Journey 1: Bath and Stonehenge

At the train station, getting to see
the sun rise (our first time to see the sun since we've
arrived in England)

This weekend was such a blast. I went with a small group out of Oxford to Bath. It was our first trip out of the city and our first experience with the train station. For the most part, it's really simple and we didn't have any problems. The only word of note I have is the way they list the trains: you have to know the final destination of the train you need to get on, not just your own stop because they don’t list the individual stops of each train. We had to ask around to find our right trains to get out to Bath, but coming back we were pros.

You can see the steam rising from the baths

We left the house at about 8 a.m. and walked to the train station, took the 8:37 train and arrived in Bath around 10 a.m. Our first mission was to find where the tour bus taking us to Stonehenge later that day was going to be and then we headed to the Roman Baths. That was a really neat place to see. (I’ll put a couple pictures here on my blog, but most of them will be on Facebook, so feel free to check that out if you feel so inclined.) Touring around was interesting. We split up and walked around more or less individually, which is sometimes the best thing for me. I like to be on my own sometimes. The really cool thing, in my opinion, was that Bill Bryson did some of the audio commentary. (For those who don’t know Bill, he’s an author who has lived in England for 20 years, but moved back to the States a while back. He’s written several books, one of which I started before heading to Oxford. He has quite the sense of humor and a really easy writing style.) Anyway, so for personal reasons, that was really exciting. We all got to have a sample of the Bath water to drink, and I’ll just say that I’m glad I did because it wasn't as terrible as I had been told it was. It has a high mineral content and it just tasted strongly of iron. I didn't feel the need to spit it out though…

This is supposedly where they
filmed the scene in Les Mis where
Javier jumps off the bridge.
We thought about reenacting it,
but decided against it.

At noon, we went to the Abbey courtyard to eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we had packed. While we were there, a guy came and started playing classical guitar. It was really soothing, and I could’ve stayed there all afternoon. But we had a bus to catch.

Our view from the bus

We were able to get closer
than I though we would

The 6 of us were the only ones of our group that were able to go to Stonehenge that day, which for me made the trip that much more special. The tour we took to Stonehenge was well worth the money we spent, and the bus ride was excellent. We saw Bath from atop a hill and drove by some gorgeous countryside. I saw the Chalk Horse, which was neat. Stonehenge itself was fun. I had been told it was kind of lame in person, but we all had a great time walking around. I took so many pictures from different angles… The only downside was that it was super windy, so I didn’t listen to most of the audio tour just because I didn’t want to hold it up to my ear. But the coolest thing was that in the last segment, they mentioned the TARDIS. (No, it didn’t have any connection to Doctor Who as far as I know, but it was a pleasant surprise!)

Photographic evidence that
I was there!

When we got back to Bath, we were all exhausted so we didn't stay much longer. We went back to the train station and headed back to Oxford. A rugby match had just ended on our way back to the house though, so the train was pretty crowded. All around a really great first travel experience. I’m ready for London this Friday.