Day 2: Stonehenge & Glastonbury

Shuffling onto the bus at 9am, I felt a giddy sense of relief that I wasn’t going to be responsible for any crucial decision-making on this stage of the trip. There’s a lot to be said for traveling independently, but there’s a certain charm to being herded as well.

Stonehenge was a once-in-a-lifetime collection of rocks and mystery. Bordered by grazing sheep, crowded parking lots, and busy carriageways, the mystery is all intellectual, not atmospheric. I gaped at the huge stones, scarred by meddling Victorian tourists and decorated with bright lichens, putting forth the required effort to wonder just how the heck they moved those rocks around with no mechanical support. The why doesn’t mystify me as much – nature worship seems a no-brainer for the pre-literate citizens of 2400 BC. I was most captivated by the potential for direct sunshine to light up my photographs of the pillars. I am not the first, last, nor best photographer to aim a lens at the iconic Stonehenge, but a little sunshine sure would’ve made my day!

Trundling off to Glastonbury, we moved forward in time to the seventh century. An early Christian establishment, Glastonbury Abbey is now a deteriorating collection of fragments reaching towards the sky in a Picasso-like assembly of images suggesting, but not defining, a church edifice. It was one of the richest abbeys of the fourteenth century, partly due to an association with King Arthur promoted by the savvy monks to increase tourism. To add to the excitement, some legends also claim Glastonbury is the site of a church established by Joseph of Arimathea within a hundred years of Jesus’ life.

The surrounding village of Glastonbury has a new age feel to it, much like the back roads of California, full of crystals and faerie figurines and wizard costumes. We assembled a picnic lunch of take-away falafel, pita bread and salad from the Rainbow’s End Café, plus legit Stilton bleu cheese from the deli down the hill, and retired to the shade of the Abbey’s trees.

In the late 1530’s, King Henry reinforced his decision to split from the Catholic Church by rampaging through the country appropriating the incomes of rich abbeys and destroying most of them. A fine carpet of grass now covers the ground beneath the remnants of the cathedral arches, but the Abbot’s own kitchen still stands. The octagonal building has one huge fireplace to the left of the door and the arched ceiling includes a covered outlet for a central fire as well. In the kitchen, a monk was providing demonstrations of medieval food preservation and processing practices, including examples of herbs dried for flavoring food and dyeing wool, bowls and crocks for making cheese and storing meats, and a candle stick for burning your candle at both ends (really!).