Stonehenge and Avebury

So, let me start by saying, I’m cold, covered in mud, with a hurt

ankle and not feeling kindly disposed toward things while I write this entry.  We got up early to get a taxi to our tour’s meeting spot.  I booked this tour because there was no way that I was going to try to drive on the other side of the road, from the other side of the car,

with a stick shift in my left hand.  We had to get the Cotswolds and Stonehenge added to the tour because the Avebury alone tour doesn’t run in winter.  Also, they asked if we could move from Friday when I had planned to Thursday because they didn’t 

have enough people on Friday and our tour might not make.  So, we are going on a day I didn’t intend, to places I didn’t want to go to, with two tour buses of people, which makes me think my Friday tour could have gone.  Oscar says that he wants to go to Stonehenge, our 

tour guide got him in for free because under 5 is free.  We get out to the stones and it is pouring a rain/sleet combo that is blowing at us at 25 miles an hour.  You don’t think about Stonehenge being elevated when you come in the summer, but it is and the winds blow across that sucker like you wouldn’t believe.  We literally took a few pictures, walked to the  

the end of the walkway (you can’t even walk around the stones all the way anymore) and get back on a bus to head back to the new gift shop.  Oscar and I make a bus before John because he’s lollygagging and I keep telling Oscar that there is no way that daddy is 

going to get lost since these buses only deliver people to the stones and the visitor’s center, but he’s waving and so excited when John gets off the next bus that you would think that we had been separated by years and oceans.   The revelation on this visit to Stonehenge was 

 sloe gin from this place.  They had warm mead and spirits when you walk in the door.  I’m not saying no to anything hot because I’m soaked and cold, but then the guy offers us gin.  No way, I say, then he tries to convince me that he has something different.  I’m a fool and take a sip and it’s like dessert wine.  Which is exactly what it is, they take the juniper berries when they freeze and make this gin out of it.  So, we have to

  buy a bottle because it’s delicious.  We find some little tidbits to prove that we were here, have some snacks in the café and then walk through the interactive exhibit.  Oscar and I are a little bummed that the activity today is to make a clay face on a skeleton and we don’t have time to do it!!! Oh well.  Get back on the tour bus to get to Avebury.  We pass all these

barrows, burial mounds and chalk horses through the landscape as we go.  Our tour guide narrates all of this and we get less time in Avebury because….I don’t know why.  It’s much bigger than Stonehenge and way more spread out with a town in the middle of it, but we get less

time here.  He also tells us to be careful of slipping in the mud.  Well, I’ve never run in to mud that was like walking on ice.  How can something try sucking off your shoes at the same time as making you fall because you have no traction?  I didn’t think that was possible, 

 but with every step I’m almost losing a shoe or almost falling.  I’m telling the boys to be careful and trying not to fall, while the rain and the cold are pouring down on us again.  So, what can you see of the stones?  John and I stop to take a picture with a stone and Oscar is gone.

   He’s ahead on the trail and at the top of the hill before we can catch him to say we don’t want to go that way.  So, now we’re hurrying along this chalk and mud ridge to try to catch our son, who can’t hear us in the rain and wind and won’t stop.  He is with a lady from the tour group and ignoring us completely.  I fall at one point and now I’m covered in mud, wet and very unhappy.  When we finally catch our son, I tell him that I

 can’t trust him anymore because he went too far away.  When he starts backtalking me, it’s all I can do to walk away and go to a

bathroom to try to wash the worst of the mud off of me.  As I walk out of the bathroom, I realize that I have been going on adrenaline and had not realized that my right ankle is not happy.  It stiffens and feels bad to the point of shooting numbness to my toes and I have to walk with right foot thrust out and to the side.  That’s great and all I can think is what if I broke it? That’s going to put a real damper on the entire trip.