PORTSMOUTH ENGLAND

Day 132 - 133

We're here..in Portsmouth England!

It's a harbour town, and so far is quite gorgeous. At the moment we're in the library sorting out our tickets to France so we haven't looked around that much..but we'll definately see the Dickens museum (Charles Dickens was born here) and we'll spend the next couple of days just enjoying the port..and the town..and the sunshine. IT's GORGEOUS..21 degrees...lovely!

Thanks for all your emails....i hope it's ok if i just write in here, we don't have that much time at the moment to be writing back individually to everyone..so this is us sending our love to you all..and thanks for all those long newsy emails...we love hearing from you!

Happy birthday Aiden!!

Your Dad is desperately trying to ring you! Hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day, he sends all his love to you..and we'll be thinking of you all day!

Hope all's going well for you all at home..

Take care,

Love, us xxxx

BATH ENGLAND

Hiya's

Bath is the most wonderful place! Honestly, we enjoyed it so much! Not only is it the place where Jane Austin (Pride and Prejudice) has a museum as a lot of her books were set in this area..it's also close to Stonehenge!

And that's where we choofed off to on the second day, even before we went to the Roman Baths in Bath!!!

Stonehenge, or Stonehedge as one of the girls on our Scottish tour called it (?) is a place which really baffles..

I didn't know what to expect!

A mob of stones?

And to be honest I was wondering how a bunch of stones could have been England's choice to be in the running to be inlcuded in the seven man made wonders of the world! (Ours was Sydney Harbour Bridge!!!)

And Stonehenge was pipped as wonderful and intriguing engineering feat.

SO when we saw it..i was actually pretty impressed!

It was rather wonderful seeing these huge rocks just appear out of nowwhere...a bit like seeing the pinnacles but of course, MUCH BIGGER!!!!

They've been there for 5000 years, were never recorded, even in the Doomsday Book, and have been the cause of the WHY questions by everyone who visits!

Anyway, it was fascinating..and well worth the visit.

What really got me, was on the way to Stonehenge, we actually went to a place called Heytsbury..and there we saw the bus driver's sister's house which is...gasp, owned by Janet Homes O'court!

There ya go....a bit of gossip.

While in Bath we also saw the National Heritage Community called Lacock. And that was pretty interesting too....it's where Harry Potter's birth house is..and where Pride and Prejudice was filmed.

It's also owned by the National Trust because way back when...in William the Conquerer's day (1066 was when he conquered!) he gave huge parcels of land to his cronies..and later, in the 1700's the govt got on the bandwagon to get the land back and decided to tax everyone..so they (those who inherited the land) had to pay a death tax of 90% when they died! OR give it to the National Trust and pay no tax..

Gawd.....

Anyway, it's not much different now either...and apparently of the 100% of landowners...30% own the land! In other words, landowners Ie Prince Charles! still own huge parcels of land..

Apart from that..andpolitics....the english don't whinge ... much!!!! Everyone else does tho..about the COST of everything. It's SO expensive..for downright everything, from train tickets, to tours, to having a pee to accomodation to food!

THEN..in the afternoon....after i talked with my mummy about good things (her) and bad things (bills) we went to THE place Bath is known for..

The Roman Baths..I'd been there in 1977 which the year after the Baths actually closed down to the Bath public (they used to swim there) and restored as a Heritage building and site for the wider public and i only remmber a HUGE Bath...this time when we saw it, it looked so much bigger. And it is.

To think the whole place was actually underground and it was only discovered because they were digging there and doing surveys to ascertain whether it was a good place to build on...until they realised it was actually a site of a huge bath house worshipping the goddess Sulis (celtic)Minerva (roman).

The history of it is fascinating!

Oh and a highlight of Bath..was the comedy night we went to...it was hilarious..and unfortunately Greg and then I got singled out to act as stunts for the guy....i'll have to tell you about that later, it's too embarrasing here!

And that was BATH....

Off to Portsmouth next!