The Very Oldest of Hiking Trails
One of the many privileges of living in England is the massive amount of cultural history that is present here. From Roman conquests, to Celtic conquests, to French conquests, to Viking conquests to Anglo Saxon conquests, pretty much every great civilisation of Europe's past has left its mark on this little island. War has been a national occupation from time immemorial. Some we won, some we lost. All; we did learn from. However, with so much history on this little green island it's easy to forget about our prehistory.
Long before Julius Caesar came, and saw and conquered there were people here. People, that as we are now learning, had a rich culture all of their own. They shared our fascination for astronomy and construction. They met at certain days and nights of the year and shared feasts. They farmed and maintained animals. In many meaningful ways they were just like us, and they walked the same ground as us 10,000 years before we were ever born.
Such a culture is certainly one worth learning about, and was surely worth a visit to the site of one of its greatests monuments. A monument that has stood for over 40 centuries, and today we call Stonehenge.
The Stonehenge site, as some may already know, consists of a group of neolithic structures. Henge is a word for any form of neolithic earthworks, but are usually taken to be circular in structure. Neolithic is the name given to the era, as lithic means to do with stone, and neo means new. Hence, Neolithic era can be taken to mean "the new stone age". This is a period in time between the stone age and when human beings learned to make tools from metal. It marks a pivotal point in our history as a species, as it happens to be when we first developed agriculture. This seemingly small advance in knowledge had the effect of taking mankind from being a simple apex predator to being a creature capable of reshaping the earth itself. Not that we've always done a good job of it. How and why agriculture meant so much is simple. It meant that for the first time human beings didn't have to spend every waking moment in the pursuit of food. It meant that we were able to afford ourselves the security of a food supply. This in turn meant for the first time we could turn our minds to things other than hunting and gathering.
Hunting had done a lot for the human mind. To be a be a successful hunter means to have mastered the skills of tracking, anticipation, reason and cunning. Hunting requires imagination. It requires the hunter to think as the quarry may, and understand it's own self preservation instinct. Such mental tools were set free in the pursuit of greater knowledge and art for the first time during the Neolithic Era. Stonehenge represents one of the earliest known expressions of this new luxury.
So what better way to explore this place than to take the very journey the ancient travellers did. To walk from Woodhenge to Stonehenge. At this point it's worth noting that there is no really clear indication if Neolithic man walked from Woodhenge to Stonehenge or made the reverse journey. Though the course of the River Avon at the time of the sites construction would have taken it right past Woodhenge. At this stage, one guess is as good as the other. However, there is free parking at Woodhenge, and so that would be the path of our pilgrimage.
The journey down the road to Stonehenge was a tricky one. Chatter and debate led to us missing our exit and we added an extra thirty miles to our route when all was said and done. This proved to be a blessing though, and we eventually arrived via a route which virtually eliminated any traffic and took us directly to the free parking facilities at Woodhenge. For those not resident in the UK this may seem unremarkable, but you should know that the idea of not being charged for the right to park your vehicle on a public road is an increasingly rare one. I did in fact discuss this with my friends and needed to be reassured that parking was indeed free, and that I wouldn't be towed!
The view across the Wiltshire countryside was gorgeous in every direction. It seemed the perfect place to spend the afternoon with a few beers and good company. A tour group had just arrived aboard a coach and was being given a history lesson on the site by the tourguide. We listened in as best we could. It seems the Woodhenge site was only discovered in 1925 after examination of an aerial photograph. The site was, as the name suggests, originally a timber circle. However, the original wooden posts having long rotten away and are now replaced with concrete cylinders marking their original positions.
The journey down the road to Stonehenge was a tricky one. Chatter and debate led to us missing our exit and we added an extra thirty miles to our route when all was said and done. This proved to be a blessing though, and we eventually arrived via a route which virtually eliminated any traffic and took us directly to the free parking facilities at Woodhenge. For those not resident in the UK this may seem unremarkable, but you should know that the idea of not being charged for the right to park your vehicle on a public road is an increasingly rare one. I did in fact discuss this with my friends and needed to be reassured that parking was indeed free, and that I wouldn't be towed!
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| View from the Parking Spot |
The view across the Wiltshire countryside was gorgeous in every direction. It seemed the perfect place to spend the afternoon with a few beers and good company. A tour group had just arrived aboard a coach and was being given a history lesson on the site by the tourguide. We listened in as best we could. It seems the Woodhenge site was only discovered in 1925 after examination of an aerial photograph. The site was, as the name suggests, originally a timber circle. However, the original wooden posts having long rotten away and are now replaced with concrete cylinders marking their original positions.
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| Woodhenge |
The concrete posts just mark positions, and are not representative of the height of the original timbers, nor any structural details that may have existed above ground level. All we know today as that there were posts in the ground at these locations.
Today the Stonehenge complex is understood to comprise many henges, hills and pathways. Possibly all related to one another. Of note is the fact that evidence of butchered pigs and feasting have been found only at Woodhenge. Stonehenge...well, it's set aside from other parts of the complex by being a damn big pile of rocks. As a result, Stonehenge and Woodhenge are thought to be the two capital locations within this complex. With Woodhenge thought to relate to the world of the living, and Stonehenge the world of the dead. So putting the pieces together we imagined that the ancient travellers would come in on the River Avon to Woodhenge, feast and generally have a good time, and then make their way to Stonehenge to pay their respects to the dead. It seemed logical, as it's the kind of thing we might do today. Of course, that doesn't mean that our assumption was correct.
The next step was to make our way to Stonehenge, already established in our minds as the "main event" of the trip. This assumption certainly was not correct. After much debating and pointing and arguing over "is that it over there?" we decided to look at the signposts and begin walking along a well trodden path towards the stone monuments.
Making our way down the path we had plenty of time to engage in discussion as to what we were doing and seeing. What was Stonehenge after all? What was Woodhenge? Sure, they are sites, but what's the explanation for their design, choice of materials, location? We had no answers, but luckily network reception was strong and clear, and so we consulted the internet. Stonehenge, as we already knew, was thought to be a type of calendar. It's stones aligning to the position of the sun, moon and stars at various times of the year. What we didn't know was that there seems to be little consensus about anything else about the site. Even down to the manner in which it was constructed.
As engineers ourselves, John and I agreed that moving large objects, despite looking impressive, is rarely complicated. With a committed team of people at the ready, almost anything can be moved into almost any position. More often than not it's the degree of planning and organisation required that are the real challenges. Then, there was our first piece of true information about this site. We knew that it must have been built by thinking people. People who imagined, designed, organised and executed a plan to put this thing together. A society had existed here that was capable of committing its resources to such a project. It must have meant a lot of people coming together, and this in itself is remarkable. In a world where there was little need to travel more than a few miles from your home, here people had travelled over 200 miles to recover stones. Strangers had met and come together for this accomplishment, and for thousands of years hence strangers would continue to come together to enjoy it. This then was a monument of unification. The first notion of identity for a place we today called England.
Today the Stonehenge complex is understood to comprise many henges, hills and pathways. Possibly all related to one another. Of note is the fact that evidence of butchered pigs and feasting have been found only at Woodhenge. Stonehenge...well, it's set aside from other parts of the complex by being a damn big pile of rocks. As a result, Stonehenge and Woodhenge are thought to be the two capital locations within this complex. With Woodhenge thought to relate to the world of the living, and Stonehenge the world of the dead. So putting the pieces together we imagined that the ancient travellers would come in on the River Avon to Woodhenge, feast and generally have a good time, and then make their way to Stonehenge to pay their respects to the dead. It seemed logical, as it's the kind of thing we might do today. Of course, that doesn't mean that our assumption was correct.
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| "Is that it over there?"....(No) |
Making our way down the path we had plenty of time to engage in discussion as to what we were doing and seeing. What was Stonehenge after all? What was Woodhenge? Sure, they are sites, but what's the explanation for their design, choice of materials, location? We had no answers, but luckily network reception was strong and clear, and so we consulted the internet. Stonehenge, as we already knew, was thought to be a type of calendar. It's stones aligning to the position of the sun, moon and stars at various times of the year. What we didn't know was that there seems to be little consensus about anything else about the site. Even down to the manner in which it was constructed.
As engineers ourselves, John and I agreed that moving large objects, despite looking impressive, is rarely complicated. With a committed team of people at the ready, almost anything can be moved into almost any position. More often than not it's the degree of planning and organisation required that are the real challenges. Then, there was our first piece of true information about this site. We knew that it must have been built by thinking people. People who imagined, designed, organised and executed a plan to put this thing together. A society had existed here that was capable of committing its resources to such a project. It must have meant a lot of people coming together, and this in itself is remarkable. In a world where there was little need to travel more than a few miles from your home, here people had travelled over 200 miles to recover stones. Strangers had met and come together for this accomplishment, and for thousands of years hence strangers would continue to come together to enjoy it. This then was a monument of unification. The first notion of identity for a place we today called England.
The path wound its way around the borders of fields and behind hills and we walked on. For the most part, at this stage, our view was obstructed by hedges. Occasionally there would be a gap and a steep mound about 3m or so in height. Climbing up to the top offered some degree of visibility of the surrounding area, but not enough to see Stonehenge. We couldn't tell if these mounds were ancient or recent. The walkway made its way past people's homes, a military test site and a small horse pasture. All of which got some of our time and attention, but all the time we did wonder if we were on the right path.
Finally the walkway opened up and cleared. There were two fairly obvious paths ahead of us. One was a huge clearway in the grass. It was filled with buttercups, and seemed to lead away from where we were going. The other was a winding route towards Stonehenge, which we could now finally see. An earlier examination of a tourist map had shown that the large clearway was indeed an ancient structure called The Cursus. It seemed that the way to Stonehenge was not so ceremoniously marked, and so we did a bit of quick research to determine where this pathway was leading. Indeed, there was far more to the site than we had realised. An explanation is best accomplished with the aid of a map...
Click on the picture to see it enlarged.
Now it seems that there is another ancient site north of Woodhenge called Durrington Walls, which was once the site of a settlement, and now remains as a circular earth bank where the outer wall of the settlement once stood. I had in fact inadvertently photographed this bank when I was using my camera's long lens to look around the surrounding area. Here it is below, in a not so clear photograph.
Furthermore The Cursus continues on towards the site of some excavation works which seem to be uncovering a treasure trove of prehistoric structures and sites. However, our main concern was Stonehenge, and we agreed to make for the stone site first, and then decide what to explore next once we had got there. So, on we went.
The path taken was as direct a one as possible. This led us through a cow pasture and onto a long sweeping hillside. The view was incredible, and when we finally reached the long shallow apex of the pasture we were greeted by this sight.
After much photographing and chit chat we walked on slowly up the long slope up to Stonehenge. There were tourist boards placed here and there along the route. One is visible in the photograph above just over John's right shoulder (John is the one on the left). These gave some site information and basically reassured us that we were on the right path and not accidently trespassing on someone's property.
As Stonehenge became larger and closer in our field of view, one thing began to become obvious. There was a huge crowd of people queuing up to approach the stones. The site seemed rather crowded. As we edged closer yet we could see a good few of the people looking back at ourselves, with some pointing and discussion which we were no doubt the subject of. We didn't really know what to make of this at that moment in time. The series of tourist information signs along our path seemed to make it clear that we were on the right path and had every right to be there. So we marched forward hoping to unravel the mystery when we got to the site. Then, closer still, it began to become very obvious that the looks we were getting were pretty nasty ones. It seems a little odd at the time, but it would soon become very clear what was going on.
After an hour of so of hiking, we got to a wire fence, about 20m from the stones. I took this picture just as we got to that point, as it was the closest we had been to the monument thus far. In fact, it was the closest we would get at any point it turned out.
As you can see from the above photo, the tourists visiting the site were on another path, about 4m closer to the stones than ourselves. This path met the edge of the wire fence that was in front of us about 100m to our left, and we began to walk in that direction, the entire time very aware of the dirty looks we were getting. At the end of the fence we opened a small gate and made our way through. The site looked much more industrial now, and there was modern crushed gravel on the floor, a few pieces of heavy excavating equipment, some plastic barriers and a whole load of people rushing about. In all, looked a lot like a kerbside in a busy urban area. There was a man wearing a badge just a few feet away and we approached to ask which way the path into the site was. He advised it was right ahead, but we needed a ticket. The ticket could be bought from the visitors center behind us, and would cost £14.50 each and another £2 each for an audio guide. Additionally, the site would close in 45 minutes. Rather confused, we glanced at each other for a moment and I asked the gentlemen what he meant by "closed". Surely we were in the middle of the countryside. Where is the door that would be closed to deny us entry? He advised that the path to the site, the path visible in the photograph above, would be closed. So I asked, just to confirm, that he indeed meant the path that we had walked a mere 4m from for free just as we had arrived. Indeed, the very same path was the one he meant.
It seemed that the unhappy looks we had been getting were from the unsuspecting tourists, who only then realised that they needn't have paid to get a look at these ancient stones. Stones which resided in the middle of open countryside. I looked about the place from our current vantage point and all of a sudden began to see it in a different light. Between the costs of getting there, parking, entry and the generally unpleasant look of the place, this must be a rather underwhelming conclusion to a day out.
After all, what exactly were they paying for? They were not able to get much closer to the stones than we had, and they certainly were not permitted to touch them. We had spent an afternoon walking in glorious sunshine through the absolutely gorgeous Amesbury countryside, enjoyed some amazing views and a lovely hike, and it hadn't cost a penny aside from travel. Now I appreciate the need for generating revenue for the archaeological work being done here. I also fully agree with the importance of this work. However, the looks on people's faces put things into perspective. They did not look like people that were enjoying a day out. They looked like people that had been absolutely sodomised, and were now staring at some rocks wondering when they should just cut their losses and leave.
Stonehenge dates back to a time before all current national borders. It represents something from the history of not just England, but all mankind. It's a place where our modern day civilisation saw one of its earliest glimpses of daylight. All across the country, works of commercial art and the spoils of war are proudly displayed for free in magnificent galleries and museums. Here, in the middle of a field in Wiltshire, people are expected to pay to cross an imaginary line and get "slightly closer" to a monument. A monument that stood a thousand years before there was a city named Rome. It just doesn't seem right. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the area, but without entering the pay zone. There were many more things to see, but the general feeling that we were being prayed upon for cash lingered a little too closely. In the end it seemed much more enjoyable to walk back to the car and enjoy some more of the beautiful scenery surrounding us.
We shall return next summer and have a better look at the place, and get there nice and early to ensure that the ticket offers maximum value for money. However, until then, this was the end of our journey to Stonehenge.
A two hour drive back home saw us discussing the state of the cultural heritage of our country. Which parts were celebrated, which parts ignored, which parts saved and which parts left to be forgotten. It was an interesting idea, that here so long after it's construction, people still gathered at Stonehenge and reflected upon and discussed the ties that bind us together. In the end, I suppose this is the very reason it was built, and the greatest testament to it's builders.
I leave this post with a few shots of the scenery!
Finally the walkway opened up and cleared. There were two fairly obvious paths ahead of us. One was a huge clearway in the grass. It was filled with buttercups, and seemed to lead away from where we were going. The other was a winding route towards Stonehenge, which we could now finally see. An earlier examination of a tourist map had shown that the large clearway was indeed an ancient structure called The Cursus. It seemed that the way to Stonehenge was not so ceremoniously marked, and so we did a bit of quick research to determine where this pathway was leading. Indeed, there was far more to the site than we had realised. An explanation is best accomplished with the aid of a map...
Click on the picture to see it enlarged.
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| Our walking path (red), The Curses (boundaries marked in green), Stonehenge Visitor's Parking (purple circle - more on that later) |
Now it seems that there is another ancient site north of Woodhenge called Durrington Walls, which was once the site of a settlement, and now remains as a circular earth bank where the outer wall of the settlement once stood. I had in fact inadvertently photographed this bank when I was using my camera's long lens to look around the surrounding area. Here it is below, in a not so clear photograph.
 |
| Durrington Walls is the long earth bank that can be seen sweeping in from the left of the frame across the image. It sits just below the horizon line. |
The path taken was as direct a one as possible. This led us through a cow pasture and onto a long sweeping hillside. The view was incredible, and when we finally reached the long shallow apex of the pasture we were greeted by this sight.
 |
| Stonehenge Ahead |
As Stonehenge became larger and closer in our field of view, one thing began to become obvious. There was a huge crowd of people queuing up to approach the stones. The site seemed rather crowded. As we edged closer yet we could see a good few of the people looking back at ourselves, with some pointing and discussion which we were no doubt the subject of. We didn't really know what to make of this at that moment in time. The series of tourist information signs along our path seemed to make it clear that we were on the right path and had every right to be there. So we marched forward hoping to unravel the mystery when we got to the site. Then, closer still, it began to become very obvious that the looks we were getting were pretty nasty ones. It seems a little odd at the time, but it would soon become very clear what was going on.
After an hour of so of hiking, we got to a wire fence, about 20m from the stones. I took this picture just as we got to that point, as it was the closest we had been to the monument thus far. In fact, it was the closest we would get at any point it turned out.
 |
| Stonehenge "Up Close" |
It seemed that the unhappy looks we had been getting were from the unsuspecting tourists, who only then realised that they needn't have paid to get a look at these ancient stones. Stones which resided in the middle of open countryside. I looked about the place from our current vantage point and all of a sudden began to see it in a different light. Between the costs of getting there, parking, entry and the generally unpleasant look of the place, this must be a rather underwhelming conclusion to a day out.
 |
| Stonehenge from a a less pleasant aspect |
After all, what exactly were they paying for? They were not able to get much closer to the stones than we had, and they certainly were not permitted to touch them. We had spent an afternoon walking in glorious sunshine through the absolutely gorgeous Amesbury countryside, enjoyed some amazing views and a lovely hike, and it hadn't cost a penny aside from travel. Now I appreciate the need for generating revenue for the archaeological work being done here. I also fully agree with the importance of this work. However, the looks on people's faces put things into perspective. They did not look like people that were enjoying a day out. They looked like people that had been absolutely sodomised, and were now staring at some rocks wondering when they should just cut their losses and leave.
Stonehenge dates back to a time before all current national borders. It represents something from the history of not just England, but all mankind. It's a place where our modern day civilisation saw one of its earliest glimpses of daylight. All across the country, works of commercial art and the spoils of war are proudly displayed for free in magnificent galleries and museums. Here, in the middle of a field in Wiltshire, people are expected to pay to cross an imaginary line and get "slightly closer" to a monument. A monument that stood a thousand years before there was a city named Rome. It just doesn't seem right. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the area, but without entering the pay zone. There were many more things to see, but the general feeling that we were being prayed upon for cash lingered a little too closely. In the end it seemed much more enjoyable to walk back to the car and enjoy some more of the beautiful scenery surrounding us.
We shall return next summer and have a better look at the place, and get there nice and early to ensure that the ticket offers maximum value for money. However, until then, this was the end of our journey to Stonehenge.
A two hour drive back home saw us discussing the state of the cultural heritage of our country. Which parts were celebrated, which parts ignored, which parts saved and which parts left to be forgotten. It was an interesting idea, that here so long after it's construction, people still gathered at Stonehenge and reflected upon and discussed the ties that bind us together. In the end, I suppose this is the very reason it was built, and the greatest testament to it's builders.
I leave this post with a few shots of the scenery!
