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Stonehenge is on Salisbury Plain about 2 miles west of Amesbury near the junction of the A344 and A303. You can’t miss it. There is a large carpark and admission is now £4.20. I was last here as a child years ago and remember having a picnic on the stones, now it is all fenced in and even on a freezing cold day in December there were two coaches. It is an impressive site but the road noise can be overpowering and what with the channelling of visitors the quieter moments are not really enhanced. We found that arriving early the next morning the site was virtually deserted so try to beat the coach tours for some peace. The gates are locked at 4.00pm (winter) so hopes of a peaceful evening faded away with this noticeboard.
The first view of Stonehenge you see after coming out of the tunnel |
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There are carvings on some of the stones but you can’t get near them to see nor is there any information available as the visitor centre is only a souvenir shop. We thawed out looking around this shop hoping to find useful information but only saw cardboard kits with which you can “build your very own Stonehenge and create a summer solstice”. They also sell particularly dreadful Stonehenges in plastic bubbles that you shake to make it snow!
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Cursus
Barrows Just to the NW of the carpark you can walk over a field to the barrows on the skyline in front of the cursus, a mile long Neolithic earthwork.
These are bell barrows and their shape is clearly defined. For some reason these monuments are also fenced off with barbed wire. We missed the sunrise the next morning as our van had frozen overnight – even the gas cylinder froze – and it took some time to get started. However Stonehenge didn’t “open” until 9.00am about when we got there for a quieter and sunnier visit. For an anticlockwise tour of the site and pictures of Woodhenge click on the links below |
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Dec 01 |
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