June 24-28, 1999 - English Country Life (before
& after Glastonbury)
The four of us darted out of London and headed
to Salisbury, in the south western part of England. We found a bed & breakfast, and
mentally began preparing ourselves for the Glastonbury Festival the next day.
We first decided to drive to Stonehenge, to see
the famous mystical phenomenon of huge rocks. It was open but roped off so far that we
couldn't get within 50 meters of the configuration. The summer solstice had been the week
before, and over-enthusiastic celebrators had broken in at dawn and camped underneath the
stones. The "mystery" of Stonehenge lies in the fact that the 22 foot high
boulders placed from 2800 to 1500 B.C., were somehow transported all the way from Wales.
And the formation that the stones formed seem to coincide with our current calendar of
seasons perfectly. We also stopped at Old Sarum, but decided one megalithic ruin site per
day was enough.
Then we headed to Glastonbury
After the Glastonbury Festival was over, we
stopped in the town of Bath for lunch. We opted not to go into the Roman baths there, as
we didn't think they could compare to the genuine Turkish baths we had been to a few weeks
before.
We drove back towards London until we hit
Stratford-Upon-Avon, and spent the night. We were glad we didn't plan to spend too much
time here. The Shakespeare house was closed by the time we got in, and aside from boat
rides on the small river Avon, the remainder of the town seemed to be comprised of
knick-knack stores selling Shakespeare memorabilia and capitalizing on the recent fame of
Shakespeare in Love.
On to the Glastonbury Festival (actually, we
went on to Amsterdam from here, but you'll need to check out the Glastonbury Festival to
catch up)!
