Avesbury – Bath – Windsor

Tuesday 21st 2009

We had to be at the airport at 6am so JR could catch her flight back to Newark. The traffic at 5am was barely noticeable so it didn’t take me long to drive from my apartment to London Heathrow. Amanda decided that we should visit Avesbury to see the Avesbury Ring. The Avesbury Ring is a collection of stones which has been there since prehistoric times.

You could say these stones could be Stonehenge’s cousin but with far less fan fare and prestige. The town itself is tiny so I guess that why it isn’t as popular as the Stonehenge. Where will all the tourist buses park? When we arrived there it was so early that the public parking area was closed and we weren’t allowed to park anywhere in the town. So we ended up parking in some estranged cavity in the road and set about to wander around the stones and take photos.

It was Amanda’s time to drive. She finally had enough courage to tackle the road on the opposite side of the road. So I gave her the keys and we began the drive to Bath. She was quite comfortable driving along the highway but when we drove through the smaller towns, she wasn’t very comfortable. So before we entered the city of Bath, she pulled over and gave me the reigns to the car.

The last time I went to Bath, it was overcast and raining. Visiting Bath or any other city for that matter when it is sunny makes it so much better. In Bath we went to see the Roman Baths. It’s amazing there are actually natural hot springs in that area, if only those baths were made to be open to the public like those in Budapest, now that would be cool! We rushed through the Roman Baths in anticipation to visit the Bath Abbey and climb to the top. We were disappointed that when we arrived for the guided tour that they had already left so we couldn’t go to the top of the tower.

Instead we decided to have brunch at the famous eatery Sally Lunn, which is the oldest building in Bath and where the first Bath bun was created. The sandwiches were lovely and hit the spot nicely. Lucky we had brunch at the time that we did because once we left, there was a very long queue outside waiting for their own fix of Sally Lunn.

Next stop was Windsor on the way back to London to visit Windsor Castle. Today was also the Queen’s birthday so she was actually on the premises but by the time we arrived there, the castle was about to close to visitors. The police officer in front of the entrance of Windsor Castle encouraged us not to go inside with only 15-20 minutes remaining so we took his advice. Failing to visit Windsor Castle, we just decided to head back to London and return the car back to its rightful owner.

The tricky part about navigating back to the car rental place was that we didn’t have GPS and we were relying on instructions from google maps. The other difficult part was to avoid the congestion charge inside London. London has a congestion charge in that if you enter the city area within the hours of 7am – 6pm (mon-fri) you must pay a fee of £8.

The congestion charge is there to deter drivers from using their cars to enter the city and take public transport. £8 fee is quite expensive if you head into the city every day. So we had to drive on the perimeter of the congestion zone so we don’t get slugged the extra fee + administration fee the car hire place picked up the notice. We successfully navigated our way to the car hire place without too much fuss and returned the car in one piece.

smiles