Well Henged

One of our objectives on our English sojourn was to give Eloise a bit more of a perspective on history and the general age of things that exist and were made by people or by people's close temporal evolutionary relatives, and with that in mind we wanted to visit old things and old places because these are not things that are generally readily available to be experienced in sunny Australia.

Also we had suggested that, in contrast to a focus on old things we would focus on young people and give the little cousins a chance to meet each other, some for the first time, and form the basis of bonds that might last them a lifetime.

With the second thing in mind we embarked upon a short home-stay in the bootiful West Country with James and Jane along with Erin and Noah, as a kind of holiday within a holiday where we could all get away from it all in a non-territorialised location where diverting tourist-type fun could be had.

So we decided, if the going was good, that when we passed Stonehenge that we would visit it. We stopped at Solstice Services with the youngsters sound asleep in the back for emergency refuelling and when we climbed out were perturbed somewhat by the gusty wind rushing across the plain robbing the sun of its warmth and thought that if the traffic was bad then we might give the Henge a miss, but as we drove past on the 303 and saw it there on the grassy side in the middle-distance with a procession of little stick figures around it that it really should be looked at.

So we stopped at the visitors centre still in a little doubt over whether we went to hand over our cold hard cash to go and look at some cold hard stones, under the impression as we were that it was all fenced off and a bit nasty, but the facilities were nice and the fleece-clad greeting people sincere and earnest and we were won over and so on we went through the shop by the little bronze-age village and onto a Land Rover Land Train for the couple of miles to the Stones.

And very nicely done the new visiting arrangements are, for although we moved amongst a crowd of people with wind-blown stones in their little circle sat far enough apart that they seemed almost alone on the wind-swept plains, gently bathing in the bright sun hushed cool by the wind, and there was a kind of reverence there as we walking around the 5,000 year old circle and thought about how far these stones had come and the amount of work that must have gone into them and how the actual reason still seems something of a mystery.

And then we got into the car and left.