Jerash

Having arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday I began to work out my plans for the trip. I had a list of places that I wanted to see but I had kept my schedule intentionally free. That was a good thing because the Middle East is a very religious place (Surprise Surprise). Strangely enough, Israel seems to be more religious than its immediate neighbors. It has a hint of theocracy about it and what that means in practical terms is that everything shuts down on the Sabbath. Most businesses including many restaurants and stores are included in this, as well as all the buses and museums. So being in Israel on a Saturday is pretty dull.The Christian, Armenian, and Arab quarters of the Old City (where I was staying) didn't all keep to this but it would have seriously hampered my movements to remain. So I took my trip across the border to Jordan a little sooner than planned. While I did get a chance to see a bit of Jerusalem that night I'm leaving that 'till the Jerusalem section later because I saw most of the city during the day after I got back from Jordan.

Getting there wasn't as easy as I'd have liked. First of the there are three border crossings to Jordan. The Sheikh Hussein one is in the north below the Sea of Galilee and the Eilat/Aqaba one is at the far south border of both countries. The third one is the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge which is near Jericho just north of the Deas Sea and is a real oddity for several reasons. Firstly they don't issue visas which means that you have to get one from the Jordanian embassy in advance. Second, it's in occupied Palestine which means that there is a mass of legal loopholes concerning it. For example, as far as Jordan is concerned people using the bridge are going into Palestine and not Israel which is good for all those people who don't want an Israeli stamp on their passport (ie. if they're traveling into any other country in the area apart from Egypt. Those are the only states that recognize Israel as a nation). Israel doesn't see things that way but are content to let in the visitors using that loophole provided that they go through a typically rigorous security check. The other strange thing about the border is that you can't take your vehicle across. That wasn't a problem for me since I was taking buses, but it must be annoying for anyone else. Fortunately, I was aiming for the Sheikh Hussein crossing in the north. My plan was to make a 2-3 day trip of it starting in the north and working my way down to the Aqaba crossing.

Crossing borders in the Middle East (or at least Israel) is a long and sometimes complicated procedure. Anyone who doesn't realize that Israel has security concerns should really not be visiting since they are probably suffering from a severe brain injury. The Sheikh Hussein Crossing consists of two different checkpoints and about a mile of no-man's land in between. You go through the Israeli side, get your passport stamped to certify you're exiting the country, pay the visa fee, and then you pay for a bus to go to the other side of the border. Once there the Jordanian authorities will ask you the same questions and charge for them to stamp your passport. They do issue visas on the spot, but the whole process takes about an hour and a half to two hours. Unfortunately for me that meant I missed one of the main attractions at my first stop, Jarash.

Lincoln (Medieval)

COMING SOON

Newark-on-Trent

Newark is a town on the bus route from Nottingham to Lincoln. I didn't realize that you could get a cheap train to Lincoln (the last trains I'd had cost over £30) so I took the bus. To get from Nottingham to Lincoln you need to get off here and hop on another bus. It's a nice little market town that I didn't mean to get stuck at for an hour. The bus stop is right over the road from this castle so I went to see it.

Avebury

Avebury may make me change my mind about Neolithic sites. It was a beautiful town. We came there for lunch and the pub gave us a limited choice of food in order to accommodate all of us. The pub has a well that supposedly contains the body of a murder victim. You'd be surprised how many wells seem to have those but this one was built right into the pub and served as a table.On the way in we passed a giant mound that is apparently the biggest Neolithic monument in Europe. It's just a big mound of earth but it is impressive to consider its scale.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge. What is there left to say about Stonehenge? I don't like it. Frankly, it's just a pile of rocks in between two motorways. I know that there are people who'd get all up in arms over that but it's just not my thing. Neolithic remains don't interest me, which is a shame really because that's what the rest of the trip was.

Getting to Stonehenge is real easy. It's located right at the junction of two highways. You don't even need to get out of your car, you can just look out the window as you drive by and see as much of them as I would want to. If you do go in for a visit you take the right fork (if you're coming from London) and there is a parking lot and small visitor centre there. There is a fee to get in, though I don't know how much, and they give you audio guides to help you walk around the circle. You can't go into the circle you just walk around the outside. They do let certain people in on rare occasions. Those crazy new age druids from Glastonbury demanded to be let in here because this is an ancient druidic holy site. Never mind that the henge predates the druids by at least 2000 years, they know better than those pesky archaeologists what this site was used for. Turns out it's for staring at the moon and chanting. How disappointing. On a slightly more realistic note Doctor Who came here last season. Somehow all those echo surveys that they make of the ground failed to pick up the giant cavern underneath the stones that the Doctor went in. Probably an oversight on their part. Anyways, to get to the henge from the visitor centre you go under the highway and a set of stairs will take you past some rather nice paintings of the henge people and up to the henge itself. Then you do a circle round the thing and come back and you can say you've done it. Hooray! Moving on...

Salisbury

Salisbury seems like a nice place. Our group stayed there overnight after doing Glastonbury. We only had that evening and the following morning (before 9) to see the city. After that they hustled us into the bus and moved on. The market square was absolutely dead when we arrived at around 7. Apparently this place is usually a bustle of activity but on Saturday evening and Sunday morning none of that was evident. It had a number of stores that would have been worth going into had they been open and the people manning the pub were friendly and served good food.

Glastonbury

I went here as part of a University organized trip. So a whole bunch of students being ferried around the country. The theme was Arthurian legends so we went to places associated with those tales. I've always loved the legend of King Arthur so it seemed like a good trip to go on. There are a lot of myths weaved around Arthur, many of them contradictory. The one place that has tried to associate itself with Arthur more than any other is Glastonbury.

In 1191 the monks at Glastonbury Abbey went so far as to claim they had found Arthur's grave. In reality they probably found a Dark Age tomb of some nobleman and his wife, but they claimed that upon it there was the inscription Hic jacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus. That's the line that gave T.H. White the title to his book The Once and Future King.which sounds rather better than the more literal translation "Here is buried Arthur, king once and king in future." The problem with it is that it was written in High Medieval Latin (Classical Latin has no J) and sketches of it (the original has disappeared) reveal it to be engraved in the then current style. It was during a time of great interest in the Arthurian story. Richard the Lionheart brought a sword supposed to be Excalibur with him on Crusade.