Our appointment at Aston Martin wasn't till 2 in the afternoon so we decided to try and do some more touristy stuff. We looked on the map and Stonehenge (It's henge, not hedge, Although there are a lot of very thick hedges in England, there are no stone hedges) looked to be only a couple of inches away. Looked like about 50 miles. Ha! We should have known better. No straight roads in England. It was close to 100 miles. 100 miles of twisty road with lots-o-roundabouts, but we were still OK for time, tight but OK. Stonehenge is out in the middle of nowhere. It's off a main "M" road, but there is nothing else around it for miles. In America, you would have all sorts of junky touristy stuff sprouted out all over the place. Signs would try and lure you into the Stonehenge enchanted castle. Or the Stonehenge miniature golf. Or Stonehenge T-shirt factory outlet. But this was very nice. Paved parking lot on one side of the road. Walk through the tunnel under the M and get in the short line for tickets. Big open fields of grass with some big ol' rocks sitting in the middle. How's that for a description - big ol' rocks!. Wow, you feel like you're there!
You pay your fee and you grab what looks like walkie talkies, but are actually tape recorders on a stick. They have them marked for several different languages, and what you do is when you come up to a marker like the first one that's marked "A", you punch A on the keyboard of you tape recorder on a stick, put the recorder up to your ear and listen to the electronic tour guide. As he gives you the background on Stonehenge, you move to marker B and press B. Lot of neat theories about the significance of the rocks, where they came from, who put them there, how they moved them. All sorts of information. I personally think it was just space aliens playing dominos a few thousand years ago...
We did see a couple of weirdos walking around. This one woman had on a long purple and black robe and walking around bare footed. She was probably trying to feel the Cosmic energy with her toes!
There was a little Stonehenge gift shop and bakery, so we grabbed some Stonehenge refrigerator magnets and some Stonehenge megalite scones and hit the road. The megalite scones were actually very tasty. I probably don't want to know what they are made of.
We (Rich the driver) really had to hustle to get back in time for our appointment at Aston Martin. We made it with a whole 3 minutes to spare. This was to be the most "In depth" tour of our trip. It was also the only tour that we had to pay for. Hey, what's £10 when you've gone this far. The tour guide was an elderly gentleman named Roger. He had retired from Aston Martin some time ago and now did tours. He was very passionate about Aston Martin cars. "They are the best you know" he would say. A lot of hard, manual labor goes into every Aston Martin. One guy assembles the engines. One guy grinds the flashing off the aluminum block and heads with a die grinder. One guy runs the big automatic milling machine that takes a roughly formed hunk of aluminum and makes beautiful heads out of them. 110 fixtures is what we were told is handled by the one machine. Mostly middle-aged craftsmen working on these beauties. The craftsman were all very proud of their work. They were not afraid to stop what they were doing to talk to us. After all, if you are proud of your work, you want to show it off so more people will buy it.
As we approached the body panel section, you could hear the tap-tap-tapping of the body hammers tapping the aluminum into the exquisite shapes of fenders and other bits. As we neared, I detected someone tapping out "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" on his fender. Did we really look like Americans with all the Lotus shirts and hats we had on?
The square tube frame chassis was all welded by hand. No robots in this process. Very intricate. Lots of tubes to make the big car stable and squeak-less when you put the car through its paces.
We went through the hide section and Roger showed us some Pink cow hide. He said that times are hard and if someone is willing to pay for Pink, they get Pink. Aston produces only a couple hundred cars a year, so they could be very customized if requested.
Over in the back was where the restorations of old Astons took place. Roger explained the difference between a "restoration" and a "resurrection" The former is a lot of work, the latter is an incredible amount of work. Usually, these cars are being rebuilt because someone loves that particular car. In many cases, the cost for the rebuild does not justify the cost financially. But if a very, very rich person had some fond memories of the back seat of a particular car .... money is no object.
One of the cars being restored was just like the original James Bond car. Looked like it been driven hard and put in a wet garage to rot for a while. I'm sure it will be perfect when the craftsmen are done with it.
We all paid Roger for the fine tour and he gave us all little Aston Martin pins. Looked like the wings airplane pilot used to hand out to kids back in the 60's.
We headed back out to the Great Malvern. Rich had arranged this stop at a real Bed & Breakfast. Big old mansion built in 1825, converted over to about a 10 room B&B. Nice little town the Great Malvem. Lots of shops. Very scenic hillside. Our room looked out over the countryside. No shower, but the big old tub worked just fine. The tiny TV only had 3 channels. The best on was "Whose line is it anyway?", something we watch across the pond.
We all settled in for a good sleep. All of us except Jim whose wife called and woke up the owner so she could talk to Jim at 4 am, Only problem was that the B&B owner didn't know which room Jim was in. She had to knock on the doors and wake up several people until she found Jim. I guess they talked on the phone for hours. Wouldn't want to pay that phone bill!
