Sofronia chose to take our family to Stonehenge. She has an assignment from school to get a picture of herself reading over the summer. She wanted to get the picture at Stonehenge.
Stonehenge is impressive, but there are lots of people and they won’t let you get close to the stones anymore. Nobody really knows why the henge was built. The myths about why it was built are interesting to learn about, but you can just never know which is true.
In any case, it was very difficult to build. They had to move the stones on giant rafts and then several miles from the river to this site.
Close to Stonehenge is a beautiful town called Salisbury with a huge cathedral. We enjoyed our picnic in the park, but it cost us $116 to get in. We’ve discovered, though, that you can really get in for about $3.00 so we’ll take that option when you come to visit.
On our drive to Salisbury, we noticed that there was another place called Old Sarum. We stopped by on our way home and probably enjoyed this as much as Stonehenge. It is the site of an ancient castle and large cathedral. It hosted several important national councils including one by William the Conqueror. After his conquest, he called all of the landowners from the whole country to pledge their allegiance to him.
The old castle was eventually left in ruins after decades of disagreements between the bishop of the cathedral and the noblemen that occupied the castle. The decline of the castle began once the Bishop received permission from Rome to relocate the cathedral to “New Sarum” or what is now called Salisbury. Eventually, they took all of the granite from the old cathedral and castle to build the new cathedral - leaving only the ruins of the castle and an impressive dry moat.
What’s fun about castles that are in ruins is that you can imagine things and have lots of fun pretending. This castle and the cathedral are perfect for that.
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