The henges of Salisbury Plain

However, Bath was just the first step in our long weekend journey through ancient britain. Bright and early on the Sunday morning, we hightailed it down to Stonehenge.

These are some of the most famous bluestones in the world, and yet nobody knows what they were for. No huge surprises there - the folk wh0 built them died thousands of years ago (Stonehenge is as old as the pyramids in Egypt) and unlike the Egyptians, these folk left precious little in the way of written records to help enlighten us. The folk we spoke to on the day think there's a connection with Woodhenge, a series of concentric post hole rings a few miles distant - and Durrington Wells, on the next hill- where to my very great delight, there was an archaeological dig in progress and an open day, complete with recreations of what the neolithic homes being excavated might have looked like.

The best bit, though, was the look on our Kiwi companion Lara's face as the penny dropped, and history started to become about real people for the first time. In just 2 days she evolved from 'How do you know that's an arrow head and not just a piece of flaky rock' to stuff like 'do you think that pottery would be roman, because it's red' and 'so they might have used that for....'

Our next ancient stop was Avebury, on the road home. This massive stone circle, which takes a good half hour to walk around, passes through parts of Avebury village, and is completely accessible anywhere, any time. And, again, we know almost absolutely nothing about why its there. There is, however, an excellent museum that details leading theories on the matter, what we know about people from neolithic times, and a history of the archaeology of the site. And, once again, Lara went nuts trying to work out stuff.

Last but not least, on our way back to Oxford on Monday, we stopped at the Uffington Chalk Horse. I'd seen signs to it when out and about on a work trip, and Nicola wanted to see a chalk horse. Who knew that ours would turn out to be the oldest in Britain? Right here in Oxfordshire.

Lucky we didn't pick any of the other ones - a good many of them are 18th and 19th century 'follies', put in by bored aristocrats who wanted to make their mark, literally, on the landscape. This one, with its abstract design that has virtually not changed in 3000 years, is cool. Oh, and just next to it is the hill said to be where St George (who wasn't actually English, but Greek!) slew the dragon. You can see where the dragon's blood fell on the earth - nothing grows in the tearshaped spot on the hill with an unnaturally flat top.

Not a bad weekend's sightseeing - and we all felt afterwards we didn't even feel terribly rushed. Nice.