And so we had reached our last full day in England.
With a heavy heart we left Devon and drove through Somerset into Wiltshire. We had one big-ticket item left to see – and that was Stonehenge.
In case you haven’t heard of Stonehenge, it’s the king of all stone circles. A massive grouping of stones erected 4,000 years ago, and no one really knows why. Each stone is a behemoth, transported to Wiltshire from South Wales – a distance of over 200 miles. How they did that is really a mystery. And why they did that is even more of a mystery. No one really knows, but given that skeletons were found buried underneath the stones, and that they align perfectly with the winter and summer solstice, it was obviously a site of great importance – most likely a place of worship, burial, or both.
There are other places of Neolithic importance nearby such as burial mounds and the Cursus (a Neolithic processional route).
The stones are very impressive – much larger than you’d think. I’ve been to Stonehenge a few times before – you cant help but be awe-struck by the sheer size and age of it. 2,000 years before the Roman Empire, Neolithic people in their masses carved and transported huge stones to a specific place in Wiltshire and arranged them in a perfect circle.
I love the place.
But – and it’s a big but – it is really, really overrun with tourists. It gets one million visitors a year, many of them day-trippers from London arriving by the coachload. Part of the beauty of the stones is their mystery, and the quiet sense of awe they inspire. But it’s hard to feel that power and majesty when all you can hear is school groups chattering about selfies.
You can no longer walk right up to the stones, but there’s a large circular path that takes you all around them. There are swarms of people, but this circular path does a good job of keeping everyone spread out – except in a few key spots where the stones are particularly photogenic, and then everyone stops for a selfie.
If you’re looking for a stone circle that you can actually walk around, try nearby Avebury, or Castlerigg in the Lake District.
When I first came to Stonehenge, there was barely a visitor centre or a shop. You parked on the other side of the road, walked under a tunnel armed with an audio guide, and there it was. The visitor experience has changed substantially since then. There’s now a massive visitor centre, museum, gift shop and cafe complex.
The museum is fascinating – you can learn more about the Neolithic people and the theories around why they built Stonehenge. The gift shop is equally fascinating, selling every kind of Stonehenge-related souvenir you can think of, from earrings to soft toys – all shaped like Stonehenge! Outside the visitor centre there are a few points of interest – like a replica stone to show the size and weight, and reconstructed huts to show how the people that built Stonehenge may have lived.
But here’s the downside, and it’s a bugbear for me. They have built this beautiful shiny visitor complex a mile and a half away from the stones – and you have to take a bus to get there. Given that the National Trust owns the fields around Stonehenge, surely they could have built this facility closer and avoided the expense and faff of operating a shuttle system. I’d be most interested to know why they chose to do it this way. If it was to manage the large number of visitors, perhaps a timed-entry system would have been better. Imagine arriving to Stonehenge after a long drive and realising you’re actually nowhere near the stones! The cost of running the shuttle is likely one reason why the ticket price is so high – a whopping £30 per person.
You can opt not to take the bus, as we did, and instead walk to the stones. For us, it was a chance for a last countryside ramble. You can walk along the main shuttle road as the quickest route, but it’s much more pleasant to turn left into the fields and walk alongside the Cursus. You can also detour into the woods which the kids wanted to do – they couldn’t resist one last opportunity to pick some blackberries. There are burial mounds along the way, and a few information boards to keep things interesting.
I will also mention that a public footpath runs right next to the official circular walk. So if you don’t want to pay the entrance fee, you can still get very close to the stones – just not on the bus. I understand that it’s now possible to book an early morning or sunset tour of the stones, which allows you to actually walk among them in small groups. I wish I’d known this ahead of time as I definitely wold have done that.
After Stonehenge our next stop was Basingstoke (or “Amazingstoke” as it’s know to locals!). This was another stop on our nostalgia tour of England, as it’s where we bought our first flat together. Basingstoke has a train station with a fast, comfortable service to London – I can vouch for that, having spent many, many hours commuting on these trains. It also has a great shopping centre – Festival Place. We stopped here for a bite to eat and a last-minute raid on M&S for some Percy Pigs and chocolate biscuits to take back to Australia. (if you’ve never had a chocolate biscuit from M&S, you don’t know what you’re missing!).
We made a great choice for our last night in England – The Elvetham Hotel in Hampshire. This is a large country house hotel and popular wedding venue. The grounds are beautiful and the main building is lovely. They claim the history of Elvetham dates back to medieval times, but there isn’t much left of that now. The current building dates from the mid-19th century. Its main claim to fame was that Henry VIII met Jane Seymour here – while still married to Anne Boleyn!
Our room was in the Stables – very modern and spacious – perfect as we needed to repack our suitcases to cram all those Percy Pigs in. We wandered into the hotel that evening for a drink in the bar and a game of cards. The main hotel is really nice – comfortable and luxurious. It would be a great wedding venue.
The next morning we had a final wander through the grounds, which were beautiful – very English. Full of large old Oak and Sycamore trees, manicured lawns, a field full of cows and a little stream where, in a poignant moment, we threw in Theo’s “T for Theo” stick and said a sad farewell to England.
What a wonderful time we’d had on this month-long trip around England. It was so special to share our favourite places and childhood memories with the kids. Teaching them the things I grew up with and didn’t think much of until I moved to Australia and realised they are missing from life down under. Playing Pooh sticks, finding conkers, picking wild blackberries. making daisy chains, checking if you like butter with a yellow buttercup flower, cream teas, meal deals and Sunday roasts. It had been so lovely to be home and experience it all again.
Farewell England, we’ll see you again soon!
Previously…cream teas in Devon
Read the full back catalogue of England trip reports here.
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