Stonehenge

It being probably the best-known landmark I met on my Oxford adventure, I think that Stonehenge deserves its own post.

The best description I can give is one I already gave to my sister, No. 3, in an e-mail the day after.*

The illustrations are pictures from [the other] Emily's camera. There are pictures of me at Stonehenge existant, just not in my possession . . . yet. So that gives you something to look forward to(!).

* * *

Yesterday we went to Stonehenge, which is a big pile of rocks in between a freeway and a parking lot. In the parking lot there are a ton of buses filled with tourists who quickly get in line either to use the loo or to walk around a big rope circle that goes around the big rock circle.

If they have enough, you get an "audio wand" to listen to an audio tour, but if they don't have enough then you have a paper handout of the audio tour to read to yourself. The audio tour says that before the rocks it (Stonehenge, not the audio tour) used to be a wood henge ("henge" comes from the word for hanging, which means stone henge means hanging rocks; this is supposed to explain something). So they took out the wood to update things and put in rocks instead, but the wood poles left holes which a guy named Aubrey discovered in the 1600's and he also discovered that the ancient people stuck people's ashes in the holes from the poles, which is called "celestial burial" (go figure).

It took a long long time to make the wood pole holes, and it happened a long time ago. We know because there were some antlers and moose jaws (or whatever the British have instead of mooses) next to the pole holes and they got carbon dated and turned out to be really old. And, of course, it takes a long time to dig pole holes with moose jaws.

What doesn't take very long is walking around the rope circle around the rock circle. People try to make it take a little longer by stopping every few steps and taking pictures of themselves. Unfortunately, this is a kind of sad endeavor when your camera battery is dead.

And I left without even seeing the loo.

* WARNING: It is to be understood that although portions of this description leave me looking like an ignoramus (the Wikipedia links probably only seal the deal), said ignoramus-sounding portions are included for comedic effect. Recycle any of the above information at risk of yourself becoming an apparent ignoramus.