We slept in a bit and had breakfast.  Today we will be doing a walking tour of Bankside, the neighborhood between London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge on the southern bank of the Thames.  We took the subway AKA Underground (10 minute walk from the apartment) to the London Bridge Underground Station with a transfer at Baker Street Station.  Baker Street...hum...that address sounds familiar.

As expected, it was quite the scene when we got outside. As I mentioned yesterday, there was a terrorist attack on London Bridge yesterday where 5 people were stabbed, 2 fatally.  The bridge was blocked off and there were cameras and reporters everywhere.

We just avoided the scene and went on the Bankside walking tour in Rick Steves' London Guide.  This is Southwark Cathedral, dates back to 1207, and is where Shakespeare prayed.

And here is Shakespeare, the eternal resident of the church:

After touring the church, we headed outside to the Borough Market.  There has been a market here for over 1,000 years. 

This is London Bridge.  Many people think Tower Bridge is London Bridge, but it is not.  The original bridge was built by the Romans over 2,000 years ago.  The next version was built around 1200 followed by the 1823 version that was sold to an American and reassembled in Lake Havasu City.  There is a running joke that the Brit's think the American believed he was buying Tower Bridge, but this is London Bridge:

And here are the reporters and news vans and an interesting comment on Google Maps.  Our current location is the blue dot.

Here is the Golden Hinde Replica.  This is a replica of the 100-foot clipper Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe with from 1577-1580.  This replica actually circumnavigated the globe as well between 1974 and 1979 covering over 100,000 miles.  It is now a museum.

A cool mural with musician playing in front of it.  Fire actually came out of the top of his tuba as he played.

This is a replica of Shakespeare's Globe theater.  The originally one burned down a performance started from a spark generated by a stage cannon going off.  This replica, built in 1997, is a very realistic replica that even has wooden nails and a thatched roof.

Our plan was to tour the theater, but decided against it after reading reviews.  It would have been cool to see a Shakespeare play here, but they were all sold out, and we saw a play in Stafford-Upon-Avon (Shakespeare's birthplace).  So, this is all we saw of the Globe Theater, albeit, it is a very cool building.

The view from in front of the Globe was pretty cool.  In the walking tour, this is where we read about the 1666 great fire. The fire started on 2 September 1666 and burned for 4 days.  80% of the city was burned to the ground, including 13,000 houses and 89 churches.

The buildings from right to left is 20 Fenchurch Street skyscraper (AKA "The Walkie-Talkie"); 52 Lime Street (AKA "The Scalpel"); The Leadenhall Building (AKA "The Cheesegrater"); and The Pinnacle (AKA "The Helter Skelter").

This is looking to the left (east).  This is Millennium Bridge where we are headed to next.  The dome building is St. Paul's Cathedral.

And here I am, standing on the Millennium Bridge:

Here is the view looking east.  This is Southwark Bridge in the foreground, London Bridge, just beyond, is mostly obscured except for the supports, and Tower Bridge is further out (see the towers).

The long view.  The tall building on the right is the Shard, the tallest building in the UK (1,016 ft high).

The only thing left on this side of the Thames that we want to see is Tate Modern art museum, but it has it's own walking tour and we don't have enough time to see it now, but we did duck in to warm up a bit.

We were warmed up and ready to walk around 2:30 PM.  We have to be somewhere by 4 PM and it is only a 15 minute walk from here.  So, we turned back from where we came and walked slow, re-enjoying the sites we saw today.  Where are we going you may ask?  Well...today is Saturday, 30 November, the day of the last Ohio State regular season football game, which mean that today is the Ohio State versus University of Michigan Football game.  I was able to find the Ohio State Alumni of Greater London on Twitter and saw that they are having a viewing party at Belushi's by London Bridge.

We arrived at Belushi's around 3:30 PM, a bit early, but not too early for a beer....ha.  It wound up that the Michigan fans were meeting downstairs and the Ohio State fans were upstairs.  Interesting that they separated the crowd, but I guess thing can get messy during European football games, so they are used to separating fans.

It was pretty fun meeting and talking to others that attending Ohio State, and to make it even better, Ohio State won 56 - 27.

It was a fun night out after which we returned to the apartment.  I don't know what we are going to do tomorrow.  Maybe we will do nothing.

Oh by the way...remember the photos of the reporters above? Well, here is a screen capture of the actual broadcast:

We woke up early enough to have breakfast at the hotel which was very good.  We checked out, scraped ice off the window of the rental car, and headed to London to drop off the rental car and check into our AirBnB apartment that we will be staying in for the next week.

Wow...two awesome things to look forward to.  First, dropping off the rental car will be a big relief.  It marks the end of me driving on the other side of the road and it removes that little nag at the back of my head that we are responsible for a rental car.  Second, we get to stay in one place (London) for the next 17 days.  What a relief...that is after we drive though the traffic of London to return the rental car.

We left the hotel around 8:15 AM as planned and got stuck in London traffic as planned.

We arrived at the rental car agency just after 9:30 AM, with relief of being 30 minutes early.  By the time we returned the car, we had driven almost 1,000 miles (979 miles to be exact), in 11 days.  Wow...that's a lot of driving.  By the way, here is a photo of our rental car we took a couple of days ago at the tin mines of Cornwall.  It is a Fiat Tipo.

Now that we are in London, I will let the train conductors and bus drivers do all the driving for us.  It was convenient that the rental car agency was located near the train station, so we headed in and was in our neighborhood in 30 minutes. 

We arrived here earlier than we can check in, so we found a coffee shop and hung out there for 1.5 hours.  They didn't seem to mind as we made purchases throughout our stay.   We finally  checked in, unpacked, and headed to the store for groceries.  By the time we arrived back to the apartment, we decided to just stay in and start exploring London tomorrow.  This gave me time to come up with a plan for the next 17 days.  Using Rick Steves' London Guide, I came up with a day-by-day plan to ensure we see everything we want to see.

Oh...I forgot to mention.  Do you remember the terrorist attack on London Bridge where 5 people were stabbed, 2 fatally?  Well that just happened today.  Just in time for our arrival to London.  What is even more interesting is that we are going to be in that area tomorrow to visit an outdoor market.  I guess we will see if it will be opened tomorrow.  Until then...

Here is a rare photo of my this morning as I study the route of today's drive before checking out of the B&B.

Talking about the B&B.  What an incredible breakfast we had.  The rooms are actually above a really nice bistro called Whitehouse.  We could order anything we wanted off the menu...it was so good.  Rye really was a great overnight stop.

Dover is just a one hour drive away, so we loaded into the car and headed out and arrived right at 11 AM.  We are doing a walking tour that Rick Steves has in his book.  It starts in the Market Square with the Dover Museum. 

Inside the Dover Museum is a surprising item, a large and well-preserved 3,500-year-old Bronze Age boat unearthed near here in September 1992.  According to the display, it is "the oldest know sea-going vessel in the world."  The boat consists of four oak planks held together with oak wedges and yew stitches with the holes packed with moss and beeswax.  It is 31 feet long and 8 feet wide.  Very interesting.

This is a model in a display that shows what the boat looked like:

We left the museum and continued our Dover walk.  Here is Market Square with Dover Castle in the fog.  Dover isn't that pretty, basically because it was destroyed in WWII and had to rebuild.

Here is a better photo of Dover Castle.  It cost £20 per person to visit, so we decided to skip it.  We have been to many castles and this one didn't seem too special.  The only thing we would have liked to see is the secret WWII tunnels.

We then walked down to the waterfront promenade along the English Channel.

Here, I am standing at the start (or finish) for people swimming across the English Channel to/from France.  You can see the swimmers on the top of the rock pedestals.

Aha...here are some of the White Cliffs of Dover:

We did decide not to visit the White Cliffs of Dover Visitor Center since we saw some spectacular cliffs yesterday, so we returned to the car and drove the rest of the way to Canterbury, 30 minutes away.

We checked into the B&B around 3 PM, settled in, then went out to explore.  That is Canterbury Cathedral in the background:

5 minutes from leaving the B&B, we arrived to The Foundry Brewpub where we had a flight:

Oh...we also had dinner here which was pretty good.  After dinner we headed back tot he B&B.  We have a lot to see in Canterbury tomorrow, so we want to get an early start.

Today we tour Canterbury then head to a roadside hotel just outside of London to make it easier to drop the car off tomorrow morning.

The Canterbury Cathedral opens up at 9 AM, so our plan is to be there then.  Luckily, our B&B is a 1 minute walk to the cathedral, so we didn't have wake too early.  After the continental breakfast at the B&B, checked out of the hotel, put our bags in the car, and headed to the Cathedral.

The Canterbury Cathedral is the headquarters of the Anglican Church (like the English Vatican).  In the 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in front of the alter.  Becket was canonized a saint 3 years later, and the Canterbury Cathedral became a destination for pilgrims.  This place is huge.  We spend 1.5 hours following Rick Steves' Self-Guided Tour in the book as Tim took 65 photo...and here they all are.  Just kidding.  Here are the highlights:

The next stop is the quirky Canterbury Tales experience.  When in Canterbury, you must...right?!?  This experience uses live actors, lighting effects, and plaster figures.  It dramatizes five of the tales in amusement-park like rooms.  The Canterbury Tales were written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400.

As I was putting together this Blog entry, I tried to find more information on this place and found that it has closed for good..too bad.

After the Canterbury Tales Experience, we wondered around town:

After the walking tour it was time to eat.  I have had a craving for Chinese food for a while...actually, I always crave Chinese food, so I found a place on the phone that had pretty good reviews.  We wound up at Super Noodle and wow....it was really good.  I guess I forgot to tell you that I wasn't really feeling great, so after lunch we headed to our car and drove to a Best Western just outside of London.

We arrived at the hotel and I got under the covers.  We have to return the car by 10 AM and it should be about a 1 hour drive, but we want to give ourselves plenty of time to account for traffic and getting lost, so we are leaving around 8:15 AM.  Until then...

Today we have a nice 2 hour drive along the southern coast of England...at least is would be nice if it wasn't raining.  But, as usually, we won't let the rain get in the way of our traveling, so we moved out the the AirBnB and jumped into the car.  Our first stop is Brighton, 1.25 hours away.

We arrived in Brighton around 11 AM.  Even though it was raining and window, we parked and headed to the Brighton Pier.  During the "season" it is glitzy and shiny and bright with amusement rides, carnival games, food stands, restaurants, and arcades.  Because it was a Tuesday morning and rainy and windy, we pretty much had the pier to ourselves with only a few other crazy people walking around.

After walking the pier it was after noon, so we walked into town to find lunch.  I found a place on my phone that is know to have very good sandwiches, Social Board Brighton.  Wow...it was so good.  Tim enjoyed his Philly and I loved my Tempeh sandwich.  You might be like...Tempeh?!?...yuck.  Well, this is the description of the sandwich.  All those different textures and flavors made it one of my favorite sandwiches ever.

Boy...I would love to have another one of those sandwiches right now!

After lunch we walked back to the car and headed out to Beachy Head.  It is only 40 minutes away, but a pleseant drive along the coast with views of chalky, white cliffs.  Beachy Head has the largest of these cliffs called "Seven Sisters" and it was spectacular.

You may be asking...isn't Dover where the white cliffs are?  Why yes, but here in Beachy Head, we knew that we would have  the place pretty much to ourselves instead of dealing with the crowds of Dover.   We are driving to Dover tomorrow, but we might not visit the White Cliffs of Dover since we are now here.

I'm sure it it was sunny, the contrast between the white cliffs and dark sand would be amazing, but it was still quite a site to see. 

There was a visitors center with displays that talked about the formation of the cliffs and how erosion will one day take out the visitor center.  The coast is currently eroding 8 - 10 inches per year.

We are on our way to Canterbury, which is only 2 hours from here, but Rick Steves talks nicely about a town called Rye, exactly between here and Canterbury.

Who doesn't dream of half-timbered pubs?!? So, we decided to stay there for the night.  We arrived at our B&B just after sunset.  We walked around town a bit, stopped at an Italian restaurant and shared a pizza and some pasta, then looked for a half-timbered pub.  We found a pub called Rye Waterworks Micropub, and what a find!  They had about 8 local cask beers with the casks visible from the bar:

We had a couple of these cask beers and then switched to trying some of the local ciders they offered.  I think one of the ciders I had was 12% ABV!  Here is a cool photo (borrowed from their website) of the ciders:

After all that beer and cider, I had to use the bathroom:

Pretty cool that it flushes like you are pouring cask ale!  After a few hours of hanging out at this awesome pub, we walked back to the B&B and called it a night.  Tomorrow we head to Canterbury for 2 night with a stopover in Dover.  Until then...

We left the B&B just after 10 AM and drove towards Portsmouth were we are going to check out the Historic Dockyard.  As we were driving, the road starting looking familiar and then we realized that we were driving right past Stonehenge.  Yes, you can see if from the side of the road.  Tim was able to get a pretty good video as we drove right by.

We arrived in Portsmouth, checked into our AirBnB, and walked to the Historic Dockyard which was a pleasant 30 minute walk.  There is much to see here, but since it is already after 2 PM, we only have time for one sight...the Mary Rose Museum. 

The Mary Rose Is a 16th-century warship that sunk 2 miles off the English coast in July 1545 killing about 370 sailors.  She was located 1971, and in 1982, after 437 years underwater, the ship was raised.  The ship we saw in the museum is the remains of the Mary Rose after 35 years of conservation.

Before visiting this museum, I have never heard of it before and wasn't totally interested.  Tim had seen a show on PBS about it, so was excited to see it.  Needless to say, when seeing the ship along with all the displays of all sorts of items found inside the wreck, I couldn't get enough.  Here are some highlight photos of the Mary Rose Museum.

Lot of longbows were found inside the wreck:

By the way...here is a model on display of what the Mary Rose looked like:

We wound up visiting the museum until they kicked us out at 5 PM, almost 3 hours after arriving.

On the walk back to the AirBnB, we stopped at the Brewhouse & Kitchen.  This is a small chain that we have been to before, but each location has a few local brews that they make, so we had a flight:

We then returned to the AirBnB and looked forward to tomorrow when we get to see some more of the Historic Dockyard.

We woke up, had breakfast, and headed back to the Historic Dockyard.  There are multiple ships here that we can tour including the HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, and HMS M.33.  First stop, HMS Warrior.

The HMS Warrior was the first ironclad warship and was built in 1860.  Interestingly, HMS Warrior was never in a battle since its very existence was sufficient to keep peace since the enemy knew it was unbeatable.

There were tour guides in character throughout the ship.  This guy told us what it was like to be a fireman, the guy that shoveled coal into the furnaces. 

Next stop, the HMS Victory, the historic warship captained by Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson during England's victory over Napoleon's feet in the Trafalgar campaign in 1805.  Unfortunately, Admiral Nelson was hit by a sniper bullet and died onboard.

It is kind of cool how the ship is dry docked:

The plaque on the deck says "HERE NESON FELL 21st Oct 1805."

This is the spot where Nelson actually died.

Next is HMS M.33, a M29-class monitor built in 1919 and is one of only three surviving Royal Navy warships of WWI and the only surviving ship form the Gallipoli Campaign.  By the way....the modern looking aircraft carrier in the background is the soon to be commissioned HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier...more to come later.

We did go inside this ship, but it wasn't very exciting, although they did have a multimedia presentation about teh Gallipoli Campaign which was very interesting.

After walking around three ships on land, it is time to take the water tour on the Solent Cat.  The tour was about 1 hour and took us up and down Portsmouth Harbor passing the Portsmouth Naval Base.

This is Spinnaker Tower.  It was originally called Portsmouth Millennium Tower, but due to delays the construction didn't begin until 2001 and was completed in 2005.

The HMS Prince of Wales was commissioned on 10 December 2019, just 15 days after we took these photos.

This is the HMS Bristol, a Type 82 destroyer commissioned in 1973.  It served in the Falklands War and now serves as a training ship.

Other random photos taken during the harbor tour:

We returned to the dockyard and continued our walk around the area.  We took a quick peek inside the Making of a Royal Marine Commando exhibit and thought we were done, so we headed towards the exit.  But then we came across Boathouse 4, so we went in to check it out.

Boathouse 4 is a working Boatbuilding Skills Training Center where historic boats are restored as well as it being the home to the International Boatbuilding College Portsmouth and Highbury College.  Tim was quite enthralled by this building.  Here are some of his photos:

I was so done by this time and had to drag Tim out of the building kicking and screaming.  For dinner we went back to the Brewhouse & Kitchen since tonight was buy-one-burger-get-one-free night.  We then returned to the AirBnB.  Tomorrow we drive to Rye with a couple of fun stops along the way.  Until then...

It is a 3 hour drive to Glastonbury, so we got a fairly early start and drove the 170 miles, arriving around 12:30 PM.  We are staying in Wells tonight, but we are stopping in Glastonbury on the way. 

First stop is the Glastonbury Abbey, the first Christian sanctuary in the British Isles.  This site has been a sacred site for hundreds of years starting with the druids.  In the 1st century, Joseph of Arimathea (the man who was responsible for burying Jesus), supposedly visited here and built a small church, making this the leading Christian pilgrimage site in all of Britain.

In 1184 there was a devastating fire bringing the pilgrimage to a halt.  In 1191, the abbot "discovered," with the help of a divine dream, the tomb and bodies of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, bringing the pilgrims back...along with all their money.

In 1539, King Henry VIII destroyed all abbeys leading to the ruins we are seeing today.

A guided tour is included in the admission price, so we ate our sandwiches we bought at a convenience store, while waiting for the tour to begin.  Lucky us, we were the only ones on the tour.  The tour guide dressed up as a pilgrim from the 12th century which was pretty cool, although Tim only got a photo of here back:

Here are some photos from our visit:

And of course, the site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's tomb:

After the Abby, we walked through town.  This town is full of shops selling crystals due to the druid connection mentioned above and also because of hippies visiting the springs filled with healing water.  There are also many music and art shops due to the famous Glastonbury music and art festival held nearby.  Our first goal on this walk is to find, and taste the healing waters of the Red and White Springs.  After about 20 minutes we found them, right across from each other.  Here I am tasting the Red Spring water.  It was actually pretty good.

Across from the Red Spring is the White Spring which you can bathe in by entering this strange building:

Inside it was candlelit with shrines, antlers, crystals, and naked hippie-like people showering under cold water or soaking in cold water pools.  This is taken from their website.

After getting our fill..and no, we didn't go into the water...I filled up my water bottle with White Spring water, which tasted better than the Red Spring water.  We then headed to Glastonbury Tor to hike to the top.  We are hiking to the tower in this photo.  It doesn't look too bad.

Did I say it doesn't look too bad?  Well, the walk was much steeper than anticipated.  This is looking down from almost the top:

Ah....made it.  The view was well worth the walk.

We started our hike down and decided to stop for a snack at a conveniently located bench.

It was now almost 3 PM, so we finished our snack and headed down the hill, through town, and back to our car (stopping for an awesome brownie at a bakery in town.)

Oh yeah...I forget to show you a photo of the Chalice Well Garden.  Behind this building is a well that Joseph of Arimathea (you learned about him above) dropped the chalice from the Last Supper into.  We didn't see it fitting to pay £4.50, so all you get is a photo of the building.

We were only 15 minutes from Wells, so arrived in town, parked, and walked to the Wells Cathedral.  We arrived there in time to walk around a little bit and take a few photos before they announced that the cathedral was closing unless you were staying for Evensong Service, so we stayed.  I do like listening to the organ playing with the boys choir singing.

Here are some photos of the cathedral.  It is England's first completely Gothic cathedral dating from around 1200.

Check out the figure-eight "scissor arches'...pretty cool.  I don't think we have seen this before.

Evensong ended at 6PM, so we were greeted with a lit-up church when we exited.

Wells was lit up for the season:

Our B&B is not actually in Bath, so we returned to the car and drove the 10 minutes.  As we checked in, the owners made a reservation for us the closest restaurant, The Pheasant.  We had a glass of wine in the room and walked 10 minutes to the restaurant.  We had a nice dinner and some beer and returned to the B&B.  Tomorrow we head to Portmouth for a 2 night stay.  Until then...

We are driving to Penzance today.  It is 100 miles away, so it should take about 2.5 hours.  Luckily there is a neolithic site we will stop at to break the drive up a bit.

We left the AirBnB and drove to Scorhill Stone Circle, just outside of Gidleigh, England.  We arrived into town and drove up a narrow road that ended in a parking area.  We entered the gate and walked uphill about 15 minutes and was rewarded with a great view of the Dartmoor moors.

When we went over the rise, Scorhill Stone Circle was in view:

Here is a zoomed in look:

Standing in the circle:

As a bonus, just a short hike away is a clapper bridge, so off we went.

Tim's fingers taking a walk:

Great action shot Tim:

OK...enough of this.  Time to hike back to the car and drive to Penzance...if these cows get out of our way!

We arrived in Penzance around 2 PM, checked into the AirBnB and then went out for a walk.  Here is a photo of our neighborhood.  It is a bit stormy out here.

We walked around town a bit and found Cornish Crown Brewery just a few blocks from our AirBnB, so of course we had to stop for a flight:

It was starting to rain, so we headed back to the AirBnB hoping for some better weather for tomorrow for our driving tour of the Penwith Peninsula which Penzance is a part of.

We awoke to stormy weather so slept in some, had breakfast, and waited for the rain to slow down.  When it finally did, we headed to the car to explore the Penwith Peninsula.  First stop is a small village could Mousehole.  We parked and walked down to the walking path along the English Channel.

This is a cute town.  I could just imagine it with blue skies:

Well look...The Ship Inn looks interesting. It is a St Austell Brewery inn which isn't actually a brewery, but since they had 4 different St. Austell beers on tap, we decided to order a flight:

Here is a nice Cornish toast:

We walked back to the car along the path along the water and enjoyed the scenery.

Back to the car and onward to continue our Penwith Peninsula tour.  These Hedgerows are an icon of Cornwall and aren't as soft as they appear.  There are rock walls behind that greenery making for a "fun" drive.  And yes...this is a two way road.

More crazy, narrow roads through Lamorna Cove.

Check it out...Lands End is only 7.5 miles away.  Going there will complete our end-to-end tour of the UK, but first we have a few more stops.

We continued for about 1 mile and pulled off to the side of the road to visit Merry Maidens Stone Circle.

What a nice circle, especially since we had it to ourselves.  About a half-mile beyond Merry Maidens is a Celtic Cross which marked the way for Celtic pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela during the 6th to 10th century..

Rick Steves mentions a tiny road leading to a secret cove called Penherth Cove.  We had to go check it out, so we made a left.  This was really a tiny road, and again, it IS two-way.

We arrived to a sign that said visitors weren't allowed past, so we parked on the side of the road and walked the rest of the way to the cove.

This contraption is to help pull the fishing boats out of the water and onto the slipway.

Cool stone buildings on the cove.

This is the South West Coast Path and travels 630 miles along the entire coastline of the Penwith Peninsula...maybe one day we will walk the path, but for today we just walked up to a nice viewpoint.

We returned to the car, drove back up that tiny, narrow road and made it back to the main road.  Next stop Land's End, the westernmost point in all of England and is now a tourist trap with a pricey parking lot.  All we wanted was a photo of the sign, so instead of paying for parking, we took turns leaving the car an getting the obligatory photo.

That is us...the little blue dot on the map.  By the way...I am as close as you can get to the sign without having to pay.  We were in John O'Groats on 21 September, exactly 2 months ago today.

It is now after 3 PM, so we decided to head back to Penzance and finish this driving tour tomorrow.  We stopped at a Lidl and bought some food for dinner and headed back to the AirBnB for a relaxing evening.

We woke to another rainy day, but it won't stop us from exploring the rest of the Penwith Peninsula.  Right at 11 AM we arrived at Cape Corwall AKA "The Connoisseur's Land's End" because it feels like the end of the world without all the touristy gimmicks of the actual Land's End.  We parked in the parking lot and walked to the top of the bluff.  On the way, we passed the ruins of the tiny 6th-century church of St. Helen's Oratory.

We are headed up to that chimney.

Made it...and check out the views:

We walked back to the car a bit soggy from the rain, but still not letting it stop us. Next stop is the Crown Mines of Botallack.  The 1860's were the hayday for these tin mines.  We found a visitor center and talked to the park ranger for a bit as she explained that the mines went down the cliffs and under the Atlantic.  The Geevor Tin Mine in this area extended a half-mile under the ocean.  See this drawing that Tim took a photo of.  All those mine levels are under the ocean...pretty cool.

Here are some photos of mine ruins

Back to the car for a scenic drive to St. Ives through, as Rick Steves put it, "mining towns, farm hamlets, and pastoral fields." Here is a  white-belted Galloway cow along the side of the road and the "pastoral fields."

We made it to St. Ives just before 3 PM and guess what.  There is a brewery here not surprising called St. Ives Brewery.  There were no beers on tap, so we bought one bottle of each of their beers.

After the flight, we were ready to get back to the AirBnB and dry out.   We arrived at the AirBnB right around dinner time, had some dinner, did laundry, and called it a night.  Tomorrow we have a 3.5 hour drive to Wells, England.  Until then...

Today we are doing "Dartmoor Driving Tour" in Rick Steves' England guidebook.  FIrst stop is in an area called "The Moors".  A moor is land with a relative lack of vegetation except for high grasses and heather.  This area has long views of undulating expanses of open land without trees, but is littered with prehistoric stone monuments.

Our first stop is to hike up to a stone monument called "Grimspound."  We parked on the side of the road and hiked up a hill to the monument.  Here are some nice "view" photos:

Below us is Grimspound (see the circle of rocks):

Gruimspond dates from 2000 BCE and is a late-Bronze Age fortress used as a settlement for 800 years.  The inner stone circles, like the one I am sitting on below, would have been stone huts.

We returned to the car to continue the driving tour.  We passed these cool cows on the side of the road along with a celtic cross.  These celtic crosses are found all along the road and marked the way for villagers to cross the moor, often for funeral processions.

Further down the road is the village of Postbridge, and has a very cool and very old bridge called a clapper bridge that dates back to the Middle Ages.

It was about noon and we were hungry so we stopped in the next town, Widecombe-in-the-Moor.  This was a very small town with a cute church.  Luckily there was a gift shop that sold pasties.

This image of many people on the back of a gray mare appears all over town.  Notice the city sign above as well.  The image comes from a popular folk song called Widecombe Fair about a a man called Tom Pearce, whose horse dies after someone borrows it to travel the the fair in Widecombe with his friends, making 8 people aboard this poor mare...no wonder it died.

Back to the car with the next stop being Haytor, one of many bare granite peaks that poke out of the moor landscape.  While climbing up to it, I located a geocache.  Tim says that I am way to motivated to get to these hidden canisters.

After about 15 minute hike up hill, we came to the granite peaks.  Wait...this doesn't match the photo in the guide book!  Oops...wrong granite peaks.  These wound up being called Saddle Tor.

Back to the car, and around the next bend we saw Haytor.

Less than a 10 minute walk up the hill and we arrive:

What a great view from up here.

Back on the road to the last stop on our driving tour, Hound Tor. Named Hound Tor because the rocks look resemble heads of dogs.  This clump of rocks are supposedly the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes story "The Hound of Baskervilles."

We were supposed to climb up these rocks, but it was past 2:30 PM and we want to get back to our AirBnB and tour the town of Chagford, so we stopped in the parking lot, took a photo, and headed back to Chagford.

We returned to Chagford, parked the car, walked to the AirBnB, and then headed out for our town walk.  There was a brochure in the AirBnB with a Chagford walking tour.  It was already 4 PM, so we didn't have much daylight left, but off we went.

We must have stood here for 10 minutes watching them replace the thatch roof on this building.  It was very interesting to watch them work.

Here is St. Michael the Archangel's Church built in the 1400's.

We exited the church at 4:45 PM and just like that, it is dark.

We returned to the AirBnB, had bread, cheese, and jam in front of the fireplace.  Tomorrow we head to Penzance, a 5.5 hour drive, so we want to get an early start.

The alarm went off at 7 AM because we plan on being at Salisbury Cathedral by 9 AM and wanted to eat breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast and just happens to be where we stayed last night...Wetherspoon.  After breakfast, we headed straight to the Cathedral.

Salisbury Cathedral was completed in 1258.  It is a beautiful place that holds one of the original copies of the Magna Carta.

The cloister is beautiful.

The Magna Carta is inside that booth.  The Magna Carta, dating to 1215, is to England what the Constitution is to the United States.  This is one of four orignal Magna Carta's that exist. The one here is know to be the best preserved.  Of the other three, one is in Lincoln Castle and two are in the British Library in London.

No photographs are allowed of the Magna Carta, but here is what it looks like:

After this live history show we walked back to the car via another historic site.  I am standing in the exact location where on 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the UK's intelligence services, and his daughter Yulia Skripal were poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.  Both survived, but this led to the British government accusing Russia of attempted murder and announced a series of punitive measures against Russia, including the expulsion of diplomats, on the 14 March.

We returned to the car and headed to a bucket list location...Stonehenge.  We arrived around 11 AM, skipped the museum for now, and headed straight to the stones.  From the visitor center you can walk the 1.25 miles, or take the bus.  We decided to take the bus since we are trying to beat the afternoon crowd.

Stonehenge is believed to have been built between 3000 and 1500 BCE and used as a cremation cemetary, and functions as a celestial calendar.

When you arrive at the formation, you walk clockwise around the stones while listening to an audio tour.  We took over 50 photos but here are a few of the better ones.

This is the "heel stone" which lines up the sun and the alter in the center of the stone formation.

This is a Station Stone.  There used to be 4 of these stones marking the corners of a rectangle.  Now 2 of these survive.

After spending about 50 minutes walking around and contemplating Stonehenge, we headed back to the bus.  We decided to get off at the halfway point and walk around some more of the standing stones in the area.  It took us about 30 minutes to walk back to the museum and took a walk around.  At this point there were bunches of children, so we quickly checked out the exhibit.

Here is a skeleton they found on the grounds.  He was excavated in 1864 and is believed to have died between 3630 and 3360 BCE.  I love when they extrapolate a face on the skull.

We went to the cafeteria and had pasties for lunch which were pretty good.  We then headed to Chagford, 2 hours east, where we are spending the next 2 nights.  It took us a bit to find the house since the road is under construction, but we finally found it.  Tim loved that it had a wood burning fireplace.

Tomorrow we are doing a driving tour around Darmoor National Park.  It is a pretty long drive with some hiking so we want to get an early start.  Until then...

Our train back to London is before 9 AM, so we have to leave our AirBnB by 7 AM.  The alarm went off at 5:30 AM...oy...so early.  We got up, packed, and made it out of the house right at 7 AM.  We walked to the train station and arrive at 7:30 AM.  We bought a couple of sandwiches for the train, went through security, and got our 6 month Visa from the United Kingdom which was the main reason we did this trip to Brussels.

We boarded the train on time at 9 AM and were in London 2 hours later.  This time we are in London for only the time it takes for us to walk to the car rental office and get out of town.  Don't worry...we will be back in London soon with plenty of time to spend here.

We got the rental car and headed to the Avebury Stone Circle, a 2 hour drive away.  We arrived in Avebury just before 1:30 PM.  Avebury Stone Circle, built  4000 - 5000 years ago, is the largest stone circle in the world with a diameter of 1,088 feet.  It has 2 inner stone circles.

There is also an earthwork henge (a circular ditch) that has a diameter of 4,560 feet that runs around the outside of the stone circle.  earthwork henge can be see in the photo below to the left of the dirt path.  It looks like a natural ditch in this photo, but it is man-made.

Close to the Avery Stone Circle is The Avenue, a double row of stones.

Tim and I walked down The Avenue and then hiked up the other side and arrived to Silbury Hill.  It is a 129 foot high artificial chalk mound that is more than 4,000 years old. it is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world.  I found this interesting analysis on Wikipedia:  "Archaeologists calculate that it took 18 million man-hours, equivalent to 500 men working for 15 years to deposit and shape 248,000 cubic metres (324,000 cu yd) of earth and fill."  Wow...incredible.

We returned to the car and had a 1 hour drive to our overnight town of Salisbury.  Tonight we are staying in a Wetherspoon hotel, the same Wetherspoon as the restaurant with awesome beer and drink prices that we have gone to multiple times during our travel.

We checked into our room that was actually really nice and relaxed for a bit before heading across the street for dinner.  We decided to try a different restaurant other than Wetherspoon tonight.  The dinner wasn't the best, but it was inexpensive and hit the spot.  We then returned to the room, watched some TV, did some blogging, and then went to sleep.  Tomorrow we plan on touring a church here in town before hitting the road and visiting Stonehenge.  The church opens at 9 AM, so we want to be there around that time.  We want to eat breakfast before visiting the church, so the alarm is set for 7 AM.