Unhinged at Stonehenge

The Stones

Our cruise ended in Southampton early in the morning, so my inner tourist ramped into overdrive at the thought of what we could squeeze into the day ahead.  Thanks to Captain Ulrich's daily time changes, we had transitioned from America to England with no jet lag. With only 34 miles between the port and Stonehenge, I simply couldn't resist the chance to join the pilgrimage made by 800,000 annual visitors to one of the UK's most iconic sites.  It seemed a fitting way to return to my country of birth and crank a little ancient British history into the kids' brains.  

"England's green and pleasant land" 

William Blake

After 14 days of blue ocean vistas, the brilliant green of the English countryside, bathed in sunshine, was a welcoming sight.  We wound ever deeper into the New Forest National Park.  The name is misleading considering the forest is actually quite old. After conquering England in 1066, William I evicted the peasants from the farmsteads in the area and designated the woodland for royal hunting.  

New Forest Cottages

The commoners have made a comeback over the last few centuries and the real estate is both cute and coveted.  You're never quite sure who you might see talking a stroll alongside the farmers' fields, both Madonna and Sting have homes here.

"There'll always be an England While there's a country lane, Wherever there's a cottage small Beside a field of grain." 

Ross and Charles

But it's the New Forest ponies that are the real locals in the area, as one of the indigenous horse breeds of the British Isles, thousands run loose in the park.  

We, of course, only found the ones blocking the road and ended up in a traffic jam with a few of their long eared cousins. Although we were pretty sure that the next animals we spied were completely introduced. 

" I heard someone say that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven.  I decided to sculpt camels in a needle." 

Willard Wigan

Lady Chichester's camel, Therese, enjoys the run of the large estate except when she makes her annual appearance in the local nativity play alongside the donkey.  Luckily, we had our own wise man, Chris, to guide us in the direction of Stonehenge.  Only we were channelling a very different divinity using copper rods.  

"The Avenue" near Stonehenge.

We were all a little suspicious of dowsing, which finds the location of 'ley' or energy lines crisscrossing the planet.  Perhaps neolithic man was much more in tune with the mystical power of the universe and sited their ceremonial and ritualistic sites along these energy lines. 

“You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe”

 Dr. Carl Sagan

It was difficult to understand why the copper rods crossed when we walked across the Avenue, which was the ancient ceremonial pathway from the river to Stonehenge. The kids changed from doubtful sideways glances to fighting over taking their turn. I was starting to remember the questions I had mulled over last time I had visited this area 25 years earlier.  Building of the  Stones began over 5000 years ago and many theories abound about this prehistoric monument and the people that built it.  A visit to Stonehenge always creates more questions than answers.  Enough with the theorizing, my inner tourist needed some photos.  We eagerly joined the long line of cars winding their way towards the site. 

"Upon the fields of barley...As we walk in fields of gold" 

Sting

With cosmic contradiction, the Stones had stayed the same for millennium yet the original visitor centre from the 1960's had been torn down.  The new reception building had been sited several miles from the site so we would need to pay to ride in a tourist train.

Of course, to board the landrover pulled wheelie carriage I needed a ticket.  To buy the ticket I had to join a line, a long line.  Its always hard to convince the kids that they aren't hungry when lurking next to an overpriced cafe.  I tried to distract them and utilize our wait time by taking turns to visit the bathroom, where we encountered yet another long line.  I began to ponder the merits of evolution and the planning consideration of ladies toilets by male architects.  Luckily, a stall came free before I squatted down Neolithic style in the potted plants.

Almost unhinged by the commercialization of it all, I tried to tune into the information echoing out of my 'press 1 for English' tour guide headset.  Crawling slowly along the public road which was closed off to anyone without a ticket, I saw hikers walking on the public bridleway just the other side of the barbed wire fence.  They were making their way to Stonehenge without a ticket, without a map and without a crackling headset.  Was the wire keeping me in or them out?

Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK

The wire got me thinking about the all the different groups that have become involved in the modern day melee over protection and access.  Over the last several centuries, archeological digs and restoration projects have excavated and unearthed some of the secrets of Stonehenge.  Some of the blue stones may have come as far away as Wales many miles away.  One idea suggests Durrington Walls may have been the centre for the living, with the River Avon connecting  it to Stonehenge - the centre for the dead. 

Stonehenge is indeed the centre of a concentrated network of burial mounds.  The disinterment of these graves have helped unshroud the mystery of Neolithic and Iron Age humans.  I was starting to grasp the Druid reverence of nature and ancestors.  

"it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it."

Ronald Hutton

As I approached the stones, I pushed back the headset and allowed the silent shadows of the past to haunt my ears.  I was walking the path of my forefathers, although my own DNA probably holds an ancestral story of a few thousand years of invasion from all manner of Europeans.

And now here I was surrounded by the full spectrum of humanity, tourists from all four corners of the world lined up to take photos and document their own private pilgrimages. The stones had witnessed eons of visitors just as they had seen the passage of time wrinkle its way onto my face.  The voices of the present pulled me from my contemplation, the kids were ready to move on.   

There was just time to listen to the headset explanation of the heel stone.  Standing in the circle, at sunrise, on the summer solstice the sun rises exactly over the heel stone.  A celestial calendar still drawing the faithful every 21st of June, the longest day of the year.  But today was just another day for the tourist mecca and the only souls allowed in the centre were the crows.  They perched high on the plinths ready to swoop down on any loose tourist crumbs.  Just like my last visit I left with a sense of awed wonderment at the tenacity of man and how the enigma of Stonehenge continues to pull us back along the path of our mortality.