After lunch and seeing the cathedral, we traveled onward to Stonehenge! Alas, there were way too many tourists milling about to get any fabulous photos. Still pretty awesome.
We then traveled to Avebury, which is actually a LOT larger than Stonehenge but gets quite a bit less press. It's different in that the stones in Stonehenge were all shaped by humans, but the stones in Avebury were chosen for their specific shape and not fashioned at all by humans. It is magnificent, and also different because it is not roped off and surrounded by lots of tourists, but rather surrounded by sheep grazing in the grasses.
There's also a road built right into the middle of the Avebury site. Apparently up until recent decades, there was a ramshackle village (with no electricity or running water!) built around the old stones and farmers were actively trying to destroy them. The government of Britain convinced the village's old inhabitants to move down the road into much nicer government-built accommodation and they found and restored much of the original stones of Avebury. It's an absolutely breathtaking site and we enjoyed frolicking in the fields with the sheep (even if we had to watch where we stepped). We returned to Oxford that evening totally worn out, so decided upon an easy dinner at the Eagle & Child, which has apparently become our regular pub.
It was Norman's last day in town. He left on the bus back to Heathrow the next morning around half past 9. We bid him a bit of a sad goodbye and spent the rest of the day recovering from the whirlwind visit.
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