Stonehenge: Wiltshire's Most Famous Pile of Rocks

For many, a trip to England is not complete without seeing the ancient wonder that is Stonehenge. I, on the other hand, found myself boarding my twelfth flight to England in May 2007 without ever having been near the henge of stone. It had just never fit into previous vacations, all of which centered around visiting my British relatives. However, this trip was different. I was doing the Three Peaks Challenge (described in another journal), which started and ended in Bristol. My grandparents were picking me up there and asked me what I would like to do in the general Wiltshire region before we made it over to London to visit my aunt. Of course, Stonehenge was the first thing I thought of.

Like the nearby Avebury stone circles, Stonehenge is shrouded in mystery. It appears that the henge was a sacred site for the pagans that lived in England long before any outside invasions; in fact, a "henge" is described in my handy Stonehenge guidebook as being "a lonely and inspiring pagan temple that never occurs outside the British Isles." However, some are more inclined to believe that it was a site used for "astronomical observation rather than ceremony." But, there is still one thing that baffles nearly everyone, regardless of what side in this debate they take. That one thing is the idea of moving these stones incredible distances and erecting them on top of the hill with hardly any tools to speak of. I certainly can't imagine dragging monoliths from Wales to the Salisbury Plains!

One story I am particularly interested in--having taken two classes on the subject--comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth and his monk predecessors that first wrote down Arthurian legends. They claim that the bluestones of Stonehenge--the larger rocks later proven to be from Pembrokeshire in Wales--were brought to the Salisbury Plain from Ireland by none other than the wizard Merlin. This was done on the request of Aurelius, Arthur's uncle, who wanted a monument to honor those that had fallen in war. Others tried to move the rocks, but failed until Merlin magicked them into being light as a feather, and therefore, slightly easier to transport. This story cannot be true, as the rocks are said to have been in this location since at least 3000BC, but it still adds intrigue.

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Stonehenge is not only World Heritage-listed by UNESCO, but it is also owned by English Heritage. It is great that they take care of the site and try to preserve the henge for future generations to see, but this comes at a cost, and a rather large one at that. So, if you are planning on having an outing to Stonehenge, be ready to part with some hard-earned pounds. If you are an adult, admission will cost you a whopping £6.30 (I suppose that, compared to other sights, especially castles, this was pretty cheap. However, at the current exchange rate of to £1, it seemed like quite a lot to me!). If you are student or a senior (fortunately, both Nanna and I fit into this category), you'll have to part with £4.70. Children's tickets cost £3.20, and a family ticket costs £15.80.

It's been a long time since Stonehenge has been fully open to the public so you can wander around in amongst the stones. There is a walkway that is close-ish to the stones but still keeps you a fair distance away from them. If you are looking for that experience where you get to run up and hug the stone of your choice, or pose underneath one of the lintels, there is one day of the year that the henge is still open with no barriers. That day is the summer solstice--from the evening of June 20th to the dawn of June 21st. There are plenty of pictures to be found on the Stonehenge website of the huge throngs of people that descend on the monument and spend a long, probably rainy night there. I think it would definitely be an interesting experience, although apparently it does bring out some of the more interesting characters!

Morning is definitely the time to visit the henge. On our first visit, around lunchtime on a weekday, the carpark was absolutely chock-a-block and there were both schoolkids and tourists coming out of the place's ears. It was very hard to get a picture without at least 15 people in the background, milling around the stones. The next morning, we arrived around 9.30am, before all the tour/school buses arrived, and there was a fraction of the previous day's crowds there, giving the place a much more serene atmosphere.

Best Way To Get Around:

Of course, if you are in one of those tour groups, it is a bit hard to plan a time to avoid the crowds of...tour groups. However, if you don't have your own transport and you are interested in seeing a lot of the historical sights of Wiltshire in one day, there are quite a few tours that will probably be more convenient and cheaper than attempting to take public transportation between the rather rural sights. We saw tours that visited Avebury, Salisbury, and Winchester, to name a few, in addition to Stonehenge. Since I was not relying on tour companies, I can't say how much a day on one of these buses would cost.

Having your own car is very much the easiest way to get to Stonehenge. On our first trip there, we took the A360 from Devizes to the A344 and straight down to just before the junction with the A303. On this route, you will see the stones on a hill to your right.

On our second trip to the henge, which we detoured to from our route to Avebury, we turned west in Amesbury on the A303 and turned on the A344 to get to the car park. You'd have to be pretty blind to miss Stonehenge driving in this direction!

When driving pretty much anywhere in Wiltshire, you will notice the millions of signs stating "Tank Crossing." There is a lot of army land in this area, and while I never saw a tank charging across the road--my Poppa pointed out that they are probably all in Iraq--it's probably a good idea to not go charging around those corners and chance being flattened!

The Stonehenge website states that it is possible to get to the site by train or by bus. However, riding the train will cost about £25 and will leave you nearly 10 miles away in Salisbury. Maybe you are supposed to take a cab from there? I wouldn't fancy a 20-mile roundtrip walk myself.

The bus gets you slightly closer. If you ride National Express from Heathrow or Victoria, you can get off in Amesbury and either walk the two miles or pay a slightly smaller cab fare than you would going from Salisbury.

The morning dawned grey and chilly, a stark contrast to the wide blue skies of the day before, which I think were mainly just to mock all of us Three Peaks Challengers. We had a bit of a drive facing us as we traveled from Bristol to the heart of Wiltshire, and we hoped that the skies would possibly lighten on the way.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. The gloom held through our visit to Lacock, a National Trust village, and all the way across the Salisbury Plains to the henge. I did not realize how much of Wiltshire is actually used by the army until we went driving around the countryside. It seemed that around every corner there was a sign screaming "TANK CROSSING." We didn't see any--which I think is fortunate--although a lot of red flags were flying in the army ranges.

As we approached Stonehenge, Nanna pointed out the monoliths, somewhat visible against the pewter sky ahead. Neither Poppa nor I believed her at first, but she was right. I found it hard to disagree with her once I located the stones, since there aren't exactly many other monuments like it in the area. The rocks were literally half the size that I had imagined them to be. I admit, they were still massive rocks, but I was stunned by how much larger all of the pictures made them seem.

The other main thing that struck me immediately about Stonehenge was the sheer number of people there. It certainly rivalled many of the major attractions in London in volume of tourists per day, and English Heritage must make a total killing in the process. One side of the main parking lot was jammed full of coaches--both single- and double-decker. Most were from England, but at least a couple hailed from Germany. Poppa said, and I quite agreed with him, that "I certainly wouldn't come all the way from Germany just to see Stonehenge!" Mobs of schoolchildren filled up all of the available sidewalk space, and they conveniently decided to have some sort of pow-wow in front of the one parking spot we managed to find. Connected to the main, paved, parking lot was an overflow parking lot on the grass, which had quite a number of cars on it as well, but we just got lucky and happened to drive in just as someone departed in the warmth of their car.

Nanna and I decided to chance a trip into the Stonehenge site in the light drizzle, as the forecast had predicted worse for the afternoon. We strolled downhill to the ticket booth, where there was a surprisingly short line, and after parting with our aforementioned £4.70 each, we passed a small cafe and a bustling giftshop before stopping at a booth where they were handing out free audio tour remotes. I took one and then we continued into the pedestrian subway leading us to the henge.

Stonehenge loomed over the exit to the pedestrian subway as we re-emerged into the cold day. As we walked towards the monument, I noticed small signs on the ground inside the barriers, which made a large circle and stood several meters away from Stonehenge itself. These signs had numbers on them, which corresponded to a recording on the audio device I had been handed. When I hit "1," a soothing voice began telling me about the history of Stonehenge.

Unfortunately, the day was freezing, and even in a sweater and a raincoat, I could tell that my Nanna was very cold. For that matter, I was as well, so I didn't stop long to listen to recordings. I was barely done with recording 1 when I walked past the signs for 2 and 3, so I finally gave up, just turning the recording off altogether and claiming I would buy a guidebook at the end.

I got plenty of snaps of dark-grey on slightly-lighter-grey, which didn't do the henge a lot of justice. After standing around staring at it for fifteen minutes or so, Nanna and I decided we had had quite enough and wanted to warm up, especially since the drizzle had gotten significantly heavier, so it was back down into the subway for us.

After hanging up my audio tour device on the hangers provided at the exit, I walked into the shop, intent on getting a guidebook so I could learn of all of the ancient mysteries surrounding the henge. However, once I elbowed my way through the throngs to the guidebook wall, I found that even the smallest (and most useless-looking) guidebook was £5. There was no way I was paying more than my admission fee for a book that looked that tiny. I could have sprung for one of the novel-length books on the wall, but they cost upwards of £13. No way! It was not surprising in the least how much we were all being gouged, but I wouldn't fall for it (and I ended up getting quite a good guidebook covering both Stonehenge and Avebury in Avebury for £3.50 anyway)!

As soon as we got back in the car, it started raining hard enough to justify being called "rain," rather than "ugly drizzle," so we were happy that we got to the site when we did!

Overall, I enjoyed my trip to Stonehenge and I am very happy that I went, but the visit did leave me somewhat...underwhelmed in some ways, I guess. There were a combination of reasons for this, mainly the weather, the price gouging, and the sheer difference in my conception of what the monument would be like versus what it actually was. However, it is still very impressive and quite a testament to the ability of man to do amazing things with very little means.

Of course, just to be perverse, the weather the morning after we visited Stonehenge was perfect. The sky was brilliantly blue, striped in wispy white clouds, yet there was none of the wind they boded on the ground. Fortunately, the weather hadn't completely beaten us, as we were planning on driving very close to Stonehenge on our way to Avebury anyway. In fact, it was only a couple miles off the track, so we figured we might as well stop by.

The difference between the two days was much more than just the weather, since the crowds seemed to have evaporated along with the rain on the sidewalks! Granted, it was only about 9:30 in the morning, but still--I am not a morning person at all and after seeing that, I would willingly get there when they open at 9 to see it that quiet. It still wasn't quite the serene monument that the druids/pagans had intended it to be many years ago, given that two major roads meet at the base of the hill (which I have addressed in my "Future of Stonehenge" entry), but it was a far cry from the screaming children and loud American tourists of the day before.

Even though it was a spectacular day that promised stunning pictures, I still lacked the motivation to pay another entrance fee to get slightly closer. I will freely admit that I am a picture-aholic, but I couldn't justify spending nearly £5 on getting maybe five unique angles of the site. Instead, I did just as many of the cheap younger crowd the day before had done.

As Poppa pulled up on the A344, I quickly jumped out of the car and up to the dirt track created by the feet of penny-pinching backpackers before me. A fence kept us far away from the inner walkway, where those special people that paid got to go and I had been only the day before, and even further away from Stonehenge. Fortunately, English Heritage was not cruel enough to put up an exceptionally tall fence, and standing at 6'0, I could easily stick my hands above it and snap away to my heart's desire. And that I did, getting quite a few good shots (using zoom, of course). The clouds were still wispy and made an even better background than the plain blue sky, and the stones stood in stark contrast to it. The lawn leading up to it was lush and covered in tiny yellow flowers basking in the sun.

Had I not gone in the day before, I would have paid, gone in, and enjoyed a nice stroll on a lovely day. Standing outside looking in was certainly a great alternative though, and I would recommend it. You'll still get some great vacation snaps and you don't have to wait in any lines, except perhaps for your turn to stick your camera over the fence on busy days...just watch out for cars while you are doing it!

I am not a history scholar, nor even a history major in college, so I will not pretend to be. However, Stonehenge is a fascinating historical landmark and it deserves a section on its long history, so I will distill what I have learned from the tour and my handy Pitkin Guide to Stonehenge.

Stonehenge went through four different phases of construction. The first began in 2800 B.C., the second in 2100 B.C., the third between 2000 B.C. and 1550 B.C., and the last, which was abandoned, in 1100 B.C. This dates the henge to a time long before Merlin, who is dated, at the earliest, to around 400 B.C. Sadly, this (and the fact that the rocks have been traced to north Pembrokeshire, Wales) means that Merlin did not magick the rocks into featherweights before transporting them from Ireland. According to my guidebook, the idea that druids such as Merlin built Stonehenge was a misconception spread by a William Stukeley in the 1700s.

The first phase was not the towering monument we see today, but rather a bank inside a ditch with 56 Aubrey holes, which are "small, steep-sided, round pits dug just inside the bank." The only stone of note was the Heel Stone, which now stands precariously close to the outer fence around Stonehenge, which stood just outside the entrance. It is the "only megalith to survive outside the ditch of the henge" and the closest possible source for the sarsen stone was over twenty miles away. Apparently there was a long period of abandonment after this phase.

Phase two began a mystery that was left unsolved until very recently, in terms of the monument's lifespan. Along with some alignment and avenue changes, and the introduction of "the four Station Stones...in a huge rectangle which has an undoubted astronomical significance," the bluestones arrived at Stonehenge. For thousands of years, it baffled the human mind how these stones, placed in two large circles, could have possibly made it to the middle of the Salisbury Plain. Who put them there? Why? Where in the world did they get them from? Certainly, some of those questions are still not definitively answered, but the last has been--the stones are from a crag in the Preseli Hills of North Pembrokeshire. From there, the stones were transported an enormous distance--by both wheeling and ferrying down rivers such as the Avon--of over 200 miles to get to their current location. I cannot imagine the back-breaking effort that it took to get the stones there with only the tools of 2100 B.C. to work with. Rolling immense stones up and down hills is not my idea of fun, which just leaves me more in awe of the people that did so. It really is just amazing.

Phase three gave Stonehenge the visage that citizens of the world know best. The guidebook says it best when they say "the Sarsens--natural sandstone blocks found on the Marlborough Downs to the north of Stonehenge--were worked to a precise shape with stone hammers. The geometry of the continuous lintel is truly amazing: it is accurately circular and precisely level despite the sloping site." That last part really got me, since I had not noticed it specifically before. They managed to carve these stones to the exact sizes to make them all perfectly level. What a feat. And really, what are the chances engineers would be able to do the same today without fancy instruments and computers?

The last phase involved extending the Avenue of Stonehenge but was largely abandoned, and this time, construction never recommenced.

I find it rather interesting to note that Stonehenge could be standing in its former glory today, rather than in ruins. Many think that the damage--some of which has been reversed by re-erection of the stones, was caused by natural forces. I thought that as well, until reading an interesting aside in my guidebook. It essentially says that the stones were all originally locked together like "woodwork" and were structurally sound, like other megaliths around Britain that have stood the test of time and are still standing. A vengeful person, perhaps a Roman general with a large army at his back, could have easily wreaked havoc on the monument in an attempt to douse the paganism of Britain. I find this theory very interesting and think that, given Britain's lack of hurricanes or other extreme weather such as tornadoes, it is indeed very "viable," as the guidebook says.

So that, in a nutshell, is Stonehenge's history. I find it extremely intriguing to delve into and think that it adds much to the site as a whole. Certainly, with my initial impression, I would not have been nearly as impressed if I hadn't thought of the thousands upon thousands of hours of work people put into creating the monument. With that thought in mind, you can really think this place is no less than a true wonder.

Most people in England have heard of the proposed changes to the Stonehenge site and have an opinion one way or the other on them. As English Heritage puts it in the brochure you are handed upon arrival, it seems certain that construction is going to start as soon as possible to help make Stonehenge the serene, sacred place it was intended to be.

Plans are in place ("The Stonehenge Project"), supported by English Heritage, World Heritage, and the Highways Agency, to "conceal the A303 trunk road in a bored tunnel past the Stones and to close part of the A344 that currently runs between the Stones and the existing visitor facilities. The current car park will be grassed over and a new state-of-the-art visitor center will be built approximately 2 miles away from the monument... A land train will transport people into the archaeologically rich World Heritage Site landscape to within walking distance of the stones."

These plans do sound quite nice; Stonehenge would be returned to its solitary spot high on the Salisbury Plains with no cars whisking past it, which is how I assume the builders wanted it to be. However, there are a few objections.

My first, and totally personal, objection is the cost of this project. Even if the Highways Agency absorbs the cost for boring the tunnel, English Heritage will be able to charge more due to the higher level of facilities, and everyone will have to pay it, there being no other way to see the henge (by peeking over the fence, as I did). One can hope that the admission prices won't balloon up into the range of stately houses and castles, some of which can cost upwards of £16 to enter! I think that this is an amazing, historical site that people should be let into without breaking the bank.

The original plans for the henge involved a different form of tunnel, which I understand from the site Stonehenge at Risk would essentially be one that was bulldozed straight through the middle of a World Heritage site. The original page, which I believe was published in the early 2000s and is thus slightly out of date, still makes its point quite well. They say that "Stonehenge does not exist in isolation. It has stood in a landscape for thousands or years consisting of a wide open plain surrounded by local features including round and long barrows, trackways, field systems, and other earthworks such as the massive Cursus less than a mile to the north. The site of the tunnel and the disruption that will be required to build it, according to RESCUE, covers 20-30 hectares of landscape. This area, whether it is 13.5 hectares or 20-30 hectares, includes a number of archaeological sites."

So, the question is, which should be favored? Saving Stonehenge's landscape or the archaeological wonders underneath? I hope that both can be done to some extent, and hopefully the bored tunnel currently being proposed will have minimal impact on the rest of the site and help to recreate the past landscape around Stonehenge. I would certainly love to come back and see it in its restored glory (yes, I would even pay a bit more), but I just hope that it is not at too much cost to the surrounding Plains.