Stonehenge, United Kingdom

I decided to stay on at the George for another night; it had all the right ingredients, including free wifi. Besides, I hadn’t quite finished defacing all of the copies of the menu announcing the all new “Steve James microwave lasagne”.

After tramping over Wiltshire for five days straight I thought I deserved a day of relative rest, and so I took it easy, venturing out mid-morning with my blister in-toe to Stonehenge.

The site was a good forty minute walk from Amesbury, sadly a portion of which involved following a screaming dual carriageway. The busy A303 ran ridiculously close to Stonehenge, and is yet another example of British “WTF were they thinking?” planning. If Stonehenge had been in Germany, you can bet there wouldn’t be a road in sight, but probably a highly regular, efficient and near-silent monorail system to serenely glide you into the awe-inspiring site. On time to the second, of course. The same goes for if it had been located in Japan - er, apart from the monorail would probably look like those cars you see in the Flintstones, and the drivers would probably be dressed in furs and wielding papier mache clubs - but the end effect is the same. As it was, I had to dodge thundering Sainsbury’s trucks delivering the latest batches of chicken sandwiches to get to the sacred site.

The entrance fee of £6.30 brought tears to my eyes (I’ve since found out it’s cheaper with a YHA/HI card, so flash it if you’ve got it). English Heritage must’ve read my mind, because the leaflet thrust into your hand along with your ticket was entitled: “Want to know how to get your money back?” (answer: become an English Heritage member). I smiled mirthlessly, but it reminded me that it was all for a good cause.

I picked up my “free” audio tour and took the underpass to look at the stones. And there they were. As seen on TV.

What took my interest even more than a several thousand year-old engineering masterpiece was the sight of several dozen tourists each with their audio guide handsets glued to their ears, like some huge multicultural conference call. I resisted the urge to join them, enjoying the heavy silence that a group of people listening intently can bring, taking in the stones in the beautiful morning sun with only the hum of the trunk road in the background as accompaniment.

Eventually I did succumb to the audio guide, and it was excellent stuff, even if the overall message was “er, we don’t really know anything, actually”. It did a good job of dispelling a number of myths associated with Stonehenge, one of which I found surprising: that there was no evidence linking the Druids to the site. I was also interested to learn there was once a Woodhenge as well; I had thought that was just an Eddie Izzard joke.

I was glad that I had finally made it to Stonehenge, after living so near to it for so long and never visiting, but there was a certain detachment about the whole experience, partly caused by overfamiliarity, and certainly not helped by the stones being roped off and out-of-bounds. If Stonehenge were an entertainment venue, it would be a strip club: you can look, but you can’t touch.

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