Stonehenge

The sun in shining, Fiat is sliding through the hills and we are peacefully driving where Garmin is taking us. We are driving past sleek green grasslands and lovely brick houses. The sun is slowly saying goodbye and we are approaching our destination. When we arrive to our destination everything is closed because night veil has fallen down sooner than expected. But this doesn’t stop us. We find a back road. Not really a road, a cart track. Muddy and dusty. This are some shady roads. I’m starting to loose my adventurous bravery. But we spot THE stones in the distance. We see a fence. We ride by the fence, not look suspicious at all. We stop and observe.

He wants to go beyond the fence, I’m playing by the rules and in my world you don’t jump over the fence. But he convinces me and we go out of the car and over the fence. It’s very windy and cold outside. I’m trying to tuck myself into my sweater to keep as much warmth as possible. We don’t see much but we keep going towards the Stonehenge silhouette. Out of the blue in a distance two flashlights light up towards us. I panic and start running to the car not looking back if somebody is going after us. After few moments I came to the car he walks back like nothing happened. We drive to our airbnb place and decide we’ll come back.

Few days later we try to go to the same but this time a little bit earlier. We catch opening hours and we finally see it. Magnificent Stonehenge! Seeing it from the photos I imagined it to be bigger. It is big don’t take me wrong. And there is something more about these stones than just the sheer size of them. A number of myths surround the stones. They are there for 5000 years and are most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England.

Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. The first stage of the monument is dated to around 3100 BC and consisted of a circular bank and ditch enclosure made of Late Cretaceous (Santonian Age) Seaford Chalk, measuring about 110 metres in diameter, with a large entrance to the north east and a smaller one to the south. During the next major phase of activity, 30 enormous Oligocene-Miocene sarsen stones were brought to the site. Each standing stone was around 4.1 metres high, 2.1 metres wide and weighed around 25 tons.

One of the explanation about Stonehenge. Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University has suggested that Stonehenge was part of a ritual landscape. He suggests the large area of Neolithic settlement was a place of the living, whilst Stonehenge was a domain of the dead. A journey along the river Avon to reach Stonehenge was part of a ritual passage from life to death, to celebrate past ancestors and the recently deceased.

Whether this theory is true, or it was a work of aliens, “just” a temple, or the resting place for the dead, Stonehenge certainly stays one of the most impressive monuments and sights to the living.