop in my tracks and just stare at the incredible landscape. I believe that had I livd back in the day and saw such wealth I would turn into a Mrs. Bennet myself. Stourhead is the quintessential English garden but it reaches a level of beauty that can't be translated unless you walk through it yourself.

peekabo

Stourhead Gardens were built by Henry Hoare and were part of his grand estate. All the land was originally flat and the lake was originally a stream but that wasn't good enough for Hoare, he needed to become infamous for something other than his surname. 40 years later and 4o million tons of earth moved, Stourhead gardens were complete and became open to the public. The gardens strive to make the walker discover the picturesque. It's the natural look that is anything but natural. The irony the gardens presented was even more felt in the grotto, Hoare really outdid himself. while the gardens are opulent and ostentatious, they are so lovely it's hard not to become completely enamored with them.

Hoare's masterpiece

( I will never tire of using last his name)

We were acting like 12 year olds the whole time we were at the gardens, there was just so much to see and by the time we got to the bus, the entire class crashed. We were rudely awakened, as we reached Avesbury, the grander of the stone henges. Avesbury is one perfect circle in the middle of two other perfect circles, making it take up an enormous amount of space. It was built around 2600 B.C. and it was created for fertility purposes, based on the telling shapes of the rocks. It was also used for human sacrifice, blech. What I found to be the most interesting part of this rock formation was the chalk used for the giant ditches. It must have been a spectacular sight to see the blinding white across the green countryside.

So successful trip. Just beware the sheep.....