Spending the day "Stoned" a.k.a. How to break into a national monument

So today, Steve and I ventured out of southeast England and headed to Salisbury to see Stonehenge and hopefully Avebury (a bigger, slightly less well known circle). When we got to the city though at around 1pm, the lady said that there was no way we could cover both sites since Avebury is a good two hours bus ride away. We chose Stonehenge of course and decided to see the Salisbury cathedral and go down to Old Sarum, a few thousand year old Roman fort and original Salisbury site.

I can't even convey just how amazing seeing Stonehenge is. A lot of people are unimpressed when they come back because it's such a hyped up place and is totally full of tourists and right next to a road and you can't come up to the stones unless you arrange outside of opening hours and all that. But really to me it doesn't matter, this place has been around for thousands of years in an amazing state of completeness. Plus the strange, mystic earth energy line stuff makes it that much cooler :). I took about a billion pictures of all the angles of the circle and we managed to meet up with some other people in the program and there is in circulation a picture of the "human Stonehenge" we made with me as the slaughter stone :). Yeah, I was really there today:

So afterwards, we headed back to the city and visited the Salisbury Cathedral as well as the Chapel of St. Thomas a Becket which had the coolest Doom Painting ever with Jesus sitting on a rainbow and all these old guys in heaven with him, and lots of women burning in hell below. It was fairly humorous to see. The Cathedral is absolutely gorgeous and boasts the tallest church spire in England at the height of 123 feet as well as the oldest operational medieval clock with no face that was designed to strike only on the hour to ring the bells. The first thing I thought when I looked at it was the Monty Python sketch about Ron Obvious attempting to be the first man to eat an entire Anglican Cathedral. So I attempted too:

After taking lots of pretty pictures of 13th century architecture, Steve and I hopped a bus out to Old Sarum. The thing is, the site was closed at 6pm and we got there about 6:15. A travel guy at the train station said that the site it big and open and we could probably jump the fence and walk around the grounds if we wanted to. Old Sarum really is a big hill with a flat top, with two giant ditches/mini-ravines dug around it, it was a common style of fortification in the early days. So Steve and I leisurely walked up the side of the first hill and around the edge of the first ravine. The view from up there was amazing; you can see the spire of the cathedral from up there.

But because Steve and I are slightly "stoopid" we decided it would be a good idea to climb down the first ravine and back up to the second edge and then rinse and repeat to get to the actual fort site. We also decided to do this in jeans and flip flops. That was probably one of the most fun and the most stupid things I've ever done. I generally have good judgment but for some reason climbing up a super steep hill and climbing underneath a barb wire fence slipped through the net. So with the ravine conquered we took a picture and climbed out onto the flat edge of the second ravine. Let me tell you, the Romans had the right idea with those defenses. I would not want to be in 60lbs of armor with a giant sword, climbing up that hill with people shooting me. I refused to do this again with the second ditch, so we walked around until much to our chagrin found that we could have just walked up the civilized asphalted road all the way up both edges. The way to the hill fort actually had a gate in front of the bridge which was padlocked. So we climbed over it, ran across the bridge, Steve took a few quick pictures, and we sprinted right back. This is Steve looking smug afterwards in front of the Old Sarum sign:

I was sure that by the time we made it back down there would be police wanting to deport us for breaking into an English Heritage monument, but no. Without incident and with lots of smugness we went back to Salisbury and hopped a train back to Oxford. I was definitely exhausted after all that climbing, walking, running, and most assuredly breaking the law in the sun. I'm having so much fun here :)