Big Pile of Rocks

Pictures of Stonehenge trip!

Holistic Navigation - I may not get where I'm going but I'll always get to someplace I needed to be

It's a term I first learned from reading the works of Mr. Douglas Adams, particularely his Holistic Detective Agency series. While this was the first time I had seen the idea put in print in such an eloquent format it's an idea that I have subscribed to most of my life.

As a result my plans for yesterday of viewing St. Paul's cathedral and the London Museum were easily derailed whilst eating breakfast. I was talking to a pair of fellow hostel dwellers over breakfast and asked what their plans were for the day, those two ladies indicated that they planned to head out and visit Stonehenge. . . at which point I decided that it was time for some holistic navigation and attached myself to them for the day.

We started by taking the tube to Victoria Station where we proceeded to get dumbfounded looks from the ticket clerks as we asked for bus/train tickets that would get us closes to Stonehenge. . . fortunately the kind fellow in line behind us heard our requests and decided to strike up a conversation with me and shortly we had our tickets to South Hampton! 3 hours later we arrived. . .

As it turns out the gentleman had set us on the right path but we actually needed to continue on to Salsbury so we picked up some more tickets and an hour later found ourselves in Salsbury.

the thing of it is that we arrived in Salsbury at about 2:45, having started our journey at 10 am on the tube and 11am on the first bus. You wouldn't think this to be a big concern except that there's another half hour bus to Stonehenge and the place closes at 4. With that same bus leaving right away and being the last one back.

Being of an adventurous type we headed out on the bus anyway figuring that we would find out way back one way or another. I was confident that with two attractive girls with me we would get a ride even if I had to hide while they negotiated a lift.

So we arrived at Stonehenge, ran around madly taking pictures for about 10 minutes and dove back on to the bus. The wonderful driver had fallen prey to the batted eyelids and heaving bosoms of my compatriots and decided to wait an extra 15 minutes for us so we could get a ride back to Salsbury.

Stonehenge is cool . . . big pile of rocks. . . just like in movies and pictures. . .

We proceeded to walk around Salsbury looking for dinner and discover that for some reason nobody was serving food. Apparently many places don't serve food during the fair. . . fair? Whoever heard of a fair in Salsbury? Bah!

We did finally find a place to eat then proceed to head back to London on our return tickets. 12 hours after we first climbed on a bus we arrived back at our hostel, somewhat tired but glad we made the trip. I was thrilled to have made two new friends, one of which is Canadian and the other an Ausy. I'm meeting up with the Ausy again when I hit Scotland so that should be fun!

Today?

I'm moving to yesterday's plan of St. Paul's and the Museum. I'll try to upload some pics to facebook later too.

Till next we meet. . .