St Albans

We slept in today, didn't bother getting up till 9 as we didn't have far to travel today....

We headed out to St Albans, the sight of an ancient Roman City... the third largest in England. Not alot of it remains today, just the ruins of a theatre, and a few houses. The whole area has been dug over by Archiologists, and they've found quite abit of stuff, which is mostly housed in a museum near by. there was some quite interesting stuff, and it was interesting to see how they figure out what people did by the way their bones wore out. The other big thing was the floor of a large house, which was complete with Roman central heating.... basically a room with a fire in it, slightly lower level than the rooms to be heated, with tunnels going under the floor, and into vents going up the room pillers ( in the corner of the room) that then vented into the loft area of the roof.... the idea being that the hot air would heat the stone of the floors, then into the loft so as to reduce the amount of heat wasted... quite clever these romans....

From here it was onto St Albans Catherdral.... another massive stone building dating from ages ago (1st century).... but in this one you can easily see where alterations and repairs have been made.... one minute its mostly builders fill (broken up stone) with only the corners and occasionally a level line of bricks, to sections that are made of stone delibitely made for the job. On the inside this was again noticable in the archs, some where smooth arches in the Norman style, and some meet in a point in the old english style...

In St Albans itself is the "ye olde fighting cock" the "oldest" pub in england. Back in the day it was a meeting point for cock fighting, (hence the name) and even had a round arena room. We went in for a look, and its now setup as a dinner and beer type pub, but the interior is very cool... but not somewhere for taller people, the beams where only about 6ft high.... so even i had to duck to get under them....

From here we headed into the town of St Albans. It was market day which was quite cool, lots of stalls set up in the middle of the street, so we picked up some olives for me and some rasberrys for megan to snack on.... :D

And that was about the day... now where getting the boring things like washing sorted before we hit the road with contiki....

take it easy

R&M