"Monday, July 23 1990 We had made all of our preparations, and everything is ready.  The day is sunny one minute and rainy the next.  Many of our grove have phoned wishing us a safe and good trip.  Our bags are loaded and all is on schedule.

"The trip to the Atlanta airport was uneventful with no delays.  We checked all the luggage and got to the gate an hour ahead of schedule.  Our plane arrived on time.  As we set in the waiting area and looked out the gigantic windows, we noticed that no luggage was being loaded on our aircraft.  Rather strange.   An attendant moved a lady in a wheelchair into the gateway.  Must be about ready.  Almost as quickly the attendant and lady reappeared.

"It was nearing 4:30 and the flight was to take off at 4:32.  The boarding area had filled to capacity.  Was something wrong with the plane?   Didn't appear so..no one was acting like there were plane problems.  Finally the captain picked up the microphone and as he began to speak, I saw our luggage being handed to an invisible person in the belly of the plane.  The captain reported that there was a line of severe thunderstorms around Boston and no air traffic was being permitted to fly north.  We are on temporary hold for two hours subject to change.

"About half an hour later, another message.  The storm was passing and we would be leaving around 5:45.  Then another anouncement: We can start boarding!  Finally!  Now thats better.  We are getting on the plane and its already filled to capacity (except for us).  Rhuddlwm checked during the earlier wait inside the terminal about our flight to London.  It was over three hours late arriving in Newark (our destination).  Great...everything is falling into place.

"Then the Captain spoke over the intercom...."it's a go!"   We were due to back away from the gate and start toward the runway at 5:45.

"At this moment it is 6:47.  We are on the plane...sitting on the taxiway!  We are supposed to be the tenth plane to be cleared.  Here is the captain again: "Good news and bad news.  We are at last away from the gate, but a storm has stopped all southbound traffic.  We are eastbound but way back in the line.  We will be in line at least an hour waiting for takeoff."

"So here we sit.  Planes in the front, Planes to the sides, and a long line of planes behind us.  This does NOT feel like a vacation.   Occasionally the engines would rev up and we would lumber forward slowly still waiting our turn to leave Atlanta.  Sure hope the London flight is as late as we are.

"Well it wasn't.  We ended up sitting on the taxiway for three and a half hours without air conditioning and we are all miserable and I'm pregnant!  Did I mention that?

"To conserve fuel, the captain flew at a higher altitude and tried to make up some lost time.  It was a futile effort.

"Our American airlines flight landed in Newark at 10:40pm.  Hurridly we made our way to the Continental Airlines counter, one building away from the Eastern counter.  Hardly anyone was at the counter; one representative was sitting on the edge of the conveyor belt, however her crouched position did not save her from me.

"Yes, the London flight was four hours late but it had refueled and left at 8:00pm."  We then coordinated between the Eastern and Continental representatives and found there was only one flight per day on Continental and the earliest we could leave was Tuesday at 8:00pm!!!

"Eastern arranged our hotel room and meals overnight along with a great many other passengers who had met the same fate.  We made our way to the hotel which turned out to be a very lovely new room at of all places, a Howard Johnson Motel.

"Before I forget, the Captain's last name, on the Eastern flight out of Atlanta, was Sanders.  The man obviously dreaded it every time he had to announce another delay, and the passengers were a very surly lot by the time we took off.   But, the passengers actually cheered when he announced we had arrived in Newark.   And then "Colonel Sanders" made sure he'd delivered us by banging that DC-9 down hard on the runway.  He then said, "Just to make sure you remember the flight."

"The next day, Tuesday, we were transported back to the Airport.  We found Continental Baggage services and made sure our baggage had not disappeared into the night, then settled down to wait for the appointed hour of our flight to London.

"Eventually the 747 arrived and was being redied for the return to Europe.   Eventually the crowd of passengers gathered and boarding began.  The flight was booked solid so boarding took longer than usual.  As a matter of fact boarding was still in progress at the departure time of 8:00pm. 

"The door finally closed and the plane was pushed away from the gate and turned to taxi out.  Then, guess what?  We stopped.  Delayed again!   Captain said he had just learned that President Bush was there and all traffic was   delayed until he had left the area.

"We thought, ok this is probably a sign we should not have attempted the trip at this time.  But, we were captives on a 747 and had no choice.

"Finally, and a hour and a half later we were cleared for take-off.   And like "Colonel Sanders" this captain climbed to a higher altitude to gain time.

"We were supposed to land at 8:00am but it was 8:40 when we touched down.   But we were in London at last!!"

Lord Rhuddlwm:

"We're here...we're really here! After literally months of planning, we've just gotten off the plane at Gatwick Airport in London and are waiting to go through immigration and customs. I slept for maybe a half hour on the trip because a group of students were making noise the entire flight.

"As we stood in line, I overheard a very vocal couple from New York complaining about the wait. It's no wonder we Americans are seen as obnoxious around the world. We had arranged in advance for a rental car so that was the first order of business. It took us about two hours to find.  As we the agency rep loaded our luggage on the shuttle van, he finally asked our names.  "Oh yes, you are #23 today.  Then off we went to the rental agency.

"We exchanged dollars for pounds at Barkleys, picked up the car and we were off, driving on the wrong side of the road, maps in hand, steering wheel on the right instead of the left, having to shift with my left hand. That was an exciting couple of hours!   England was in the midst of a heat wave and it didn't rain except for a few minutes on the fourth day while touring Wales. We were used to 90 degrees of high humidity in Atlanta, so this didn't seem like much of a heat wave."

SALISBURY

The First stop, was Salisbury and the Cathedral which is home not only to the oldest working clock in Europe, but one of the original copies of the Magna Carta. We drove on some pretty narrow roads to get to Salisbury, but it was worth the effort.  We wondered why there weren't more tourists here.  It is, by the way, another absolutely glorious day. It seems to be sunny in the mornings and get cloudy  in the afternoons, but right now it brisk and sunny and the perfect weather to see this glorious site.

Before touring the Cathedral, we walked through the town.   There are all sorts of picturesque river scenes and architectural features  in Salisbury and we really enjoyed it. There is a little tower sitting on top of a little small building and apparently, the wall formed part of the county goal (jail), erected in 1569. It was taken down in 1823.

It was built in 1386 and if I hadn't been told it was a clock, I would never have known it was, because it has no face. It was used for almost 500 years until 1884 when a newer clock tower was installed. In 1956 it was repaired and restored to its original condition and set up in the church itself.

We climbed back in the rent-a-car and headed off to Stonehenge.

STONEHENGE

We arrived right after lunch and immeditely parked the car, showed the officer at the admissions our pass and walked through the tunnel to get to the site itself.  At first it didn't seem to be that impressive, because we were not allowed to get close to the structure, later as I studied it, I could see why they called it the worlds most cmplicated prehistoric site.  And there are those curious "midges" or tiny flies that swirled in a column of thousands above certain power points of the site.  When Rhuddlwm started walking around the path, they swirled above his head.   When he walked, they kept above him like a hat.  Finally, after a half an hour of suffering the indignity of flies swirling around his head, he made a dash for the tunnel and they finally disappeared.  We learned later that the swirling midges above his head were a sign of great psychic power.  Rhuddlwm said he didn't care about the psychic power, he just wanted the midges to go away!

We were told before we entered the site, that the Stonehenge monument itself has decayed to such an extent that tourists can no longer walk directly up to the stones and touch them. The plan is to restore the area to its "isolated dignity." Yes, for part of the time, you are not all that close to the monument itself, but at the start, you can get fairly close. No matter how far away or how many people there are nearby, the power of this place cannot be denied.

We were also told the reason some of the stones are missing is that christian religious fanatics raided "pagan" monuments such as Stonehenge, destroying what they could.  Other pieces were simply removed for building purposes. They didn't know or didn't care that this was of fabulous, historical importance.

Stonehenge is over 5,000 years old and the most important prehistoric site in the British isles. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Druids, who worshipped in Britain 2,500 years later.  It is amazing how they got the stones to this site, how they would carve them to be the same height (and that it took years to do so), how the lintel pieces were created and fit like tongue and groove furniture, and how the pieces were erected.   It was an incredibly arduous process. 

Stonehenge is not only the most famous stone circle in Britain, but also the best known ancient monument in the world. Unfortunately, its fame has come at a high cost. Stonehenge has suffered such indignities as graffiti, chain-link perimeter fencing, and an annual Druidic festival staged by a group that can prove no historical connection to the monument.  As a result, many visitors find the site less evocative than sites such as Avebury or the Ring of Brodgar.  John Aubrey, the I7th century antiquary, once wrote that Avebury 'as much excels Stonehenge as a Cathedral does a parish church.'

While Stonehenge may not claim supremacy among British stone circles in either size or setting, the complexity of its design and the massive weight of the stones its builders used certainly go unsurpassed. In its earliest form, though, the circle would not have been quite so visually striking. The ruins of Stonehenge of today reflect only the last of several stages of development.

The earliest stage, completed about 3100 BC consisted of two concentric circular mounds separated by a ditch (the 'henge' of the name Stonehenge) about 280 feet in diameter. Around the perimeter of the circle, the Neolithic architects dug 56 pits. Their purpose remains a mystery, but they seem to have outlived their initial function and were later used as burial pits. The StoneAge builders maintained this simple design only for about 500 years, after which the monument fell into neglect and nearly vanished back into the landscape.

Then, about 2100 BC, the prehistoric people took a new interest in the site, bringing in the first of the bluestones to add to what had been, until then, mostly an earthwork structure. The bluestones were apparently to have been arranged in the form of two concentric circles inside the ditch and mound. A Herculean effort would have been required to bring the stones to the building site. They were quarried 135 miles away in the Preseli Mountains of south-western Wales (possibly because of that location's purported mystical power) and transported by both land and water to Salisbury Plain. But with this mammoth undertaking nearly three-quarters complete, the builders abandoned the scheme and instead embarked on an even more grandiose design.

This decision marked the third stage of building at Stonehenge, and resulted in the placement of the stones most conspicuous today. Some of them remain standing, exactly as they were placed roughly two millennia ago, but others lie in a confusing jumble from which only a careful study can reveal the details of the original arrangement.

(According to tradition, the fall of a stone at Stonehenge is a harbinger of death for the reigning monarch.) The outermost ring consisted of 30 upright stones supporting a continuous circle of horizontal linters. These were probably raised in stages, using levers to inch the blocks up little by little, and sliding wooden supports underneath to bear the stone's weight. A more ancient theory of how Stonehenge was built postulates that Merlin the magician levitated the entire structure and transported it through the air from Ireland, where it had originally stood.

Within the outer ring stood an even more impressive horseshoe-shaped arrangement of upright stones, set into the ground in pairs. Each pair, in turn, was capped with a lintel, forming a 'trilithon'. The largest remaining upright stands 22 feet tall and weighs more than 45 tonnes.

This intricate design far surpasses all other stone circles in Britain, but it is not only the positioning and weight of the stones that distinguishes Stonehenge, but also the painstaking manner in which the stones were dressed.  Each of the upright stones was smoothed and shaped before it was erected. The linters were held in place by mortice-and-tenon joints, and shaped with curved sides to form a perfect circle when placed atop the uprights.

Sometime after the trilithons were built, the final stones were added. Actually, these stones were recycled
bluestones from the abandoned stone circle that preceded the uprights and linters. The stones were set in a ring just inside the outer circle, and in a horseshoe-shaped arrangement just inside the large trilithon horseshoe.

Finally, two more concentric circles of holes were dug around the entire structure, apparently for yet two more rthgs,of stone to be set into, but for unknown reasons, the stones were never placed. Today these holes are not visible.  Stonehenge lies on the junction of several "Ley Lines" which will be discussed below.