Travel date: June 11, 2019
Stonehenge was Dave’s sole must see on our entire England and Ireland trip. And so we saw it! It was a bit of a detour, but it fit in pretty nicely as a stop between London and Bath.
We left London on Tuesday morning, took a million (or three) trains, and picked up our rental car at Heathrow. You might recall that Dave lost his drivers license on (we would later learn) the first of our three flights to get to London, which meant that I had to drive said rental car–something that had been very decidedly not the plan. I stayed in a constant state of low grade panic for the 36 hours or so between when I realized I was going to be driving and when it actually happened.
But I am an excellent driver! And the route between Heathrow and Stonehenge was a good one to cut my teeth on, with lots of easy motorway driving combined with uncrowded secondary roads and topped off with a nice, big, easy to navigate car park at Stonehenge itself.
Stonehenge admission is £19, £11.40 for kids up to 17, or £49.40 for a family of 2 adults and up to 3 kids. But while we were waiting in line, someone was walking around telling people about how they could get an overseas visitors pass to see all the sites run by English Heritage. We weren’t planning on seeing any of the other sites, BUT it turned out to be cheaper (for us. Lots of kids) to buy the pass than to pay for just one time Stonehenge admission. So we did that. It made me sad that we couldn’t use the pass anywhere else, but it just didn’t work out for the few days we had left in England. Anyway, though, the English Heritage pass is a great deal, and someday we’ll have to go back and plan a whole trip around it!
I’d heard that there wasn’t a whole lot to a Stonehenge visit until a few years ago when the new visitors’ center was built. And, indeed, it’s a great addition, with a cafe and big gift shop and a very nice museum detailing the history of the site:
Behind the museum there’s a re-creation of a neolithic village:
…a map of the site…
…and a chance to try to move a stone yourself and realize that building Stonehenge required a lot of teamwork:
It’s about a mile and a half from the visitors center to the stone circle, and you can either walk or take a shuttle bus. We opted to walk there and then take the shuttle back. If you have the time and ability, I highly recommend doing the walk; it’s a lovely walk through fields (with an optional detour through the woods), and it makes a great transition from the modern world to the stones, with views of them in the distance as you approach.
When you buy your tickets, you get a headset for the audio tour; there’s a choice of a kid tour or a regular one. We were getting a little nervous about time at this point, so we didn’t listen to every stop (there were a lot!) on the audio tour, but we heard (Dave and I listened to the kid tour with Abe) was very well done (as was the case on nearly every England audio tour we encountered). Although Dave had some trouble with his headset and kept hearing things about….Russian architecture or something?
I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got to the actual stones; I’d heard that the experience can be a bit of a let down….huge crowds and no chance to get very close to the stones. So maybe it was because I came in with low expectations, but I thought Stonehenge was pretty great. It’s true that you can’t walk up and touch the stones these days, but you certainly get a good view of them, and when we were there (on a Tuesday afternoon in early June) the crowds were not bad at all. I’m sure it’s different on weekends and later in the summer, but the scarcity of people was a welcome relief after some of our London outings.
We walked around, did some of the audio tour, and took lots and lots of pictures of people hanging out in front of Stonehenge:
This marks the end of my Stonehenge pictures, because I was still sharing a camera with Ari at this point, and I passed it to him. So he had it for the side where you can get closer to the stones. And he was with Milo and Gus, so he completed the “people in front of Stonehenge” series (I’m always jealous of how good Ari’s pictures are when I use his in posts):
Have I mentioned that it was quite cool and windy? It was. The actual rain mostly held off for us, though:
And then the shuttle bus back to the visitors center, a quick stop for overpriced coffee and hot chocolate, and it was on to Bath!
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Stonehenge is awesome! So mysterious.