Pulling Up My Salisbury Stakes

I spent this morning at Stonehenge and have just arrived at Amesbury (the library in fact) having hiked across the farmland, studded with prehistoric barrows, in between.
This area of England is quite beautiful. It is cold but not especially so. The birds are flocking, starlings, great tits, crows, as are the sheep, who are spray-painted brightly on the tails, I suppose for identification and ownership purposes. I have found what appears to be a primitive tool of some sort near one of the barrows on Salisbury Plain. On further reflection it is not nearly so finely articulated as to be of purposeful construction, although it uncannily fits my fingers just so, able as I am to imagine using it to chop roots or scrape the fat and tendon from inside of an animal hide. But these are fancies.

It has been quite fun travelling the land of Thomas Hardy, whether his Christminster (Oxford), his Melchester (Salisbury), or his Casterbridge (Dorchester), where I go next. The wide-rolling fields and copses of trees, the ancient monuments and the modern conveniences: it is quite a land.

Tonight, I will stay in Salisbury again but tomorrow I leave for Dorchester.

"The band of silver paleness along the east horizon made even the distant parts of the Great Plain appear dark and near; and the whole enormous landscape bore that impress of reserve, taciturnity, and hesitation which is usual just before day. The eastward pillars and their architraves stood up blackly against the light, and the great flame-shaped Sun-stone beyond them; and the Stone of Sacrifice midway. Presently the night wind died out, and the quivering little pools in the cup-like hollows of the stones lay still." - Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Pictures forthcoming