UNITED KINGDOM - DAY 2

We joined Trafalgar Tours for our 12 day tour the Britain and Ireland Experience. We travelled out of London and headed towards our first port of call, Stonehenge. Talk about freezing. The wind was so cold that even though we were in a sacred site it was too cold to truly appreciate it. This could have been the chilling effect of the mystical location but more likely just the howling arctic winds coming across the open hills. We took our pictures of Stonehenge and the surrounding burial mounds and headed straight back to the bus and warmth.

We continued until we landed in Bath. There were quite a few familiar spots that have been in historical movies, particularly Jane Austen novels. We climbed out of the bus and Dan, our Tour Guide, gave us some amusing anecdotes about the local Georgian architecture. For example around Bath it is law that the doors can only be white, black or natural timber in colour. When the council decided to reduce the number of vehicles parking in the street, they painted yellow lines outside number 25. The owner of this house was a lady, who had access to people at a higher level than the local government, was not pleased and demanded that the yellow lines be removed. They refused so she painted her door bright yellow in protest. She was taken to court regarding this as she was breaking the law, however, as she was a member of the House of Lords, she was allowed to paint her door whatever colour she liked. So from that time on, the door of number 25 has to be painted yellow.

We wondered around Bath and toured the Roman Baths the town is famous for. The water comes up from a thermal spring at a warm 46 degrees. The first baths and temple buildings were built on this site in 76AD. It was interesting to note that the level of the town has been raised 5 metres due to continual flooding.

We climbed back on the bus and travelled through to Cardiff our port of call for the night. We were now in Wales. We had dinner at the hotel that night and got to meet some of the other people on the tour.