100% stone

being immersed in all of the world cup madness for an entire month, i picked up a few bad habits that have been hard to shake off. seeing stonehenge just brought out the rage. this one's for zizou!

but alas, my days in jolly old england are coming to an end, and i figure it is time to start exploring this place a little more. so a couple of weeks ago i hit the finals of the british open and saw tiger win, then last week, inspired by Chevy Chase in European Vacation, it was off for some tourism: a drive through the countryside and a stop at stonehenge and the white horse.

i must say, british tourism is ...uh, typically british--dry and not too exciting. seeing it all is a bit anticlimactic. there's no point going to stonehenge, because when you get there you have to stand 50 feet away, so you can't even see all the detail. you do, however, get a free audio tour to guide you through--woo hoo. right... like i want to hear some guy speaking 10 words a minute describe details i can hardly see even though i am standing right at the site. and the white horse... well, it's a drawing of a horse, in white, in the grass. oh, and you can't see it all unless you are in an airplane. they forget to mention that part in the brochure.

nonetheless, the adventure was quite fun, mainly because of the drive, and monkey see and monkey do siting in the backseat. our drive was picturesque, as we drove through tiny villages that were just as we'd imagined them to look. on our drive we also saw some quite unusual things you may not see every day. as we left stonehenge and turned onto the country road, the first thing we see is Stonehenge Golf Range. i don't know why this struck me as odd... but it did.

then we enter the narrow, curvy country road, and the first sign we see reads: 'caution: tank crossing' (with a pic of a tank... in case anyone was unsure of what a large tank would look like on a small country road) ...ok, now things are getting a bit odd.

then we pass through a few provincial villages... which were quite surreal as they fit all of the stereotypes we had held. and then as we pull up to the hill where the white horse is, we see another sign: 'beware of crossing ducks' (with a pic of a little yellow duck). there are just way too many things wrong with that sign. why would anyone let ducks cross the street? give the cars a bridge and put a fence around the street so the ducks cannot cross. it is that hard? poor duckies. who is going to see a little duck crossing the street as they drive through in their SUV, all in time for the driver to stop the car and save the duck's life?? i feel like that crossing may be the duck murder capital of the world.

love can move mountains, i can move rocks