A Henge of Stone

We left a bit later than we had planned this morning, at 10, but it wasn't a big problem. Unwilling to trust the Go Places Stupidly system, Stephen spent last night poring over the paper A-Z map and Google maps, making notes and working out the route for today. And in fact we made it with only about 6 - at the most - U-turns in 225 km.

We were aiming for my nephew's house in Hertfordshire at the end of the day, north-east from where we were, but one last thing in the general region that we needed to see was Stonehenge, to the south-east. We had often heard and read of people complaining that you can't get very close to it, and what a disappointment it is, but we didn't find that at all. There is a new Visitors' Centre there, and some presumed recreations of contemporary (3500BC) houses. We chatted at some length with one of the volunteers in the houses, who told us that they're really not sure about how and why a lot of things were done, so they just try to make things (roofs, walls, doors, pots and tools) using what was available at the time, and they've found out a lot of information in practical ways like this. For example, even though the outlines of houses can still be seen to have been square, it turns out that when you get the mud or clay onto the woven twig frame, the walls bend out and become round.

The Heritage people say that over the last few years they've been working to rid the surrounding area of extraneous buildings and roads, and they've succeeded. A minibus took us to a point 1 km from the stones (we could have gone all the way, but again, it was a lovely day for a walk.) Walking across the fields, we could see up close ancient burial mounds, and man-made humps and hollows in the landscape. As we came closer to the stones, we were surprised at how small they were. All these years everything we've seen and heard has been about these huge stones, so we had some big expectations. Of course we understand how heavy and hard they are and so on, but still... we kinda thought they'd be bigger. I was also surprised at how exactly like Flintstone cartoons they looked! But as we walked around the site, we became more and more impressed: with its age, with the effort, with the time span, with the mystery of it all... it really is mind-boggling. And you can get really close. The walking loop starts out about 50m away, but it gets to only about 10m from the henge. Given that I thought at first we might only be able to look at it from a road 200m away, that was pretty bloody close. It was also good how few people were around. There were maybe 100 people (plus a class of 7-year-olds) there, tops, which wasn't bad, spread out around the circumference.

We had lunch at the cafe back at the Visitors' Centre, and got away at about 1:30. We set the GPS for Tring, but put it on mute and relied on the map. Unfortunately the map was no good on the small scale, so we turned the wrong way as we left the carpark, but that was soon rectified (one of today's U-turns) and we got underway. Sure enough, the GPS kept trying to send us off on country lanes when we were aiming for the A34, but in the end we showed it who was boss, and after numerous recalculations it gave in and started to agree with the A-Z and Google Maps.

We ran into a traffic jam in Aylesbury - so close to our destination - but eventually found that it was due to road works closing one lane, and once we got past that it was plain sailing. Just one more U-turn - no, 2, come to think of it, but one was unnecesary because we were right the first time - and here we were, at Little Andy's. (Of course, he's been the tallest in the family for some years now, but he still needs differentiating from Big Andy (the short one).) We've had a lovely evening with Andy and Layla, and 5-month-old Elle was also on her best behaviour for most of the time. I wonder if she'll get better or worse as she gets to know us?

We've got a few ideas of what to do for the next few days, but nothing's very clear. It feels as though the first part of our trip has come to its end, and we're about to have an intermission. I'm going to stop using this website for a diary now, and when I start again, I'm going to give another one a try - Travelpod, I think it's called. I'll send you another email when that's ready to go. I hope you've enjoyed the diary so far, and that you'll continue to keep up with us as we go on.

Good night! :)