Bath: Day 2 – Cotswold Day Trip

My second day in Bath wasn’t really in Bath at all. I spent the day touring other parts of the area known as the Cotswolds, which includes Stonehenge.

I’ll admit, the morning of my tour, I pretty quickly regretted scheduling my day trip for the first day in Bath. I was tired from the journey the day before and just from overall jet lag, and I knew the day trip was going to tire me out even more. My only experience with organized tours was with Haggis Adventures, and they geared their tours toward younger, more active adults. Let me tell you, at 7AM on my second day in a different country, I did not feel young nor active. I was pleasantly surprised when the second person to show up for our tour was a 70-something year old man. Maybe I could manage this.

I was right, I could and I did. Not to say I wasn’t exhausted and considered falling asleep the minute I got back into town, but the day was well spent. I was with Mad Max tours as previously mentioned, and I did their Tour 1: Stonehenge, Cotswold villages, and Avebury stone circles. I’ll admit, I was actually more excited for Avebury than Stonehenge–from what I had read, Avebury was larger in circumference and you could actually go right up to the stones, whereas Stonehenge you were blocked off from the stones themselves. I’ll admit, I was wrong. Stonehenge was way cooler.

In fact, it was surreal. Something you don’t always think about is how advanced the civilization was who built these formations. When I hear something is neolithic or as ancient as Stonehenge, my mind goes to caveman. I know, I know, that’s not accurate and way off base. But there’s still the idea that Stonehenge belonged to primitive people, and that’s just quite frankly not true. If you adjust for something I just made up called “intelligence inflation,” in actuality I think they could have been more civilized, more advanced than we are now. You see these massive stone arrangements, and then you hear things like some of the stones were collected from hills more than 150 miles away, mostly just antlers and cow bones were used as tools and oh by the way some estimate that the wheel wasn’t even invented yet during parts of its ongoing construction, it kind of makes us look dumb. It was great to see the stones themselves, but it was even more educational than I anticipated. I’m glad that the National Trust has put so much time and effort into educating the public on how truly a feat this formation is for mankind.

After a few well spent hours at Stonehenge, we headed out to the Avebury Stones. While, yes, the circumference for Avebury is much larger (you could fit all of Stonehenge into one of the inner circles at Avebury), the stones aren’t as well preserved. They aren’t formed like Stonehenge, and there isn’t any archeological evidence of astrological significance either. It was great to walk around still, and I even sat in what’s called “the Devil’s Chair”–a seat had been formed in one of the larger stones toward the entrance of the circle.

Once we left Avebury, we then headed toward Lacock village, while stopping to take pictures of the chalk white horses that can be found on a few hillsides. Lacock is where we stopped for lunch. I tried a bacon and cheese pastry from the Lacock Bakery and then a scoop of refreshing and locally sourced raspberry sorbet. I was appreciative of our tour guide, Kevin, pointing out what was local and what was not. Side note: a big tip from me in regards to travel is to try and stay as local as possible! This is actually where you’ll get to see and interact with the people around you and you’d be amazed at how many cool experiences you can get out of it. As I was eating my lunch, an older lady joined me on the bench outside in the bakery’s garden. She lived in Lacock her whole life but she said she loved meeting all of the tourists who came through her village. She joked about how “this old lady who never really left her home somehow managed to make friends from all over the world.” I told her she just made a new friend from Arizona.

Lacock also appeased the film buff in me. The village is literally picture perfect, so no wonder it’s been used for Pride & Prejudice, Downton Abbey, and a few movies from the Harry Potter series to name a few. I’ll be 100% honest, I most definitely geeked out at knowing Colin Firth and I had stood in the same place.

After Lacock, we went to Castle Combe, which was small and a quick stop. The two coolest takeaways from here: a tomb of a knight who fought in two Crusades and a working clock from the 1400s. The clock can manage to keep ticking for give or take 600 years, and yet I’m lucky if I get 3-4 days’ worth of a full battery charge on my FitBit watch. Again, intelligence inflation…it’s a thing.

This then brought me back to Bath. I managed to grab some dinner, head back to the hostel and stay awake for 30 or so minutes before passing out. I was exhausted, but it was definitely worth it (also this should explain why this post is a day behind). If given then chance, I would definitely go back to Stonehenge. I could probably skip Avebury and Castle Combe, but if I just “so happened” to have a little extra time, I would go back to Lacock as well. All in all, a day well spent.