Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Beaches, Rings, Henges and a Balloon ride

We survived the trip to Bournemouth and have kept busy since we arrived. On Saturday we arrived around noon. After a light lunch that Heather made for us (no one can argue with a free sandwich), we headed to the beach to walk towards the busy district of town. When we arrived, we saw that the Bournemouth Eye had a rather short line. Heather had never been and neither had we, so we bought tickets in hopes to cure George's fear of heights. A quote from George, "Why do you make me do crazy things?". I think he is forgetting that he was the one who noticed this attraction on the internet first.



The next day we headed off to see Stonehenge. Heather was kind enough to drive. She hadn't seen them before so was thankful to have tourists take her out to see the sights in her country. We got talking about how we visit places in other countries more then our own. When asked if there were ancient ruins in Ontario to see, we couldn't think of any. I know there are some Petroglyphs. I think I am going to make a point of going to see the Petroglyphs in Peterborough next summer. The other thing that I new we had is Viking ruins in Newfoundland.

While driving to Stonehenge, my navigation skills were put to the test trying to navigate Heather through the 5-8 roundabouts in Salisbury. Long story short, we ended up at Figsbury Ring instead. So we did our trip is a different order. Figsbury Rings is a prehistoric ruin that they believe was a fort. It is a circle of about 150m wide that is made from dirty. They also dug trenches inside the ring and outside of it. The trenches outside were probably defensive, but the reason for the inside ones are unknown. Like Stonehenge, the use of the ring is just a guess, but we did visit a second one on the way home.

The next stop was Old Sarum, where there once was a prehistoric ring. On top of the ring a castle was built.

Then we went to Stonehenge and followed a tour guide where he talked about the guesses for the purpose of the henge. He had dowsing rods and believed that at one point an energy was emitted by the circle, causing the rods to change. He demonstrated this and let other try. It worked for some and not others.


This is one of the many pictures we took of Stonehenge.

Next we visited Woodhenge. It was originally made from wood. All that is left now are concrete markers where they once stood.


This is a picture of George walking in Woodhenge


Here is an old Roman Church that was built in a prehistoric ring.