Nicole schreibt...

This time my London trip would be more than just that - I finally got around to fulfilling a twenty year old wish to head out into the west and see Stonehenge and Glastonbury. So to keep theatre reviews and trip reports separate, you can find the trip report here and the reviews of the shows I saw in London here.

Having not all that much to do in London on the first leg of my journey, I decided to go for a long walk from Liverpool Street Station through the City, past St.Paul's Cathedral and across the Millennium Bridge to the South Bank, where I'd be seeing my first show at the National Theatre in the afternoon. Since I hardly ever get to the City normally, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures here, as I found the contrast between old and new buildings particularly striking. I also quite by accident stumbled across the gorgeous Victorian Leadenhall Market, though since it was Saturday morning when the City is more or less dead, everything there was closed.

Staying not all that long, I returned to Salisbury to visit the cathedral, which was much more interesting somehow with all the tombs and memorial plaques, the gorgeous cloisters and the chapter house with one of the few remaining copies of the original Magna Carta. While I could't quite summon awe for looking at a 800 year old piece of parchment, I was awed by the tidy tiny handwriting on it.

I briefly considered staying for Evensong when the choir would be singing but it was rather cold inside the cathedral and somehow the idea of sitting through a full mass didn't appeal all that much to me, so instead I just wandered around the rather small town a bit longer to find myself some dinner and then returned to the B&B. John invited me to a cup of tea outside and we chatted for a while - part of me enjoyed having someone to talk to and he was very nice indeed, but admittedly part of the attraction of travelling alone is to finally have time to myself without having to converse with anyone, so once I had finished my tea, I went upstairs to basically do nothing for the rest of the day, just hang out online since I had free wifi here, take a shower, watch some TV. But this quiet evening and early night was really needed after the time in London.

On Monday morning I had a great and very filling breakfast, then said goodbye to John and Veronica and took the train to Westbury, a small place in the middle of nowhere. But the second train to Castle Cary took me even further into nowhere - I had expect a small but nice town and clear signs for all the travellers how to get to Glastonbury. Instead the tiny station was outside of whatever town there may have been and no signs whatsoever. The bus I had meant to take arrived, but the driver suggested I take another one that would arrive ten minutes later and would make reaching Glastonbury easier. Deciding to trust him, I stepped out of his bus, but soon after began to regret it as I found no signs for any other bus and got scared that I might get stuck in this windblown rainy place forever. Luckily a bus did turn up the, going to Street. I resisted the urge to ask What street? and just stepped aboard, glad to get away from that dreary station in the middle of nowhere. It was Ye Olde Country Life for an hour then, along tiny rural roads and pretty villages until we got to Street, the first place that looked somewhat like civilization to me. A nice lady who had overheard my conversation with the driver pointed me to the bus stop for Glastonbury and the connecting bus arrived only a few minutes later. Since I had already seen the Tor on the way to Street, I knew it was close - and in fact only five minutes further on the second bus.
Getting off the bus in Glastonbury I felt like stepping right into nutso central, finding the High Street lined with all sorts of esoteric new age hippy shops. I managed to find my B&B, "Karuna House" (garden for meditation and holistic healing available) easily and met my new host Helen, a nice middle-aged lady and not as much of a hippy type as I had feared. I got a key, dumped my backpack and was off again to visit Glastonbury Abbey first - paying £5 to wander around the few ruins that are left, which I found a rather steep price. The abbey, once one of the biggest and finest in Britain and where supposedly the tomb of King Arthur laid once, fell victim to Henry VIII's dissolution of the monastries and the stones and other materials were used for other buildings. It was drizzling half the time, so wandering around wasn't fun anyway and I decided to move on rather quickly.

My next stop was Chalice Well, one of the two famous wells that have flowed at the base of the Tor for millennia. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus' uncle, had come to Glastonbury, planted a thorn bush and buried the holy grail here. The rusty-red color of the well supposedly signifying the blood of Christ. Whatever you believe (or not), the gardens around the well were a gorgeous place, inviting people to chill and rest and meditate and I really loved the atmosphere. Granted, I stayed quite some while in the hope the rain would stop and enable me to climb up the Tor, but even so it was a stay I enjoyed. The climb up the Tor was short but steep and once on top, offers fantastic sights all around the country, even on a rainy grey day like this. Luckily it remained dry for a while, so I could enjoy the climb and the sight. It is easy to see how this could have been an island once, surrounded by very low-lying land so close to the sea. And with the uniquely shaped Tor rising up from the land and the well, Glastonbury and its heritage of Celtic Avalon had definitely turned out worth the long trip to get there.

I also really appreciated how quiet it was on the Tor with only a few people around, compared to the masses in Stonehenge the previous day. I may not believe in all that hippy new age stuff - and how they throw everything together that isn't mainstream monotheism, from buddhism and hinduism over ancient Celtic and Native American lore to more "out there" stuff like Wicca and crystals - I am sure that there is more between Heaven and Earth than we are aware of today and which we have long forgotten to recognize. And here in Glastonbury it is really easy to believe in the old Celtic holy island of Avalon and a mother Goddess. Since the Celts did not built pyramids, temples or other stone buildings they could leave behind to historians thousands of years later, but worshipped in natural groves, at wells and on hills does not make their worship any less realistic than that of ancient Egypt or Babylon.
I chose one of the nice vegetarian cafes for dinner, somehow not wanting mainstream fare like pizza or chips, and had a great piece of quiche with salad and a pint of cider that actually left me quite drunk, then returned to my B&B to spend the evening chilling and reading.

After a nice breakfast it was time to leave Glastonbury - a gorgeous sun was now shining as I left the B&B and sat at the bus stop for a while. Getting out of Glastonbury was easier: The 29 bus took me straight to Taunton Railway station where I had to hang out for an hour to catch my train to Torquay. This gave me time to think that for a while the railway privatization had caused quite some trouble and a few major crashes in the UK but all the stations I visited now were in so much better state than German stations. Staffed ticket offices, service people on every platform, even on small stations like Westbury and Castle Cary, flower pots to brighten the stations up and free toilets in good conditions. None of that McClean-ripoff we have in Germany and completely deserted stations in disrepair where the only machine is out of order.

The hotel in Torquay turned out to be a cheerful small place, run by a couple that greeted me very friendly and a fine room - definitely a steal for the £34 I paid per night. After dropping my backpack and getting changed into a summer skirt at last, I went down to the beach which did not look so nice and then for a stroll along the harbour and through the main shopping drag. I had a little picknick at a lovely old fountain, then returned to the hotel to try the internet thing and sit in the sun to read. But the evening was just so gorgeous that I went down to the beach for another walk, dipped my feet into the sea and walked around a cute little park before returning to my room at last. I loved Torquay immediately, relieved to find it a rather calm pretty place and not like those English seaside places I had seen in Northern England years ago or worse, like the English-centred places in Spain such as Magaluf and Playa de las Americas. But then of course, the German beach places at the North and Baltic Sea coast aren't half as horrible as the Playa de Palma either.
I had planned for a whole day in Torquay to chill and I was glad I could stay in this place for another day. After breakfast I walked across the small peninsular to Babbacombe to visit "Bygones", an indoor recreation of a Victorian Street with tiny shops on the ground floor, a Victorian house on the first floor and a recreation of a World War I Trench on the second floor (mixing rather awkwardly with the cute "Fantasyland" on the same floor). Being the geek I am I enjoyed the huge collection of ancient stuff - household goods, food packages, clothes and whatever else you might have found in shops and houses 120 years ago.

I was able to have a slightly early breakfast, so I could leave at nine sharp to catch my bus to London. The five hour ride passed surprisingly quickly and once I was standing in London again I was happy to be back in the bustling metropolis, where I spent two more days to see two more shows and do some more shopping before it was time to fly home (and then onwards to Ibiza). Overall I am really glad that I have been able to see some more of England at last and while Stonehenge was indeed the disappointment some people predicted, I am still glad I finally got to see it live. I was more surprised that more than twenty years after going crazy over "The mists of Avalon" Glastonbury still made such a great impression of me and I'm sure there's definitely something special about that place. And while I certainly wouldn't choose England for a "beach holiday" I also enjoyed staying at the "English Riviera" for two days. Though if I could choose, gimme the French Riviera any day!