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A Visit to Avebury in Wiltshire

from Victoria…

Avebury Stone Circle, Wiltshire
A few days ago I was wandering around the library and I noticed the book Off The Tourist Trail. I was especially attracted by the name Bill Bryson on the cover. More details on the book and Bryson below.  Immediately I grabbed it, as I love to travel but, like most of us, I prefer fewer tourists around than camera-wielding hordes. 
  
Avebury vs. Stonehenge is their  recommendation for a more leisurely visit to a great megalithic site. Stonehenge might be more famous, the book says, but it is fenced, crowded with tour buses, much smaller in size, and you can’t get close to the stones.  In Avebury, you can walk among the stones, touch them and even pet the sheep. Here is a lovely short film about Avebury.
 I have visited Avebury several times and I definitely agree. You can really get the gist of Stonehenge from pictures or driving by, but to experience the great thrill of standing next to a 5,000-year-old sacred stone, Avebury excels. It is about 20 miles north of Stonehenge.

There are many places to park and get out to hike around. Be sure to wear walking shoes as you will want to cover a lot of territory.  In the center of the circle, give or take a bit, there is a  village and manor house run by the National Trust. There are some interesting displays in the outbuildings about the history of Avebury, the stone circle, the farm and the village. The Red Lion pub is a good spot for relaxation.
The manor house dates from the 16th century. Sometime in the middle ages, most of the stones were either removed or buried due to the pagan associations they suggested to superstitious residents.  The entire site was re-discovered in the 1930’s, the stones dug and stood  up once more.  Continuing studies reveal more and more information about the area.
The Stone Circle at Avebury dates from about 2500 BC and must have been built for religious and ceremonial purposes. Nearby is the conical Silbury Hill which is manmade but still mostly unexcavated. Various technological processes will enable more and more of it to be explored without endangering its internal construction as time goes by.  Silbury Hill is the largest prehistoric earthwork in all of Europe.  Nearby are also several Long Barrows, (above, left) burial sites, some of which can be entered, though when I was there, I found a pile of trash left by previous visitors. Shame!
The fine museum at Avebury contains many bronze weapons and items of jewelry from ancient times found in this neighborhood.  Silbury Hill, below.

By all means, go drive by Stonehenge, but plan on spending most of the day at Avebury, just a half hour’s drive away. Stonehenge, below, without the fences.

Now back to Bill Bryson.  I have read that he has moved back to England since his book, Notes from a Small Island, was written.  But at the time it was published in 1995, he had moved to the U.S. after several years in Britain. It is a humorous homage to the UK and its culture and well worth reading. In fact, everything Bryson writes is excellent!  Go Bill!
We hope you enjoy living in Britain. In fact, we are really envious.

Happy Birthday to Prince Albert

Prince Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was born August 26, 1819. His wife, Queen Victoria, was born on the 24th of May in that year. They were first cousins.

Right: Prince Albert by Charles Brocky, 1841

The exhibition Victoria and Albert in Love can be seen in the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, until October 31, 2010.

The jewelry, musical compositions, drawings, paintings and furniture exchanged by the royal couple make an interesting statement about the depth of their love and commitment. Many of the items were birthday gifts given to the Prince by the Queen.

Rupert Friend (right) as Prince Albert in the film The Young Victoria. The costumes and settings were sumptuous, but the story left a bit to be desired by those of us who paid attention to the details! 

John Lucas painted Prince Albert in 1841, left. 

Prince Albert, right, by Winterhalter, in 1842.  Albert had an excellent private education. With his older brother Ernest, he was tutored at home and later attended the University of Bonn. He excelled in fencing and riding, and traveled in Italy.  Almost from birth, many considered the possibility of uniting the cousins, and King Leopold encouraged the marriage.  Victoria and Albert met several times and she was eventually quite taken with him, but after she took the throne at age 18 in 1837, she was in no hurry to wed.
After her coronation, however, she wrote to Uncle Leopold: “Albert’s beauty is most striking, and he so amiable and unaffected — in short very fascinating.” Louis Auchincloss in his Persons of Consequence: Queen Victoria and Her Circle (1979) observes: “A principal industry of the German States in the nineteenth century was the production of marriageable princes and princesses.”
The wedding took place on February 10, 1840.  Albert’s role in the realm was unclear, and it changed, evolving over the next few years until he became very influential and quite popular (though only after his death was his popularity recognized by most in the government).  Albert and Victoria became the parents of nine children.

At right is a family portrait, also by Winterhalter, of the family in 1846.

One of Albert’s greatest achievements was the Great Exhibition of 1851.  As a supporter of science and technology, he was particularly influential upon industrial advancements of the day. In addition, he single-handedly modernized and revamped the running of the royal palaces and the financial administration of the monarchy.  

Prince Albert died of typhoid fever at 10:50 p.m. on 14 December 1861 in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle, in the presence of the Queen and five of their nine children, leaving the Queen devastated. Though she lived on until 1901, Victoria never shed her widow’s weeds.

Nanny McPhee's Triumphant Return

This past weekend, I went to see Nanny McPhee and I can tell all you NMc fans that her Return was as good as the original. And, this time out, Nanny has even more screen time. The new cast of characters are a hoot, especially Eros Vlahos as cousin Cyril. Vlahos plays him as a sort of miniature, self important prig who delivers sarcastic verbal barbs with Oscar Wilde-like precision.  This kid deserves an Oscar nod.

Of course, Maggie Smith is wonderful as the dotty Mrs. Docherty, and the piglets steal the show.

This time out, Nanny’s got a window putty eating crow, Mr. Edelweiss.

One of the funniest scenes in the first film was when Nanny tells Colin Firth that she’s a “government nanny” who has been sent to his aid. He seems to accept this, then sits down to read his paper and after a few beats looks up and says, “A government nanny?!” This time out, Nanny McPhee passes herself off as an “army nanny.” That’s all I’m going to say, as I don’t want to spoil the film for all of you who will be flocking to see it. Suffice it to say that my husband, who was a decidedly reluctant companion going in to the theater, found himself shedding a tear or two at its conclusion.

“When you need me, but do not want me, I must stay.
When you want me, but no longer need me, I must go.”

I'm a Big, Fat London Pig

My withdrawal from London was quite acute back in late July, when I found myself browsing the internet for flight deals back to the Old Smoke. Bear in mind that this was just a scant month since my whirlwind London/Waterloo tour with Victoria. However, the symptoms were all there – daydreams of walking down Piccadilly, a nostalgic longing for a pint and a proper serving of bangers and mash, the almost constant urge to throw up my arm and hail a black cab. At odd moments I’d hear a voice in my head urging me to “Mind the gap. Please mind the gap.” Aaarrrggghhh!

And then I found it – Continental Airlines, Newark to London Heathrow . . . . . $345. What!? Okay, that was each way, but still, seven hundred round trip was a bargain. It was at that moment that a small, cheeky devil appeared at my left shoulder. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill devil dressed in a red suit, with a pointed tail and holding a pitch fork. Oh, no. This devil was dressed in Regency garb and holding a snuff box. He looked uncannily like Beau Brummell.
“Press that button, my dear. The one that says “Buy Now.”

“Don’t be silly. I can’t. I just went to London. My planning another trip to England would be nothing short of greed in piggy proportions.”
“I’ve never found anything wrong with greed, myself.”
“Ha! And look where it got you.”
The devil sniffed. “Be that as it may, I still maintain that you should push that button. Go on,” he cajoled, “push it now.”

“Stop it!”
“You know,” he began, his voice a blend of honey and warm oil, “you could take your husband with you this time. After all, you’ve already been to London twice since you’ve known him. Really, is that fair? I believe he deserves to see the City. . . . you’d be doing it for him.”
This was a novel way of looking at the situation. A very Lucy Ricardo way of looking at it, I might add. He had my attention.

“And,” the devil continued, “you could schedule the trip around Christmas. It could be your Yuletide present to him. In fact, your wedding anniversary is in September, is it not? You could make it a joint anniversary and Christmas gift. Only consider how much more thrifty that would make the expenditure.”
Thrifty? Hhmmm. My husband would like thrifty.
“Push the button.”
“Look, pushing that button is a big deal. I’d be committing myself, and my poor unwitting husband, to a trip to London.”

“Oh, poor dear! London. Such a sacrifice.” The imp removed a miniscule amount of snuff from his tiny snuff box and inhaled it. Once he’d stopped sneezing – into my left ear – he continued. “Push the button. Do it for your mother.”
“My mother? What’s she got to do with it?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, you’re hopeless at greed justification, aren’t you? It’s a good thing for you I deigned to show up and help you with this. Look, if you go to London, you’ll have to fly out of one of the major New York airports. Yes? Or perhaps a nearby major airport. Say . . . Newark?”

“Right,” I allowed.
“And who lives but a scant few miles from Newark airport, hmmmm?”
“My mother.”

“Got it in one! So . . . you back out your departure date and instead fly into Newark a few days before Christmas. You spend the holidays with your mother and daughter, thus making their holidays joyous whilst removing the onus of their having to travel down to you for the festivities, as they usually do. You, my dear, kill three birds with one English stone. You make your mother, daughter and your husband all happy beyond their wildest dreams. In effect, you wouldn’t be going to London for your own greedy delight in the least. Instead, you’d be going in order to make them happy. And, you and your husband would be in London for New Year’s Eve. Whilst still being thrifty, of course.”
My mouth hung open. Why hadn’t I thought of this? It was nothing short of brilliant.

“Do you really think so?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“I do. Truly. Push the button.”
Reader, I pushed the button. And just like Lucy Ricardo, I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut until my anniversary. I’ve already told my husband who, thank the Lord, is thrilled to bits, which means that the only fireworks we’ll be encountering will be those over the River Thames on New Year’s Eve.
Oink, oink.