Stonehenge

[Damini]

Hello my little Freddylings. I'm hoping some of you can help me out here with my second book. I'm writing a section set in Stonehenge, but I've never been there. If you've been there, could you describe to me what its like (sounds, atmosphere, other tourists and so on)? If you have any photos you've taken, that would be lovely. I've looked on tourist sites, but its a very sterile view of the place. Any help would be much appreciated.

Lou x

 

[throdgrain]

I went there in 1983/4 for the free festival Was awesome, I can tell you

 

[SoWat]

You could do worse than visit the English Heritage site. where you will discover, amongst other things, that there is (or rather was) a Woodhenge.

I visited it many years ago, and I remember it being quite awe inspiring. The question that everyone asked on the day was "How did they get the stones here".

These days it's right by a main road, and has a bloody gift shop.

 

[Summo]

Hi Lou!

I've visited it a couple of times, always when passing through. Although the big rocks are impressive and everything, any atmosphere the place had has been removed by the Portaloos and car park.

It costs money to go and look at Stonehenge, so a lot of people (myself included) just cross the road from the car park and peer at the rocks through the chicken wire fence. Paying tourists enter the site via a mysterious underground tunnel between the car park and the rocks. They wander around with those electronic talking things to their ear so they can listen to someone tell them about rocks.

Overall, disappointing.

 

[Damini]

Cheers Summo + SoWat. All the photos on the tourist and heritage sites seem (shockingly) to omit portaloos and chicken wire fences, which is why I'm probing people here. Is the road so close that you can hear all the cars? Can you see the gift shop and the portaloos from Stone henge, or are they tucked out of sight? I've phoned the tourist board, and they say there is a rope tying off access to the actual stones. How close are you allowed to get? Are there always lots of tourists around?

Throddy, I'd have loved to have gone to a free festival there, but I think I'd be one of those people protectively hugging the stones in case somebody hurt them.

 

[throdgrain]

We sat in the free festival for days, and some people for maybe as long as 2 months , and there was nothing the police or anyone could do about it. There was a gift / food thing there then, but there was more of us than the tourists.
For us at the time, Stonehenge represented a symbol of something pre-government, a place where the laws inflicted upon us everywhere else didnt apply. It was considered ours , rather than thiers.
Of course it was all bollocks and after about 10 years they came down harder than a hard thing on a load of harmless people who were effectively minding thier own business, but hey, what do you expect of Thatchers Britain ?
/points to other thread ...

 

[Gef]

For us at the time, Stonehenge represented a symbol of something pre-government, a place where the laws inflicted upon us everywhere else didnt apply. It was considered ours, rather than thiers.

Was there lots of free love and acid? Naked hippies dancing in the mud?

 

[Damini]

I don't know Throddy, child of the Thatcherite generation as I am, I'm of the opinion that humans en masse are too stupid and destructive to be allowed unfettered access to something so beautiful and ancient. People have graffitied the stones before, or tried to chip away parts to take home. When I was in Australia, a cave near Ayres Rock was closed off. A cave that held the oldest known example of art work in the world. Why? Because someone had written their name across it in spray paint. You either allow access to all or none, and if that's the choice, I'd have to plump with none, much as it saddens me because I'd love to see these things up close and personal.

 

[old.Tohtori]

*Teh Seel attempts to come through for the old modding, nowadays writing Chica*

Purrty.

Purrty tooo!

Shocking?

Bloooooood!

This guy didn't make the cut.

It was a dark and stormy night...

That's it for now...i like pies.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

I've never visited it, but I have driven past it. The thing that struck me is that it was a lot smaller than I had expected.

 

[oblimov]

the one time i went to stonehenge it was a bit dissapointing, sure it looked all mysterious and very very interesting from a historical point of view

however it was full of diddies running around hugging each other and making a general nuisance of themselves, also the amount of tourist tat being sold by the road was a shame.

 

[throdgrain]

Damini, the festival was in the field on the other side of the road People only really went to the the stones on the solstice really.
Some of my memories of it are
A famous saxophonist standing on the stage and saying through the microphone "can anyone play guitar ? " wrc, and forming a band there for the night on the spot
Spending an entire day inside a Morris Marina estate car too scared to come out
very young kids wandering around trying to sell bags of roaches
my mate and me queueing at a ice cream van for ages , when we got to the front me m8 says "got any coke" bloke says " yeah, £5 bags, £10 bags" me m8 says "no, a tin" bloke "says "no, we dont do that kind of thing here ..."

Happy days

 

[Wazzerphuk]

I've never visited it, but I have driven past it. The thing that struck me is that it was a lot smaller than I had expected.

Some things are small.

Some things look small because they are faaaaaaaaaar awaaaaaaaaay.

 

[Trem]

Throddy helped to build Stonehenge.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Some things are small.

Some things look small because they are faaaaaaaaaar awaaaaaaaaay.

Get back to your own island!!


(the road runs very close to the stones)

 

[SoWat]

Is the road so close that you can hear all the cars? Can you see the gift shop and the portaloos from Stone henge, or are they tucked out of sight? I've phoned the tourist board, and they say there is a rope tying off access to the actual stones. How close are you allowed to get? Are there always lots of tourists around?

The road is about 100yds from the stones, and it gets very busy.. and noisy.

The gift shops/portaloos, etc are in the carpark area, which is very near to the stones (about 30yds maybe). In the summer the whole place smells of wee.

These days you can only peer at the stones through the fence (it was chicken wire last time I passed it). Visits to the middle of the stones can be arranged though.

During the summer there are lots of people about, less so in the winter when it is bloody cold... especially when the wind is up.

The actual site is a travesty, which English Heritage have promised to remedy. There'll be a proper visitors centre and the area will be cleaned up to remove the 'kiss me quick' image it currently has.

 

[Xtro]

Lou

My gf and I visted Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral about two months ago. We both took lots of pics and some digital video I'm more than happy to send to you.

Sowat described it pretty much as I would, it was full of chinese/american/french tourists who seemed to be dragged round by teachers or tour guides and actually didn't want to be there.

You park on the other side of the road from SH and once through the turnstiles where you pay to visit SH itself you have to go under the road via a grotty subway tunnel that they've tried to jazz up with paintings of ancient britons dragging the stones. It actually just makes it more depressing you expect Big Issue sellers to be down in there and vomit crusted lager lads asleep on the floor.

It still is a wire fence btw - some COACH tours werent even bothering to pay to get in they were just looking through the wire, stood at the side of the road. If you pay to get in you arent fenced off from the stones theres a natural path about 30yrds round it with lots of Keep off the grass, dont go near the stones type fences.

On the whole people looked bemused. We were disappointed but had to force ourselves to think that people dragged these stones hundreds of miles etc etc etc.

Salisbury Cathedral was fookin excellent tho

It was a total and abject failure of a day visiting stonehenge to be honest lol.

Drop me a pm with your contact details or something?

 

[Clown]

I went there. I'm not really interested in things like that, but my dad is. Just a bunch of stones in the grass.

 

[Lazarus]

Ring of Brodgar would be cheaper

 

[Tom]

I'd love to go visit, one of my life ambitions is to see the Great Pyramid of Giza, but Stonehenge is too far to visit unless I'm working in the area.

 

[throdgrain]

Ive seen the pyramids, they are much more impressive than Stonehenge
But Stonehenge is our, and the Pyramids are theirs.

 

[Tom]

Stonehenge actually predates the Pyramids though, doesn't it? What pisses me off are the loonies who suggest that constructing such things must have required amazing lost technologies, or alien intervention, while forgetting that their brains were by that time just as advanced as ours.

 

[Cyfr]

I saw it on dark age of camelot if that helps

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Stonehenge actually predates the Pyramids though, doesn't it? What pisses me off are the loonies who suggest that constructing such things must have required amazing lost technologies, or alien intervention, while forgetting that their brains were by that time just as advanced as ours.

It's nothing to do with brainpower. It's about the technologies available to them at the time. Even in modern day, building a pyramid would take a very long time and be a constructor's nightmare. Stop being a tit.

 

[old.Tohtori]

And in the ancient days it wasn't a constructors nightmare to build a pyramid, it was the slaves who built it. Bring enough people together(thousands), don't give a crap about work safety(only 5 dead today, good!) or workhours(i think 25 hour days are just fine) and you'll build a monument of Tom's Willy the size of the world trade center in a relatively short time.

 

[Tom]

But the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza did take a long time. About 20 years in fact. The quarry is right around the corner. They didn't use slave labour. They dragged the rocks up the ramp on wooden poles.

Brute strength. And seeing as your average Victorian schoolboy could quite capably do long division or multiplication in his head, while most people today need a calculator, its hardly inconceivable that Egyptian architects could achieve the same feats.

Because no records survive to chronicle the construction of Stonehenge, its entirely open to speculation as to exactly who built it, and why - but then again, they didn't use JCBs and motorised cranes to build the Colossus of Rhodes now did they?

 

[Lazarus]

personally, I think that some of the construction feats of previous (ancient) centuries are better than most modern ones considering the archaic tools that they had at their disposal.

 

[Chilly]

Stonehenge was on the way to my Granny's pad down in zomerzet so Iv passed by it abotu 50 times and been there one or twice, I havnt been for a few years like, but when I went there was a wee fence about a foot tall politely telling you to fuck off and not go near the stones, which are absolutely covered in engraved graff - shit like dave 4 lou 4eva etc, Andy woz ere '91 etc. You can certainly hear the cars, and its by NO means a spiritual experience cos its usually fairly full of squealing babbies during the wamer months and miserable old trouts in the colder. The ameneities(sp? bleh) consist of a carpark, a few portaloos and a burger van the last time I was there.

It's not very good rly, Woodhenge is much more fun, theres a wee carpark (gravel 4the win) and then a load of little wooden posts driven into the ground where the original wood used ot stand but has now been excavated/rotted away for the most part, theres also a wee info board with a few theories and some nice background blurb. Me and my mum went there a few years back cos we got bored of stonehenge and it was empty apart from us.

Anyway...perhaps could be spooky at midnight with no one about, but you still cant get to the stones cos of graff problems which is a shame.

Hope iv been some help and I hope theres a thanks to FH inside somewhere!

 

[Lazarus]

*cough* Ring of Brodgar *cough* has much better atmosphere

 

[old.Tohtori]

But the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza did take a long time. About 20 years in fact. The quarry is right around the corner. They didn't use slave labour. They dragged the rocks up the ramp on wooden poles.

Not "slaves" per say, but workers who worked 16 hours a day, atleast, with only water and food for pay, no concern for safety at all except from your co-workers, just because it was considered an honor. Sure, not slavery, but the egyptians who sipped wine and ate grape and watched their great work be done didn't lift a finger. Not slavery, sure, but hardly humane.


Much like in electronic arts