Last day of UK & Ireland Tour.

Departed Plymouth driving through the midlands and Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge.

We weren't looking for favourites on this tour, but Stonehenge was as amazing as finding William Julius at the Abbey.

Stonehenge is magic. Understood to be built about 5,100 years ago (approx 300 years before the Egyptians built the first pyramids) we were just in awe of the site and are still wondering how and why it was ever constructed.

Although Stonehenge is renowned for the stones themselves, we were surprised to learn of all the other components that make up the precinct including the ditches, the station markers that identify the solstices and equinoxes and also the huge burial mounds scattered around the area.

We (all on the tour) were in total awe.

The defence training estate on Salisbury Plain has its own history. The military training area covers almost-half the plain. The army first undertook military training on the estate in 1898. In 1943 the village of Imber and the hamlet of Par Hinton were evacuated to allow training for Operation Overlord to be conducted. Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during WWII by allied forces. Imber has remained closed ever since WWII except for the annual church service and some bank holidays. The area is still the UK's largest military training area with the Royal School of Artillery based at Larkhill nearby.

Leaving Stonehenge we travelled for almost 3 hours back to London and our hotel where we started. On the way through London we saw the Natural History Museum, Westminster Cathedral, Buckingham Palace (front yard and backyard), Kensington and the exclusive label names around London city centre.

We are excited and plan a quiet night as we prepare for our flight to Amsterdam to start the next leg of our holiday - a river cruise to Budapest.

Today's insight:
The large stones at Stonehenge are not local to the area. Most were transported over 240 miles from Pembroke in southern Wales and Cornwall.

Scientists believe that the wheel wasn't invented until about 4000BC - so how did the Ancients transport up to 40 ton rocks over that distance??