Our Big Adventure

Stonehenge

We couldn’t miss seeing this prehistoric monument and being only an hours drive away we rent a car and go for a drive. You can see Stonehenge from quite a distance, it sits on a triangle of land and is bordered by 2 major roads. Makes you wonder what the engineers were thinking when these roads were planned. You cannot go right up and touch the stones any longer, but you can still get reasonably close. The site now under the control of English Heritage does have a path that surrounds the area and a free audio tour that explains the history. Stonehenge lies in the centre of an area rich in pre-historic remains. Burial mounds are still visible to this day from the path that surrounds Stonehenge and many artefacts such as pottery, animal bones and even Roman coins have been discovered in the surrounding fields Archaeologists estimate it was first constructed in 3100 BC, although it has been reconstructed many times over in the past 5000 or so years. Evidence of burials have been happening here even long before that period. Surrounded by a bank and a ditch, it’s main entrance was carefully aligned to face the midsummer sunrise in one direction and the midwinter sunset in the opposite direction. So could Stonehenge have been built to commemorate both the Summer and Winter Solstice’s? The size and type and placement of the stones, some of them believed to been bought here from Wales about 240kms away and weighing over 40 tonnes is amazing. Even though the day we were at Stonehenge there were probably another hundred visitors there, there was a sort of eerie reverence, a quiet admiration for the ancient people that built this massive structure.

posted by Brian and Julie @ 7:30:00 AM