Glastonbury, Wells, Winchester & Stonehenge: The journey gets old and mystical

We left early Wednesday to head to Glastonbury, the site of the ruins of an ancient Abbey. There's a lot of legend surrounding the site. It's more or less fact that Joseph of Arimathea fled to England following Christ's death and established an Abbey on that site, which was once an island. The original was wooden, but two successive stone abbeys rose over the centuries on that same site, until the dissolution of the abbeys under Henry VIII, which saw it destroyed and much of the stone repurposed elsewhere.


This site was sooooo cool. I don't know what it is about ruins that intrigues us humans so much, but it really was amazing. To stand and think about there being 2,000 years of history there was just kind of mind boggling. There are a lot of legends about Glastonbury having been Joseph of Arimathea's home, and how he might have been a relative of Jesus, thus people think Jesus may have actually been to England in his lifetime. Apparently, people also believe there are these bands of energy that circle the earth, and that several of them intersect right at Glastonbury. So it's a pretty important mystical place, although I can't really say I felt anything out of the ordinary. There also is a crypt claiming to contain final resting place of King Arthur and Guinevere, although, apparently, there are many such spots marked all over England, and no one really knows for sure. It did make me want to read "The Once and Future King" though.

After Glastonbury, we headed to Wells for lunch and our next engagement. It was pretty much the most stressful time here so far. First off, my watch stopped, and I had to get the battery replaced or I would never know when it was time to be at the next rendevous point for the bus. That ended up taking longer than expected, so I didn't go up to the cathedral with the group, which would have been fine, except that our stupid tour guide sent me a bass-akwards way through a construction zone to the choir room, and when I got there, I could see it, but there was no entrance that was unlocked. After running around for about 10-15 minutes trying to get in, finally got someone to tell me through the window how to get in - guess what? Through the frigging front door! I was so pissed at our tour guide for that; it wasn't the first time he'd been less than helpful, and it just made me even more frantic than I was about to be in the service.


So after all of that, we had a pretty stressful & ragged rehearsal, due to the fact that we were doing some pretty big 8-part stuff and hadn't looked at it in a few months. On top of that, I was responsible for chanting all the sung prayers instead of the priest, something that had been mentioned months ago but never rehearsed. Sheesh! Talk about a nail-biter of a service. It ended up fine, but we were all really stressed out the whole time, and we sort of got rushed out the door after our service ended, so we never really got any time to see the Wells cathedral for more than a few minutes (and what little we could see from the enclosed choir area during the service). We also had one of the worst dinners yet; some kind of gross, overcooked chicken thing with sauce at a hotel across the street - only the second of our dinners with the whole group at once, but neither has been edible. Another gathering in the suites on our last night staying in Salisbury, along with some booze made it all forgotten.


This morning I said a fond farewell to my private room in Salisury, and we moved on to Stonehenge. So. Freaking. Awesome. It really is something that everyone needs to see once in their lives. It's surround by this enormous field of gentle rolling hills that goes on for miles in every direction, with nothing around except a few flocks of sheep and cows in the distance. That more than anything makes you wonder how the hell people 5,000 years ago dragged these stones 30 miles over the land into position. This afternoon we saw Winchester cathedral, which was the best by far, in terms of the architecture and the history in it. It began as a Norman cathedral right after William the Conqueror came to power, and was modified on the inside to reflect more gothic style later on. It helped that we had a real, live tour guide taking us around and telling us stories. She was an adorable old English woman who told us funny stories about stuff like how Jane Austen was buried there, and they had to ask the old girl to shove over a few feet so they could run a steam pipe through her crypt when they installed radiators in the early 1900s. I also had lunch at the supposed oldest bar in England, where I had fish and chips, and tried Shandy - a mixture of beer and lemonade. It sounds so awful, but it was sooooo good, I'm a little ashamed to admit.


And here I am now, in an actual hotel in a weirdly suburban little part of Chichester, a town on the southern coast of England. I haven't ventured out yet to explore, as I wanted to take advantage of having early evevning free time to chat with Nate, but it was very, very weird to turn into a 21-century parking lot with a Mc Donalds and an awful looking chain restaurant selling "New York style italian food" after spending all this time staying in ancient cities. Supposedly the area right around the cathedral is a little more old-timey and quaint, so I'll have to go out and grab some dinner by myself later, as I skipped out on the group dinner outing. I'm a little over the group togetherness by now, if you couldn't tell. It's fine and all, and it's a good group, but I never really truly feel at home here, especially without my Nate-y. Who is great-y. Ah well, only 3 real days left, and then a half day of travel and I'm home!

390 pics so far!