The crazy thing is that Stonehenge is just sort of sitting there, by the side of the road, in a completely normal looking field. You can almost drive right up to it, but since we are already English Heritage members and could get in for free with our membership, we did it the official way and went to the visitor center.
Once we unpacked everyone from the car, our first stop (after the bathrooms, of course) was the new visitors center. It was really well done, as Jay will remind me, as are all the English heritage sites. They had movies about how the site was built, artifacts from the excavation around Stonehenge, recreations of houses and tools and clothing, and a lot of new information for all of us. Very cool! They also had a fake stone that you could try to pull.
There are actually two types of stones in Stonehenge: smaller bluestones (2-5 tons) and larger sarsens (25-30 tons). This is a sarsen. We could not move it. Somehow, the ancient people brought these stones more than 250 km to the Stonehenge site, perhaps using logs like the model shown here to move the stones. They then shaped the stones using simple tools like hammerstones.
We decided to take the shuttle bus halfway to the site and then walk the rest of the way. Of course, immediately after we got out of the bus, Sammy declared, "I'm tired of walking." Please note that he had just sat in the car for 2 hours and then stood around in a visitors center for 30 minutes and then ridden a bus for 5 minutes. I swear, we are not abusing this kid by making him run marathons. Luckily, I discovered an amazingly effective distraction that we may have to use again. We had to walk through a cow pasture to get to the Stonehenge site. Naturally, this cow pasture was dotted with cow pies. So I told Sammy that he had to be careful where he walked so as not to step in cow poop. He loved it! All he could talk about was avoiding the cow poop. He walked the whole way without complaining, and once we left the cow pasture, he found that stepping in mud (as long as it was confirmed by an adult to actually be mud) was equally fun. He got his wellies nice and muddy! No complaining from him at all!
As we walked through the cow pasture, we came upon some barrows. These are burial grounds from the people who used Stonehenge. They dot the surrounding landscape, in this case in the middle of the pasture, in other cases in someone's backyard.
After this peaceful walk, we arrived at the Stonehenge site which was a little more crowded. It wasn't a particularly warm day, but it wasn't windy and the sun was breaking through the clouds. This made the visit chilly but bearable, and more importantly, it made for beautiful pictures.
Lanna was mostly stuck in the Baby Bjorn due to excessive muddiness, but that always makes for cute selfies. Jay's beard was really coming into its own, making him look almost prehistoric himself!
We even got a kind stranger to take a family picture. Note that she offered to do this as her own toddler was falling in the mud off to the side. Sammy doesn't look great here, but it's the best we could do.
The first stone you see up close as you get to the site is the heel stone. This is an unshaped sarsen, the largest on the site. When you see this, you realize how much work they did to shape the other stones and it makes the whole thing seem even more impressive. The heel stone looks a bit like a turtle head sticking out of the ground, but we missed the opportunity to have Sammy make a turtle face for the camera.
As you walk around, you move closer to the stone circle and learn more about the site from the audio guide. There is actually a circular earthwork enclosure (aka a ditch) that surrounds the stone circle and was built around 3000 BC, as well as an entrance avenue and 56 pits (aka Aubrey holes). These are hard to see from ground level but quite visible from aerial photographs (see the English Heritage site link at the end). The two concentric stone circles were erected around 2500 BC. The vertical stones are actually set in holes in the ground. They were then likely pulled upright using a timber A-frame structure and fiber ropes. They then used wooden platforms to raise the horizontal lintels to the tops of two vertical stones to form each trilithon. The most amazing part to me was they shapes the vertical stones and lintels using a tenon on the vertical stone and a mortice hole on the lintel, plus the two adjacent lintels were attached to each other by a shaped groove and tongue. I learned how to do this with my dad using wood. It is incredible that they did this shaping in stone. These were some impressive engineers!
In these pictures, you can clearly see the tenon sticking up from one of the vertical stones.
You can't walk into the stone circle these days, which maybe takes away from the experience somewhat. But a lot of damage has been done to the site over the years from all sorts of people from visitors to archaeologists. Stonehenge also seems smaller than you expect as you come up to it. Not as small as in this video (credit to Jay), which looks like Pi, but small.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyh1Va_mYWI
Yet while you are there, you are struck by the peaceful nature of the site and the enormous historical significance. It's awe-inspiring. These sheep, grazing right next door, seem over it though.
We took the bus back to the visitors center and enjoyed some lunch and hot drinks. We almost lost Sammy, as he attempted to follow Jay instead of staying with me but Jay didn't realize he was following him and blah blah blah. Luckily I managed to rescue Sammy slightly after his panic started but before any well-meaning stranger intervened. Nothing a little hot chocolate couldn't fix. Jay particularly loved the Stonehenge sugar.
It was a great day. It was nice to check Stonehenge off our England to-do list, but more so, it was just amazing to be there. How did I remember all of these things about Stonehenge, you ask? I didn't. I cheated. Here is the English Heritage website where you can read even more amazing Stonehenge facts and see those aerial photographs.
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/
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