Bath, Stonehenge, Salisbury and London

Aug 11 

The City of Bath is a city in Southwest England. It is most famous for its baths fed by three hot springs. The city was founded around the only naturally ocurring hot springs in the United Kingdom. When we first got off the bus we walked into the town square, where we split into our groups. My group went to go see the outside of the Roman Baths. It's in great shape for how old it is. Next, we went and looked in the souvenier shop. It was a very nice store. After that we went and got a little bite to eat and a smoothie.   By Mike Tracz

 

Today is our last full day of our WISE trip. We’re going to go to see the city of Bath and also Stonehenge, both World Heritage sites, before we head back into London for our last night. After our typical early wake-up and breakfast we boarded the coach and headed towards Bath. We saw some hot air balloons over the countryside on the way.

When we got to Bath we broke up into groups and my group chose not to spend 8 pounds each to enter the building to see the baths. Instead we went around to the side and I climbed a wall to take a picture just as my camera died. The people who did go in and see the baths said they were incredible and well worth the price of admission.

 

 

Randy led my group to find the closest Starbucks and we all had some pastries and coffee (Adam Cleri even drank the Bath water) while discussing Mike Herde’s upcoming birthday party.

We headed back to our bus and once the Altamirano’s finally arrived we were off to Stonehenge.

When we arrived there the parking situation was quite confused because it was a sunny Saturday morning with blue skies and everyone was there. To enter the site you went through a tunnel from one side of the road to another and we were all given audio listening devices describing what we saw. We were told that experts think that over the 5000 years it has been there the site was used as a calender to tell the Summer and Winter solstices and at one time it may have also been a burial site. We took lots of photos from all around Stonehenge, visited the gift shop and then jumped back on our coach.

 

Next we headed into the old city of Salisbury, which had an open air market taking place. They had lots of fruits, vegetables and meats for sale and Randy let us go off on our own and we were to meet back up with him and Mr. Bill at 1:30. We waited 20 minutes past that time and they never showed so we left with Mr. Murray.

Along the way to London we filled out the trip survey, had a quiz that Billy Boroski and Kevin Henri won and then we had the drawing for the late pool funds that John Murray and Mr. Bill won. We then applauded Billy our driver and Jon our guide for the great job they did on the trip.

Upon arriving at our hotel in London we unloaded the luggage and presented Jon with our trip jacket and friendship gift and Billy with a troop t-shirt and MP3 cassette converter. We will miss them after all these days on the road with them.

Mr. Martin Hall and his wife Jane, from the Peterborough Scout group met us at the hotel. They arrived earlier in London and helped us out tremendously by purchasing our half-price tickets to the West End shows in advance.

After eating pizza in Leicester Square half of our group went to see Stomp and the other half saw Mary Poppins. I thought Mary Poppins was pretty good, especially when the chimney sweeper danced on the walls and the ceiling, also when Mary Poppins flew out over the audience with her umbrella. We took the underground back to Kings Cross and after thanking the Halls we went to our rooms in the fancy hotel for our last night’s sleep in the United Kingdom.

By Chris Wentz