Evensong, by the way, is a service of evening prayers and psalms, "conducted according to a set form, especially that of the Anglican Church" according to our dictionary. The nice thing about the evensong at St. Paul's yesterday was the wonderful choir made up of men and young boys, some of whom looked no older than seven.

Today we took the tube out to Heathrow Airport where we had booked a "hire car." We braved Gord's driving and went in search of stone circles. First we went to Avebury, a little village with a church and a manor, and surrounded by a huge complex that includes a great stone circle or "henge," a deep ditch and high bank, and groups of large stones. Nearby are ancient communal burial grounds or barrows. Grazing among the stones were many sheep, and consequently it was difficult to step anywhere without coming into contact with the sheep droppings that were literally everywhere, forming their own circles. We had lunch at The Red Lion, located in the middle of the circle. The pub is 400 years old and is one of the top ten most haunted pubs in the country. The main ghost is that of Florrie, who was killed here by her husband and thrown down a well. The well is inside the pub, covered with plexiglas (or perspex as they say here) so that you can peer down it, and functions as a table at which you can eat. They have a few rooms where you can spend the night and apparently they lock you in!

From there we drove to Stonehenge. We went late in the afternoon to avoid the crowds, which worked out quite well. The complimentary audio guides were good. It is just amazing how they transported these huge stones 4,500 years ago to map the course of the sun and the moon for some purpose on which we can only speculate. The larger stones are Sarsen stones brought from the Marlborough Downs 19 miles away and the smaller ones, Bluestones, are from Wales, 240 miles away. Incredible.