Europe Chapter 1: Part II How old is this? A history lesson...

We left London on Tuesday 1/24 on our way to Bath (called Aquae Sulis after the celtic goddess when it was established in AD 44!) stopping in Windsor and at Stonehenge just in time to see the sunset over the hills. We woke up Wednesday morning to tour the roman baths which were actually very interesting and more elaborate than I imagined them to be.

On our way up to Birmingham to stay and visit with a few mates I met while living in NZ, we sidetripped to Avebury where more unexplained rock formations similar to Stonehenge exist. They are a bunch of boulders standing upright and forming an outer circle and several inner circles that date back almost 5000 years! We also got lost in Oxford looking for a payphone and a net cafe. We didn't do the historic college town much justice navigating its busy streets by foot and car for only a few hours.

After a good evening catching up with my mates in Birmingham, we drove northeast to Nottingham/Sherwood Forest where we saw 'Major Oak,' an 800 year old oak tree where legend says Robin Hood hid and his Merry Men would meet. The oak was beautiful but looked very tired. Its branches were supported with many metal beams and trees and other plants were cleared away from it so that it doesn't have to compete for nutrients. It kind of reminded me of a lonely old man.

We spent the night in York and explored the medieval city via foot the next day. On our own walking tour, we gaped at the Yorkminster which is the biggest gothic cathedral in northern Europe (circa 1220, but a church has been there since 627). I don't know much about architecture, but anything over a few hundred years old with such elaborately detailed structures inside and out baffles me. Someone with an incredible imagination designed and built a masterpiece that has withstood wars, natural disasters, etc. and it's not just the cathedral...

On Saturday 1/28, we saw Hadrian's wall which was built by the Romans 2000 years ago. Ok, so that's not a masterpiece in an artsy sense, but it was a big feat; 74 miles long and much of it still stands today.

I was a little surprised to read that some of it was actually taken down to build roads within the last century! After York, we headed to England's nature capital, the Lake District where we did a bit of hiking around Lake Windermere and its surrounding rolling hills and pasturelands. We had a gorgeous day, blue skies and sheep grazing green grass in every direction. It's no wonder all of the Brits spend their summer holidays there.