Stonehenge, Bath, and the Hike

 

So we started the morning by going to Stonehenge. It is a spectacular monument to something. I think I love the fact that there is no real explanation as to why people dragged these giant stones and created the monoliths. You can no longer stand among the stones (people were putting graffiti on them) but you can still get really close to them. We did not have much time to spend there however, since we were supposed to see it yesterday. So we only spent 30 minutes circling the stones but I think it was totally worth every moment of it. I could have stared at the stones for another hour trying to decide what purpose it served but the half hour gave me a great taste of the massive size of these stones. It really is just unreal that these stones have stood for so long. It was awesome.

This needs no caption!

We then continued our journey and went to Bath. Surprise, surprise we started at the Roman Baths. It was actually really informative. These bathes were heated with the only natural hot spring in Britain. The great bath was huge. It was actually the size of a community pool in just a rectangle. What I didn’t realize though was that the Roman bath actually had a temple attached to it. They worshiped Minerva who was the goddess who gifted this hot spring. The water was actually really warm. It would be a wonderful place to soak and swim. They even had rooms for saunas and just anything you would like in a bathhouse except for showers. I spent about an hour exploring this museum before leaving to go out into the main city. I actually could have spent at least another hour in the museum (it had an audio tour and I heard maybe half of it) but we only had an hour and forty minutes total in the town. So we are basically just getting a taste of Western Britain. Once I left the bath I headed to the Royal Crescent with Michael, Matthew and Taylor. The Royal Crescent is a crescent created with buildings that overlook a great view. That’s really all I know about it because we only had time to see it take a picture and leave. While we headed back to the coach we stopped by the Cornish Pasty (not pastRy) shop and I got a chicken and chorizo pasty. It was DELICIOUS! I will be definitely on the lookout for more pastys!

Entrance to the Roman Baths

A natural hot spring, this is the Great Bath

Our next stop was Tintagel…well sorta. We stopped in Tintagel and half of us had to grab our gear and hike 20 minutes up and down hill to get to our hostel. The hostel had a wonderful view of the Atlantic ocean. Then we had to do the hike back to the coach and ride it to Boscastle. This was where the other half of our group was staying. We then had to move their stuff into their hostel. Then we began a three hour hike at about 7 pm. It was a long hike. The views were incredible and the countryside was gorgeous. The Cornwall coast was great, however, we were tired. It was a really good hike but my legs did protest. We finished our hike at 9:45 and the pub was no longer serving food…thankfully an Indiana restaurant was still open. So 25 hungry hikers invaded right before the restaurant was going to close. It was delicious Biriani. We finally made it back to our hostel at around 11:45. It was a long day but I will have fantastic legs by the end!

Oh, Tia. You know when we would do the bonus levels in Sonic to get the chaos emerald? Well, there was mud every where and I literally had to hop from side to side of the slightly curved path to avoid the mud. I really felt like Sonic avoiding those black things. I thought you would appreciate this!  

The Cornwall coast

More coast

Michael, girls and the nice part of the hike

Beauty.

Sunset!