After arriving in England the first place I intended to visit was Salisbury in Wiltshire, to see the prehistoric monument located just outside the town.
Before taking the trip out to Stonehenge itself, I decided to take a look around Salisbury, and found their lovely cathedral.
Stonehenge was far enough away from Salisbury that there were shuttle buses going back and forth from there.
It was sort of a shock to me to see just how close Stonehenge is located to a fairly well-trafficked road, but it was far enough away for me to practically ignore it.
When I and my fellow passengers stepped of the bus, we were greeted by a gaggle of wiccans, druids and pagans handing out pamphlets and picketing the tourism industry around Stonehenge.
The security and ticket takers seemed very annoyed by this.
Once I got behind the fence, everything calmed down a bit.
But I did sort of see the point that the protesters were making, in that it seems wrong to me that Stonehenge is located behind a bunch of fences, and not free to be explored.
But if that were the case, I bet that the structure would have long since been divided up in thousands of souvenir pieces, scattered all over the world.
Stonehenge, and other structures like it, has always fascinated me.
There is something about a lone man-made structure located in the middle of a beautiful natural environment that really speaks to me on a personal level.
So much so that I keep having the urge to create when I am out in nature.
After I was done looking at the monument, I headed back to Salisbury with the shuttle bus.
And from there I hopped on a train to Cardiff, Wales!
From what I hear, Stonehenge takes little more than a half-hour to see, photograph, reflect a bit and leave, Carnac, Brittany, which I have visited, is ten times as large and well worth the day it takes for a proper visit.
Sounds about right, but I’m still glad I’ve seen it 🙂
Thanks for the tip on Carnac, I’ll be sure to make a visit sometime, it seems right up my alley 😀
Sad but true. The numbers of individuals without boundaries or conscience is heartbreaking. There would indeed be pieces everywhere.
Well, I’m glad there are people out there that do what you do 🙂
Alas, the system I worked in really doesn’t care and is set up to fail as are other systems in some countries… 🙂
That is too bad :/
Luckily there are people within those systems who do care 🙂
Woops, sorry :p
I thought this was a continuation to our conversation on my Harry Potter post.
Point still stands 🙂
🙂
Stonehenge is still surrounded by great mystery. Over 3000 years ago it began to be built, for what?
I think it was some sort of place of worship, and that it was the endpoint for pilgrimages, seeing how there are people from all over Europe burried there.
The stones could serve a function, but maybe they were just monuments to what the people worshipped.
Interesting to see it up close … great you got a picture of yourself posing in front of this great monument.
That is one of my favorite pictures of myself 🙂
Another is from toward the end of this trip, in Rome.
It’s a strange and almost haunting place, isn’t it? It is a bit frustrating to travel all that way, only to be kept out by a fence, but I understand why that is. The year I was there, someone had spray-painted some of the stones.
People can be jerks sometimes :/
Wish they could have just created something new with those paint-cans instead.