Stonehenge & Summer Solstice

I was feeling a little better about the idea of driving, so I decided to take the girls to Stonehenge. I remember seeing pictures of this as a kid and thinking it was really cool, so I thought it would be a cool experience for the girls. I wrote directions down, but also had the trusty GPS. At least this time, I had the flat marked as a "Favorite" on the GPS. I had thought about going to Stonehenge the day before, but decided that wasn't a good idea since it was the first day of summer. And, I knew a lot of people made a special trip there just to see the sun rise at Stonehenge.

The drive was supposed to take 2 hours. We drove on a lot of 2 lane road and got lucky in not getting stuck behind any slow cars! We drove through Stratford-Upon-Avon. I told Katie that was where Shakespeare was born. Then, I had to explain who Shakespeare was. She responded with, "OK, Mom." We drove through some beautiful countryside and a lot of quaint looking towns. One town had an open air market going on and the kids wanted to stop and by dresses and scarves. It was really neat to drive through a town and see a stone structure that had to be at least 200 years old!

After almost 1.5 hours, I saw a sign for a castle and the girls said that they wanted to visit it. After driving on a tiny back-woods road for 15 minutes, we finally got to a castle park that had benches where you could eat lunch. Ugh! I tried to make the best of it and get out to eat lunch there. But, Dani took too long and while I was throwing some trash away, I saw a sign that said there had been some car break-ins lately. So, I decided that we needed to drive on to Stonhenge.

When we were almost at Stonehenge, I saw a sign for Woodhenge. It had the English Heritage symbol next to it, so we decided to see what it was. We saw a bunch of people camping out and walking around. Then, we saw a field with a bunch of wooden posts sticking out of the ground. It looked like they were no taller than my knee. Katie and I decided this was a little silly, so we turned the car around and headed to Stonehenge.

We later found out that Woodhenge is a Neolithic Class I henge and timber circle that was built about 1000 years before Stonehenge. It was identified in 1925 during an aerial archeological survey. There are 168 posts. The deepest post holes measured up to 2m and the height of the timber posts had been estimated at up to 7.5m above ground. The posts would have weighed up to 5 tons! The posts were arranged in a similar fashion to the posts at Stonehenge.

After adding about an hour to our driving by visiting a nonexistent castle and some wooden stumps in the ground, I was itching to see Stonehenge! And, when we spotted it from the car, it was a truly amazing site! When we went in, we saw a bunch of people wearing white robes with hoods and two women in white robes with flower wreaths around their heads. They were standing inside the circle of stones doing some ritual. Dani wanted to put on her white Jedi cloak and join them!

I asked another tourist what was going on and he said, "It's a bunch of whack jobs dressed up in cloaks doing some kind of ceremony." Hmmm... I decided to ask someone more official. She said, "You weren't expecting to get a show, were you?" Then, she explained that it was a druid group doing a ceremony for the summer solstice. I asked why they were doing it today and not yesterday. Another guide answered that solstice means that the sun stands still. And, this is true for a few days around the actual Summer Solstice, June 21. And, since you have to book ahead of time to get permission to actually go up and touch the stone circle, not all groups can book on June 21. So, the groups book time in there during the acceptable days.

The girls had a lot of fun running around looking at the stones. Katie was upset that she wasn't allowed to go inside the path and actually walk up to the stones. But, she was able to get over it. After walking around for a bit, we got back out to the car and the girls had some ice cream. Then, it was time to start heading back to Coventry. But, we were going to first stop in Oxford to see some sites where Harry Potter was filmed!

Here are some more facts about Stonehenge and the summer solstice. Stonehenge was built as a temple to the sun. If you stand in the center of the stones on the Summer Solstice, you see the sun rise behind the Heel stone. This is the time of year that most people come to Stonehenge. However, it is believed that in the past, Stonehenge was more important at the Winter Solstice. At this time, the sun sets between the two uprights of the tallest of the great "doorways." And, it is believed that this is when people came to ask their gods to end the cold, dark winter and bring back the sun.

Stonehenge has become increasingly associated with British Druidism, Neopaganism, and New Age philosophies. However, it is strongly believed that Stonehenge stopped being a used as a temple 1000 years before the first Druid priests were in existence. Between 1972 and 1984, it was a place for a free festival, where there was live music and apparently plenty of marijuana. The festival would culminate on the summer solstice. In 1985, the festival was banned from Stonehenge and it wasn't until 1999 that ritual use of the site was allowed again.