Mrs Ash and I have been down in the south of England for a few days. The weather has been great, 28 degrees here at 9pm at night on Thursday night. We took a trip to Stonehenge yesterday, Devizes and finally Avebury to see the stone circle there. Mrs Ash loves all this stuff for the photo opportunities that they offer. Prices for Stonhenge? £8.00 each. Not bad in this day and age. But the last time I went, a few decades ago it was free and I was able to sit down on one of the stones and eat my lunch. Now, you cannot get to the stones, remaining cordoned of by about 12 feet minimum. Today we visited Windsor Castle. The Queen was out but nonetheless a great trip within what amounts to the toffs end of Berkshire. Windsor Castle proved to be extremely popular, despite the £17.50 entrance fee each. The majority of visitors were foreign. Windsor Castle undoubtedly generates a lot of revenue. Noticed this phone box painted up by Timmy Mallet. Princess Kate and Prince Harry are on two of the 3 other sides. We even had a quick squint at Eton College which is walkable from Windsor Castle, through the village. Apparently Eton has produced nineteen British Prime Ministers, including Sir Robert Walpole, William Pitt the Elder, the first Duke of Wellington, William Ewart Gladstone, Arthur James Balfour, Harold Macmillan, and the current Prime Minister, David Cameron. I came across this place as we walked through Eton Town: Old Etonians who have been writers include Henry Fielding, Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, Aldous Huxley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Bridges, George Orwell, Anthony Powell, Cyril Connolly and Ian Fleming. The mediaevalist and ghost story writer M. R. James was provost of Eton from 1918 until his death in 1936. Other notable Old Etonians include scientists Robert Boyle, John Maynard Smith, J. B. S. Haldane, and John Gurdon, the dandy Beau Brummell, economists John Maynard Keynes and Richard Layard, Antarctic explorer Lawrence Oates, politician Alan Clark, cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, adventurer Bear Grylls, composers Thomas Arne, Hubert Parry, and Peter Warlock, and musicians Frank Turner and Humphrey Lyttelton. Off to Bath tomorrow for more photos for Mrs Ash's facebook page.
Weather not quite so good today. Visited the Roman baths in Bath. Large queues outside to get in. Tickets at £13.00 per head or a tenner if booked in advance. They told me that they get a million visitors a year. Today many were from overseas or foreign students in the UK, many from the far east and or south east Asia. 5000 visitors in a single day, not so long ago. Not great for anyone with babies as they don't allow buggies in and there are a lot of stairs and steps. Interesting to see how the Romans lived here in the UK some 2000 years ago. Underground heating and all sorts. The waters are quite warm.... From Wikipedia: "The water which bubbles up from the ground at Bath fell as rain on the nearby Mendip Hills. It percolates down through limestone aquifers to a depth of between 2,700 metres (8,900 ft) and 4,300 metres (14,100 ft) where geothermal energy raises the water temperature to between 64 °C (147.2 °F) and 96 °C (204.8 °F). Under pressure, the heated water rises to the surface along fissures and faults in the limestone. This process is similar to an artificial one known as Enhanced Geothermal System which also makes use of the high pressures and temperatures below the Earth's crust. Hot water at a temperature of 46 °C (114.8 °F) rises here at the rate of 1,170,000 litres (257,364 imp gal) every day, from a geological fault (the Pennyquick fault)."
When I can I will. Its a must for me. I want to see Pompeii I have visited Sabratha in Libya, near the tunisian border. Libya has been blessed with 3 great sets of Roman remains. The Libyans don't seem to appreciate them though. LOL. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/184 Taken from the above link, I have this pic but it predates even the PC, taken in 1979. It has been, to some degree, rebuilt by Italian archaeologists. There's a heap of other stuff there in Sabratha too, just as impressive.
I was listening to radio2 on my way to the eistedfod, a couple of days ago, and someone inteviewed abolke that seems to be of the opinion that Stonehenge was not purpose built as some sort of cosmic calendar but as a crematorium...
Do you do any singing boyo? Yes, many theories. Its a colossal bit of architecture, though, considering when it was built.
Okay, so The Porny School in Eton wasn't what i first suspected, it is named after a headmaster. Phew......
Indeed and the question is how did they get to Salisbury Plain from Pembrokesire, 160 miles away: "The new find leaves two prominent theories for how the Welsh rocks got to Salisbury. Humans could have quarried the site and dragged the blocks on wooden rafts. Or a giant glacier may have chiseled off the blocks and ferried them about a hundred miles (160 kilometers) toward Stonehenge, with humans dragging them the rest of the way." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...nes-wales-match-glacier-ixer-ancient-science/
Thank you! I remembered that - it's a public convenience of course - and I remember saying as we walked through it that you could chat to your neighbour as you did the business (over running water) but I've never been able to find a picture of it.
Yes, very sociable lot, the Romans.... I took a picture of it when I was there, but this one is from the internet. My photos of Sabratha are printed only, taken on an old Brownie (no pun intended). I like the little water channel just in front of the rows of seats, where they dunked their sponges on sticks, for cleansing purposes apparently. “It is a new research area really. Everyday topics like going to the toilet were long taboo in science. I’m excited that it changed: everything is different than you think from your modern perspective. Image there was no toilet paper. people shared a sponge on a stick.” http://historyoftheancientworld.com...ite-stinky-large-international-study-reveals/
