9 February 2016 –
This morning we're picking up a rental car from a nearby Hertz rental place and making our way over to Cardiff (details on the reason for going to Cardiff will be given out tomorrow).
You know what's located between London and Cardiff??? Okay, so a lot of towns …Oxford….Bath….Cotswolds…but do you know what else???
Stonehenge!
We're off in our car. It's an Audi station wagon. So nice to be able go for a drive ….ON OUR OWN!
See that? Do you see that???
We're at Stonehenge! So the website for Stonehenge made it sound like we needed to pre-book tickets for a particular time slot and that we may or may not get to see this site without those tickets.
No need to worry! We're here and there's no worry about getting to see Stonehenge.
We're waiting for the shuttle bus from the visitor center. The visitor center also contains a museum which delves into Stonehenge's history and the history of the surrounding area. It's all very interesting but we're really anxious to see the actual stones than standing around reading about them in this museum. Although, there is a lot of excellent information presented here. Stonehenge isn't just about the stone circle- although it is the most striking and alluring feature. The ruins date back to 3000 BC!!! The sarsen stone circle and bluestones were added at a much later date – between 2500 to 2200BC. The sarsen stones are the most visible stones - they're the large upright stones you first notice upon arriving at Stonehenge. These stones are quite heavy and it's thought that they were dragged to this location from their source via a wooden sledge and a huge team of people.
Stepping outside the museum now so that we can catch a ride on the shuttle bus that will take us out to finally see Stonehenge. While we're waiting for the next bus why don't we check out this hands-on exhibit. It's a GIGANTIC stone on logs. While the logs are fixed to the ground the exhibit is meant to test your strength…. could you pull a gigantic and heavy stone?
Ava has first shot at trying to make this gigantic stone budge:
No.
Annika gives it her best shot:
She makes it budge a tiny bit.
Mark actually makes it budge (via the lights):
On the shuttle bus…we're ready to see this!
We're here! This is Stonehenge! We've got blue skies (with some clouds) but it is windy and cold here. We'd better make this a quick trip as none of us are dressed for this cold.
On first examination it just seems slightly eerie and strange that this stone circle is out in the middle of a gigantic expanse of relatively flat, open fields.
That was Stonehenge! The odd thing- now that I'm sitting in my comfy chair back in China – is that you can't walk 360 degrees around this site. I wonder why they don't have a full loop/circle to walk around the site. I don't get it. This may or may not be obvious to you but you can't get close to it either. Many, many years ago Mark visited Stonehenge (about 30 years ago) and he was allowed to walk up and touch the stones. However when I visited 22 years ago I was not only not allowed to touch the stones I think that our viewing distance was further away than the current path (could be wrong as memories are fallible).
Regardless, this is a mystical place….it's all you can do to just take it all in and enjoy the miles and miles of farmland surrounding the site.
Sadly, due to the cold…we're abandoning our position and heading back to the visitor's center. It's been fun, though!!!
There are still a few unanswered questions regarding the ruins at Stonehenge…the biggest mystery of all is why was it built? Why do you think it was built??