Europe Post 14: Dorking, London, and a Henge of Stone

Time while travelling is a crazy thing. Sometimes a week just blurs by. That was definitely the case for us this week… I started writing this post from a hostel in Edinburgh, after an overnight bus from London (which always seems like such a great idea to save time and money… until you arrive, having had barely any sleep, a newly sore back, and a strong dislike for other humans!). As such, everything is a little blurry, but let’s jump into it.

Dorking

After crossing the channel on a bus, that went inside a train, under the ocean (it was as confusing as it sounds) we headed to the small Surrey Hills village of Dorking, where we stayed with some of Charlotte’s relatives over Easter. Dorking and its surrounds were everything you could hope for and expect in a (admittedly quite posh) English village – rolling hills, walking paths everywhere, and an adorable main street. We spent plenty of time catching up with the family, walking in the various surrounding hills with Charlotte’s aunt Kate, and taking in lots of quintessential English sights and experiences – right down to crisps and a pint at an adorable English pub after one day’s walking. We managed to get in our first Parkrun in a while during our stay too, on one of the most beautiful courses I’ve seen, through rolling hills of vineyards.

London

I came to London with relatively low expectations. For some, reason, I had it in my head that London wasn’t all that interesting – perhaps because of cultural similarities and rivalries with Australia. On this count I was definitely wrong. There is so much to see and do in London, and I feel like we really only scratched the surface during our stay. Here’s some of my favourite things we got up to:

English Premier League Football:

Somehow, I found myself at a football stadium one wet week-night, listening to thousands of people (mostly men) singing a song about blowing bubbles… I was lucky enough to get tickets to West Ham v Tottenham, who are coached by Australia’s very own Ange Postecoglou. The home West Ham crowd were in full voice, singing their unofficial anthem “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”, along with other classics including “Stand up if you hate Tottenham” at any chance they got (I stood up – figured it was safer to blend in). The game was tight throughout and ended a 1 – 1 draw, and it was definitely a unique and worthwhile experience. Australian sports crowds need to work on their singing game!

West End Theatre:

For Charlotte’s birthday, we booked ourselves tickets to see a theatre show at the famous West End. We saw “An Enemy of the People” at the the Duke of York’s Theatre, starring Matt Smith of Doctor Who fame. While we were stoked just to have the experience itself, the show was brilliant – challenging, thought provoking, and even including some audience participation. If you ever get the chance – see it.

National Gallery and the Tate Modern:

We got a proper art fix during our stay. We made it to National Gallery, and caught everything from Van Gogh pieces to some Da Vinci’s, which was pretty impressive for a grand price of free! Then the Tate Modern – which is an astonishingly large modern art gallery. For me, modern art is always hit and miss, but I was able to appreciate some great audio-visual pieces, and marvel that a canvas covered in a single colour of paint can apparently be worth a fortune.

Walking along the Thames, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace:

Of course we got all the cliche sights in – it was pretty surreal to walk over Tower Bridge and stand under Big Ben. Buckingham Palace is overrated – wasn’t a lot to see really – but walking along the Thames was a great day in itself with so much to see.

Vintage Shopping on Brick Lane:

This one was more for Charlotte than me, but even I could appreciate the remarkable density of vintage shops in a small area at Brick Lane. You could easily spend countless hours and countless dollars picking up one off pieces of clothing here.

Riding Red Double Decker Busses:

Bit of a London cliche, but a cheap thrill for us convicts! Melbourne needs double decker busses – there’s nothing quite like cruising the streets in the front seats on the top deck, just watching the world go by.

I’d love to get back to London one day – feels like there is so much more we didn’t see.

Stonehenge/Bath/Avebury

One evening, we were looking around online for a bus tour to Stonehenge, with our new German friend Jenny (met at the hostel). Not finding any we liked, the question came up: “I wonder how much it would cost to hire a car for the day?”. Turns out, not much at all, so off we went on a pleasant Saturday to Heathrow Airport to pick up a car. It was lovely to be back driving on the correct side of the road, and with roughly the same rules as Australia – the only exception being the use of miles instead of kilometres on street signs. Our little hire car took us first to Stonehenge. I wasn’t sure what to expect here, but from the moment we first spotted it from the road driving in, it was a pretty surreal and epic experience. There were stacks of people around and it was incredibly windy, but it didn’t really diminish the experience – if anything, the wind made it feel even more epic. We took plenty of time to walk around the henge, and spent some time in the associated information centre as well. Apparently the latest theories are that the henge was a religious site, and/or some of temple to the dead. Some of the stones were from hundreds of kilometres away and weighed tonnes – they think the site was built by local groups all coming together over winter solstice and possibly moving one stone a year before heading back home, over a period of decades – incredible dedication. It is worth noting though that even the people we talked to there said that the theories are updated and change every few years – so the conclusive real story is still out there (still hope for alien theory!)

Next, it was off to Bath. This famed tourist town was… full of tourists of course! Many of them were domestic, as was the case at Stonehenge which gave it a slightly different flavour. We loved wandering down the streets of old buildings and taking in the river views – it is a very picturesque place.

Lastly, we made our way to the Avebury Stones briefly before turning back towards London. Avebury has a less well known set of standing stones – it is less complete, but much larger than Stonehenge, and tragically, many of the stones were only pulled down around 300 years ago, to build some of the village of Avebury itself. Parts of Avebury village actually site inside the circle, including the pub – a shrine of a different kind I guess? There were much fewer people here, and we were able to go up and touch the stones, which was definitely an unreal experience. Crazy to think how much effort went into putting them in place some 6000 years ago.

Having had our taste of England, it is now time for a Scottish fling – really looking forward to getting out into the highlands especially and seeing the iconic landscapes!

Next stops: Edinburgh, Isle of Skye, Glasgow