Stonehenge

We collected Jess and Sam last night from Bristol Airport, and we then all stayed in the 'The Langford at Lower Langford'.  This morning, we drove through the gently sloping hills of southern England into scenery offering more distant views.  At length, we arrived in the Salisbury Plain, and finally at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre.  

It was a freezing, cold day and we wrestled with the choice of going out immediately to the ancient site itself or exploring the Centre.  We chose the latter, since it was raining, and studied some of the information there.  Harvey enjoyed constantly pressing the button that opened and closed the exit.  While he did that, I inspected the three or four reconstructed houses depicting life in the Neolithic era.  When the weather began to look a little clearer, we boarded the shuttle bus for the six-minute ride to Stonehenge.  

It was no longer raining, but it was freezing.  Taking photos required taking off your gloves, which was too cold on the hands.  We listened to audio about the history of Stonehenge, dating back some 5,000 years, and a little about the immediate landscape.  Five thousand years ago, a circular ditch was dug.  Another 500 years would pass before the large Sarsen rocks were delivered to the site.  These stones came all the way from South Wales, specifically the Preseli Mountains in Pembrokeshire.  How exactly the big boulders were delivered remains a mystery.  An experiment was conducted some time ago, bringing a large Sarsen stone from South Wales, but it sank into the sea.

Sam and I studied the landscape around Stonehenge, which included ditches and banks, shaped by humans thousands of years ago, and barrows.  The latter were graves for people of the Neolithic.

The biting cold prevented a longer stay at Stonehenge.  We headed slowly back to Wales, heading north to the M4, and passing through three snow storms.

Our hotel at Langford

Stonehenge

All of us: the bluestones that originally were positioned around the top of the circle have mostly disappeared.

How Stonehenge looked in the past, with all the bluestones on the top.

This is the Heel Stone, whose presence in the landscape may pre-date the arrival in the area of the builders of Stonehenge.  Here, I face northeast, and behind me is Stonehenge.  The arrow behind the stone shows the direction of the rise of the sun at the time of the summer solstice.  A similar arrow is on the other side of the ancient monument for the winter solstice.