Disappointments
May. 7th, 2004 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonAnd speaking of places destroyed . . .
Low Point: Bath. When I visited it fifteen years ago, I really liked the place. It was a graceful, beautiful, historic city with loads of interesting things, a lovely river, well-maintained. When I visited it this time, I was distressed by the heavy invasion of American-Internationalist stores everywhere: The Gap, Starbuck's, Orvis, etc. Store after store cramming those once-graceful streets, making it like any ol' mall anywhere. I mean, I can understand the residents wanting to be part of the modern world, not wanting to live in a museum, but I think they've lost something precious along the way. I spent two days in Bath on the last trip. This trip I couldn't wait to get out of town and realized I would probably never go back again.
Fortunately, most of the things I was interested in for this trip are not heavy tourist destinations. Oh yeah, Stonehenge and Avebury. But they've managed those places really well, not let the rapacious internationalist conglomerates take over. The National Trust has kept commercialism very much to the minimum, very discreet, and I was happy to see that these sites (which I also visited fifteen years ago) had not changed much. Avebury is still the coolest because you can go right up to the stones and lay hands on them and it was a thrill, even though we were marching around them in a pouring rain. And Stonehenge…well, what you've heard is true. They seem smaller when you first get there, it's crawling with tourists. But again, they've managed it well and although you can't walk amongst the actual stones, you can get quite close to them and walk all around them. You can manage a genuine Stonehenge experience (if you keep an open mind and lowered expectations) and it can still be a mighty impressive place.
My biggest disappointment regarding Stonehenge is due to the weird, near-dissociative experience I was having in all the places I revisited from the previous trip. It was like I was seeing it through two different windows in time, having trouble sometimes jibing old with new. The first time I saw Stonehenge it was autumn, past the tourist season, and I remember driving through the undulating landscape approaching it, cresting a low hill—and there it was right by the roadside, stark and dramatic against a blue-gray sky. You still do come over a crest and see it, but they've planted a coppice of trees in the middle distance, so the dramatic effect of Stonehenge against the sky has been smudged and diminished.
Everything changes, nothing remains the same. You can't step in the same river twice. Or the same Stonehenge.
Low Point: Bath. When I visited it fifteen years ago, I really liked the place. It was a graceful, beautiful, historic city with loads of interesting things, a lovely river, well-maintained. When I visited it this time, I was distressed by the heavy invasion of American-Internationalist stores everywhere: The Gap, Starbuck's, Orvis, etc. Store after store cramming those once-graceful streets, making it like any ol' mall anywhere. I mean, I can understand the residents wanting to be part of the modern world, not wanting to live in a museum, but I think they've lost something precious along the way. I spent two days in Bath on the last trip. This trip I couldn't wait to get out of town and realized I would probably never go back again.
Fortunately, most of the things I was interested in for this trip are not heavy tourist destinations. Oh yeah, Stonehenge and Avebury. But they've managed those places really well, not let the rapacious internationalist conglomerates take over. The National Trust has kept commercialism very much to the minimum, very discreet, and I was happy to see that these sites (which I also visited fifteen years ago) had not changed much. Avebury is still the coolest because you can go right up to the stones and lay hands on them and it was a thrill, even though we were marching around them in a pouring rain. And Stonehenge…well, what you've heard is true. They seem smaller when you first get there, it's crawling with tourists. But again, they've managed it well and although you can't walk amongst the actual stones, you can get quite close to them and walk all around them. You can manage a genuine Stonehenge experience (if you keep an open mind and lowered expectations) and it can still be a mighty impressive place.
My biggest disappointment regarding Stonehenge is due to the weird, near-dissociative experience I was having in all the places I revisited from the previous trip. It was like I was seeing it through two different windows in time, having trouble sometimes jibing old with new. The first time I saw Stonehenge it was autumn, past the tourist season, and I remember driving through the undulating landscape approaching it, cresting a low hill—and there it was right by the roadside, stark and dramatic against a blue-gray sky. You still do come over a crest and see it, but they've planted a coppice of trees in the middle distance, so the dramatic effect of Stonehenge against the sky has been smudged and diminished.
Everything changes, nothing remains the same. You can't step in the same river twice. Or the same Stonehenge.