On Father’s Day our family headed out to Bath for the weekend with a stop at Stonehenge on the way, a distinctly more enjoyable destination than Baconhenge.

What first strikes you about Stonehenge is that it is in the middle of nowhere. You come over a hill and there it is, at the intersection of two highways on top of a hill.

The next thing I noticed was how cheap people were lined along the 6′ high fence and taking photos either through the fence or over the fence. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I travelled all that way to see Stonehenge, I would pay the fee to go in.

On the right of Stonehenge is the parking and this huge field full of sheep. As you can see by the above, we spent some time in the field walking around near the sheep. But, no matter how hard we tried, they would not let us pet them (smile).

The place itself is pretty amazing. Like the Pyramids, it took a huge amount of effort to get the stones in place, especially the second stage of building stones:

The second and most dramatic stage of Stonehenge started around 2150 BC. Some 82 bluestones from the Preseli mountains, in south-west Wales were transported to the site. It is thought these stones, some weighing 4 tonnes each were dragged on rollers and sledges to the headwaters on Milford Haven and then loaded onto rafts. They were carried by water along the south coast of Wales and up the rivers Avon and Frome, before being dragged overland again to near Warminster in Wiltshire. The final stage of the journey was mainly by water, down the river Wylye to Salisbury, then the Salisbury Avon to west Amesbury.

This astonishing journey covers nearly 240 miles. Once at the site, these stones were set up in the centre to form an incomplete double circle. ( During the same period the original entrance of the circular earthwork was widened and a pair of Heel Stones were erected. Also the nearer part of the Avenue was built, aligned with the midsummer sunrise.)

The use is up for debate, but obviously it has some form of religious or practical use (i.e. marking the seasons). John O’Farrell has a good summary of Stonehenge:

No one quite knows why it was built, but it seems sensible to presume that some ancient ceremony took place there every year, hopefully slightly more meaningful than today’s annual beating up of New Age travellers by the local riot police ….

We know that they followed the movement of the stars and the planets, the presumption being that they worshipped the sun, which as religions go seems a bit ‘first base’, but then it was a long time ago. It is a temple of a civilization about which we know very little and so tend to presume was very simplistic. But they must have had a fairly advanced social structure; in addition to a good number of labourers or slaves they would have needed managers, engineers, surveyors and designers. Basically they must have had a middle class. How Stonehenge managed to get planning permission with all those objections from the ‘Friends of Salisbury Plain’ is just another one of its ancient mysteries.

Each stone is slotted so that the horizontal pieces fit in ‘tongue and groove’, which is why they have stayed in place over the last 3500 years. It is also important to note that as much as another 1/3 of the rock lies in the ground as they dug them in to erect the stones and keep them standing upright. Amazing.

  

The below is a ‘pre-retaliation shot (smile).

And of course, it is always great when the sun is shining. Next, off to Bath.