Made of Stone

Of course, Windsor was actually just a stop on route (?!?) to our first destination:

The chance to spend a week with Dilemma and her family was an absolute no-brainer after the fun Tiger and I had last November.  Of course they were all still in school and at work and had leavers events and everything else that goes along with the last few weeks of term, but that left us time to get cracking on my list of things to see and do in the area (and the evenings free for the eight kids and one dog to chat and play and chat and play and do everything but sleep!).  

First up, a walk round Bristol toon and docks....

In 1809 Bristol was transformed by the opening of the Floating
Harbour.  80 acres of tidal river was impounded to allow visiting
ships to remain afloat all the time.  Over the next two centuries the
harbour grew as a busy commercial port until it closed in 1975.
Since then, it has been regenerated for leisure, commerce and residence.

...where we very quickly ended up slap bang in the middle Bristol Bridge and the Extinction Rebellion week-long demonstration.  We even had lunch at College Green to the sound of - something dying - and bizarre people dressed up in red walking around, we think, demonstrating that they are the ten oceans already lost in this world.  Or something like that.

Extinction Rebellion is a non-violent, international
movement that pursues the radical changes
needed to halt ecological collapse and extinction.
We do not take disruption lightly.  We act because
there is not time to delay.  We rebel for life

Princes Wharf was a cargo-handling quayside for 100
years, and was the last active wharf when the harbour
closed to commercial shipping in 1975. 

SS Great Britain
Which we didn't go in to. Mostly because I wanted to get back to
Cabot Circus and peruse the shops I don't get up here!

The next day we travelled further afield and drove to Stonehenge, which wasn't actually on my list, but given that we were pretty close, and we could get in for free being Historic Scotland members, and that we'd been up to Orkney and saw the Ring of Brodgar and all those other stones pretty recently, and that we were unlikely to be down this way again any time soon, I figured why not.  Except being pretty close is pretty relative when it's country lanes you're driving...

The Stonehenge we see today is the end result of several episodes
of construction, after an intervening 4,000 years of destruction and decay

 

Sarsen is a very hard type of sandstone.  It was formed about 26
million years ago from a solidified layer of sand in a prehistoric sea.
Natural sarsens are found across southern England and it is likely
that those in Stonehenge were brought from the nearest sources -
the Marlborough Downs, 20 miles away.
This is an exact replica of Stone 60, one of the upright sarsens of the
inner horseshoe.  The original stone weighs about 80 tonnes.

The people who built and used Stonehenge probably
lived in houses like these, recreated from the
archaeological remains of buildings excavated
at Durrington Walls, just over a mile from Stonehenge.

Today Stonehenge receives more than one million visitors a year.
Due to the fragile below-ground archaeology, preserved stone surfaces
and prehistoric carvings, access inside the circle is only possible
at certain times outside normal operating hours.

You can still see the outer ditches of The Avenue, the processional
route to the monument built in 2300 BC.  This is the original entrance
to Stonehenge and the best-preserved part of the outer stone circle.

After lunch we took a windy, twisty way home but this time via Bath, to check out their baths, and totally unplanned, their shops (only to find some ice cream, of course).

The Roman Baths themselves are below the modern street level.  Archaeological evidence indicates that the site of the baths may have been a centre of worship used by Celts; the springs were dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans identified with Minerva.  The name Sulis continued to be used after the Roman invasion, leading to the town's Roman name of Aquae Sulis (the "waters of Sulis").  A temple was constructed in 60-70 AD and the bathing complex gradually built up over the next 300 years.  After the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the first decade of the 5th century, the baths fell into disrepair and were eventually lost due to silting up and flooding.

The original source of the 46 degree C hot water.
In the 1st century AD Roman engineers built a stone-walled reservoir
around the Sacred Spring to supply hot water to the baths.

 

What the 'beams' of the original roof would
have looked like

In the early 4th century AD the Baths and Temple of Sulis Minerva
were at their greatest extent.  In the courtyards and bathing halls
were there was space for hundreds of visitors. The buildings were
colourful and buzzed with activity.