Salisbury

When my alarm went off a mere three hours after I'd gone to bed, it took a nearly super-human effort to get up, dressed, and out of the house to Waterloo station, but thankfully I did it all without missing the train! Yet how annoying when just a few minutes after the train pulled out of Waterloo station, it stopped at a station just a few stops down from my flat. If I'd paid a bit more attention, I could have easily gotten another hour's sleep that morning!

I made it to Salisbury and to the youth hostel, where it turned out that everyone was still recovering after quite a heavy night out. Given that I've given up hangovers since I turned 30, I once again thanked my lucky stars that I'd decided to go to the garden party rather than come up to Salisbury the previous night.

We got on a bus and then went out for our first run of the day, running up and down hills, over hill and dale, until finally off in the distance, I spotted a familiar grouping of stones. Having mistaken many piles of haybales previously for Stonehenge, I wasn't quite sure if we'd actually reached it, but I was assured by my English friends that finally, after running for nearly two hours, this was it! We'd reached Stonehenge!

Unfortunately, we'd taken so long to run to Stonehenge that we didn't properly have time to really take it in, but then had to hop back on the bus and go to our next run destination. I didn't quite catch the name of it, but we passed some white horses carved in the hillsides along the way, and then arrived at another grouping of stones. Not quite as cool as Stonehenge, but still once again powerful when you remember that while the US is only slightly over 200 years old, people have been on the isle of Blighty FOREVER.


After our second run, we made our way back to the youth hostel, and changed into our togas for our toga party that night. Now of course, this is where my Dartmouth education really came to the fore, as I ended up pinning together the togas of EVERY girl who was staying in my room at the hostel. (Who would ever have guessed that skill would come in handy?)

Yet, still annoying to have to chop up a regular old bedsheet from Primark (could only find fitted sheets for cheap), as I've got a lovely silver piece of fabric that served as my toga when I was at Dartmouth. I think it's still tucked away somewhere in a box in New York, although I really wish I could have had it here!

We then created crowns out of ivy for ourselves (I just went with a white ribbon I had in my bag), and then walked down to the pub. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like walking through an unfamiliar city with a group of 30 other people, all dressed in togas. Particularly as we'd all had to pretty much strip down to our underwear underneath, and tuck in all of our bra straps, so there was also the knowledge that if any of your safety pins came undone, you were going to end up naked in front of the entire city of Salisbury!

We got to the pub, had a lovely dinner, and then hung out playing drinking games. Admittedly, I excused myself from the drinking games, as they just seemed so juvenile, something I'd really left behind in college. I actually had only two pints of beer the entire evening, and then just called it quits, keeping with my policy of having given up hangovers when I turned 30. Seriously, why is this concept of "drinking in moderation" so hard for people?

Anyway, the rest of the crowd didn't go along with my moderation policy, probably because all of the beer that evening was free (or at least "free" in that we'd paid in advance for this dinner, and the pub undoubtedly made money on me as I drank so little!) The pub shut down and kicked out all of its other customers at midnight, and then we stayed on for a lock-in, where the boys all got the brilliant idea that they should start drinking yards of ale (two imperial pints). Okay, I guess that was fun for them, but I really don't see the attraction in it!

At 3 AM, I was really desperate to go home, but with all of the drunk night-clubbers out on the streets of Salisbury, I didn't want to walk home by myself, so that when one other guy finally declared his intention to leave too, I jumped at the chance to leave. It was then funny, as walking home dressed in togas, walking past all of the drunk people getting kebabs, people started yelling things at us. The most interesting though had to be, as I was walking along with this guy in a loose white robe, and a drunk person yelled out, "Oh my God, it's JESUS!!" Ummm...sure if Jesus was a bald guy who wore glasses, but so you have it.

Made it home safely and then crashed into my upper bunk at the hostel, finally glad to get a chance to get to sleep!!