Day 6 - Sunday, July 14th

We book an Uber to take us to Stonehenge after learning our train does not run on Sunday mornings.  It is our first early departure of the trip with us leaving around 8:30AM, still hardly the break of dawn though.  Our driver Asad shows up and we head out for the 30-minute drive to our destination.  Asad is Somali and asks where we’re from.  We confirm his suspicion that we’re Chicagoans and he remarks about the futures exchange.  Since I use to work at a trade desk, we start discussing trading as he day trades currencies when not Ubering.  I’ve found no matter where on Earth two people are born, they will always have something in common, and often that something involves Chicago.  He drops us off at the Visitor’s Center and soon we are making the 2-km trek by foot to the ancient site where 4,500 years ago Neolithic people had drug sarcens, carved rock monuments each weighing around 25 tons, from where they had been quarried over 200 km away and lifted them into place to commemorate our solstices, days that seem to pass with little mention in our modern day culture.  Crows stood watch around the site as we made our way around this remarkable ruin.  Then we shuttled it back to the Visitor’s center to find a bus to take us into Salisbury.

The double decker arrived to whisk us off emptying out a number of sightseers.  However, we are the only ones who board so we commandeer the upper deck with each of us sprawling out in a different  area of the otherwise empty top deck for the roughly 25-minute trip into town.  Pulling into the outskirts, we pass close by a hill and I make a glib reference to a Peter Gabriel song only to later realize this is Old Sarum, an ancient site that was the original settlement of this locale, which would later be capped by an Iron Age castle long ago reduced to ruin with all the stones recycled off except for its foundation.  

We make our way to the cathedral standing tall in full Gothic splendor above the town and look at so many of the treasures within its majestic walls including possibly the world’s first mechanical clock along with some say the best preserved of the four existing copies of the Magna Carta which resolved that kings would no longer enjoy absolute rule, an idea that would not be overturned for over 800 years.

We ate at a nearby Nando’s and then made our way to the train to Freshford arriving back in the evening in time to tune into the Euro Final where England was looking to bring the Tournament Cup home after defeating Spain.  Spain had a different plot line in mind for the ending unfortunately and, after England had scored a tying goal, Spain managed to score one more late in the match that fair England would not be able to answer.  We shared her pain.