To Salisbury (and Stonehenge)

August 27, 2022

There’s a feeling of relief and disaster averted when we bike out of Marlborough for the last time. We’re leaving without incurring a sprained ankle or worse from the Green Dragon’s treacherous stairs and sloped floors, and we’ve managed to make it in and out of town for the fourth time without getting mangled or mashed by the traffic madness along High Street. Actually High Street has a different feeling this morning - it’s Saturday and the market is on, displacing the double row of cars that usually occupy the center of the couplet. It gives you a sense of how attractive Marlborough must have been before the automobile arrived, and what it could become again someday.

Traffic’s light this morning and the street fair is on. The town is much more inviting than we’ve seen it so far.

It’s nice to see Town Hall without a crush of cars and HGV’s managing the traffic merge/split in front of it.

Our ride to Salisbury is nearly a straight shot south, roughly paralleling the Avon most of the way down. It starts with familiar country as we bike west toward Avebury for a couple of miles and then turn south toward the high chalk downs we biked through on the Avebury loop. Once again we climb up the north side of Knap Hill, pause to admire the sweeping views, and then coast down into the Vale of Pewsey.

Nice to see this view from Knap Hill across the Vale of Pewsey again.

Descending into the Vale of Pewsey. Look at the low profile on the horizon - we have some easy riding ahead.

Rachael starts the descent before me, but before she gets far I send her one of the canned text messages built into our Garmins - Wait at the next stop. A minute later the response comes: OK; and shortly I come upon her halfway down the hill, stopped by the road waiting for me.

I reeled her in because I remembered that we’ll be able to see the Alton Barnes White Horse from somewhere along here, the one she missed seeing in the earlier ride through here. And sure enough, we look west and see him cantering across the steep slope we’ve been dropping past.

I’m taking photos when she reminds me that we still haven’t given the GBO a look at Britain. Shameful - only two weeks from the end of the tour and we’ve kept him cooped up in the tool bag the whole time. Such thoughtless custodians we are! He didn’t even get to see Wales!

Stainless steel objects have a pretty poor sense of geography though, so we tell him this is Wales as we’re propping him up for a good look at the Great White Horse. He won’t know the difference, and he should get credit after all since he was there for two weeks.

The Alton Barnes White Horse, the second largest in Wiltshire.

Look, GBO, it’s Wales! You can’t fool me, it says - that’s a horse, not a whale.

The next ten miles are some of the most pleasant miles we’ve ridden recently as we drop to Alton Barnes and then cut over to the Avon and gently follow it downstream. The miles go fast and easily and it feels like this is going to be one of our easiest rides - and then we come to a short climb that surprises us by stiffening to 12%; and then another, and another, and another. Looking at our ride profile it looks like there could be as many as a dozen of these little sappers in our path before we make it to Salisbury.

Easy riding south through the Avon valley.

At west Amesbury we reach our turnoff and take the mile and a half spur I’ve stitched in - to Stonehenge. Since we’re so close it just seemed like the thing to do to swing by for a look.

Until we started planning this trip I don’t think I expected I’d ever see Stonehenge, one of the best known wonders of the ancient world. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it, truth be known. It’s Saturday on a holiday weekend (Monday is a bank holiday in England), the weather is fine, and there’s no doubt the site will be a madhouse of tourists.

And I’m uneducated about what seeing Stonehenge is even like. How close can you get, do you need tickets or a reservation? So I start doing some research and see that it’s fairly expensive, with the price varying by day and expected congestion - £24/person today. You can reserve in advance online, but when you arrive you can either walk a quarter mile or so to the site or ride there in a shuttle bus. Your ticket buys you an audio guide, access to a video presentation, and so on. Once you’re at the site, you can see it from behind a rope barricade - you can’t actually walk around beneath the stones and look up from within the circle, for example - undoubtedly a very good thing.

Visions of waiting in long lines, riding a crowded bus, walking up to the rope and looking at the stones for a few minutes with a throng of others taking their selfies didn’t sound appealing to either of us. So we talked about maybe just skipping it. But then, I found a description of how to visit it by bicycle, which surprisingly turns out to be quite easy. You can bike up to the start of a grassy path that climbs up to the stones and then bike right beneath them, barely ten feet further from them than the ones who paid admission. And, you’re not in a crowd. There are relatively few walkers and bikers coming this way and it’s quite relaxed and pleasant. We enjoyed a pair of encounters chatting with others here on foot but both bikers themselves.

So how was the experience? It was wonderful, much better than I expected, and in retrospect one I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. And knowing what I know now, I’d like to go back at a quieter time of day, maybe even at sunrise or sunset if I thought I could safely bike back to Salisbury at that time. But would I want to go inside? No.

So which way would you like to get to Stonehenge? This way?

A profile that needs no description. We were lucky to be here on a day with good lighting. Also, look at how few people there are, seen from this direction. They’re all off to the right, stopped at the point where the bus dropped them off or they first arrived on foot.

This father and his wife (who’s off to the right, taking our picture for us) stopped to ask about our travels. They’re bikers themselves and live in the high French alps, though I think they’re Americans from their accents.

Look, GBO, it’s England! A two country day!

Gnomus the friendly giant mills through the crowd telling stories about Stonehenge.

It’s 70 miles to Stonehenge from London, but only 2 from Amesbury.

So that’s the ride - what more does a day need than this? But it isn’t of course. There’s still ten miles to go, again mostly following the Avon and crossing several more short, steep, increasingly annoying lumps. At the end though we’re delighted by how easy it is to bike into Salisbury, with a bike path that brings us safely to within a few blocks of our apartment. And we’re delighted with the apartment itself. And that we’re here for another four night stay. And the floor’s level!

Our view at lunch, sitting on the grass beneath the shade of a roadside tree.

Video sound track: Samba Dees Days, Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd

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Ride stats today: 38 miles, 2,100’; for the tour: 2,249 miles, 135,600’

Today's ride: 38 miles (61 km)
Total: 2,248 miles (3,618 km)

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Bill ShaneyfeltStonehenge, check!

No mention of a Salisbury steak... ??? :-)
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2 years ago