I grabbed my things, getting ready for the day’s “Tour of England”, and made my way to the tube station, though as far from the city as my hostel was, the London Tube was more of an elevated train than a subway.

Despite having only a crude map and a building address, I managed to arrive at the pickup point with time to spare.

The tour guide was a tall man, bald and looked to be in his late fifties, with aslight resemblance to Patrick Stewart. Obviously not new to this tour, he had awealth of knowledge that there would be no way to retain.

Looking like the stereotypical medieval castle, the first stop of the day, WindsorCastle, fascinated me, with it brick turrets and classical windows. In the distance, from on top of the palace, a flag was waving, and for a moment we all thought it might mean that Queen Elizabeth was inside, but our guide soon told us it likely belonged to of one of the princes.  

As we toured the grounds, the guide shared some of the castle's history. He mentioned how it was a new style of fortifications built by William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, a battle that marked the last successful invasion of England.

Inside the castle, numerous photos and paintings of the queen hung on the walls, spanning her 80 years of life. Our guide told us how, were it not for the king abdicating his throne in 1936 to marry a woman from Boston, Queen Elizabeth would never have been crowned. It was a fact that seemed sensational to me at the time, though was later covered thoroughly in the film The King’s Speech.

As our bus pulled away from the castle, departing the town of Windsor for the English countryside, our guide listed off a few more facts about England. Of those he said, the ones I remembered most were that 77% of the country was farmland, with the average farm roughly 240 acres in size, costing roughly £3,500 per acre.

We next stopped for lunch at a small bed and breakfast a few miles from Stonehenge. While inside, rain began to fall outside, disturbing a girl and her mother. As we left the inn, I loaned them my umbrella, but once we arrived at the site, they felt bad for me. They returned it, choosing to spend £20 on one for themselves.

Telling us how the stones had come on rafts from Wales, over 300 miles away, our guide then mentioned how many of the stones had been pillaged during the Dark Ages, leaving only the few that remained today.

We were given some time to wander around the site and I marveled at the contrast between the bright green grass and the dark grey skies. And in the middle, sat the large stone slabs.

After another hour and a half long drive, our group reached our final site: a hot spring in the town of Bath. Considering the springs as a gift from the goddess Minerva, the Romans built up the area around the spring for use as a thermal spa. Later, the Normans built a cathedral on the site, which combined with the healing powers of the spring, attracted large numbers of ill to the town. Disease, along with the abolishment of the roman church, would destroy the town, only for it to be rebuilt in the 18th century.