England Day 6

In the morning we had our complementary breakfast (cornflakes and toast) and mounted a train to Salisbury, a small town near Stonehenge. Once there we took a £7 return bus ride to the stones and wandered around there for an hour or so. I was told by many people who had been that you couldn’t get close to them and that you had to pay a whole bag full of money just to get within a couple of hundred metres of them, but I came away quite impressed with it, and thought it was well worth the money. There was a small wire (could hardly be called a fence) stopping tourists getting within fifty metres or so of them, and these are some serious rocks, so you get to see plenty of them from that distance. The audio guide that we got was quite useful too, detailing the history of them and possible uses for it. Simon’s theory could still hold true, but it would be a hell of a coincidence if the rocks just accidentally lined up perfectly with the sun at the summer and winter solstices. Apparently back in the day tourists bought hammers from a local store and chipped away little pieces of it to take as souvenirs. Once back in Salisbury Ben and I made the most of our studentrail cards and jumped on a train to London, which just made forking out the £20 for the card worth while. Two or three hours later we were in England’s capital and after finding Victoria coach station settled into a very nice Pizzeria for our final meal and t’was indeed a grand affair, massive garlic bread, pizza and very nice dessert for about £13. Then at the coach station where Ben was heading off to Paris to hang with Celine for a couple of days we did the awkward high five, handshake and man hug all in one and said our goodbyes. It was a bit sad, I’d basically hung out with him everyday for the last two and a half months and we’d had a lot of fun together, but now I’ve got another good mate to visit in the States.