The Chronicles of Stonehenge: The Barrow, the Bitch and the Motorway.

by Alex in United Kingdom, In Transit

Ever since I was a kid, there's been this thing I wanted to do. I've always wanted to walk from Stonehenge, across the Salisbury Plain, and to Salisbury Cathedral. I loved the idea of walking between these two major stone centres of worship, both monumentally impressive in their own ways, from pre-Roman pagan to medieval Christian. Yes, this was when I was a kid. No, I didn't get beaten up much, thanks for asking.

When we got off the bus at Salisbury at 8pm, it was raining. I mean Raining, with a capital R. Possibly even a capital A, I and N as well. The floodgates of heaven had been opened, dowsing us mortals on the ground with a deluge of heavenly stormwater. (See what I did there?) We walked into town, weighed down in equal measure by our bags, the weather and our (apparently!) not-so-waterproof jackets. Finally we arrived at the inn where we spending our nights, and with a few brief words from the barmaid, my hopes of completing the walk while we were here began to waver.

"Oh yeah, the rain's been like this for weeks. Not sure when it'll stop."

Great. We've specifically stopped here on our way out to Cardiff to do this walk, and it will probably be rained out. O cruel Ambisagrus*, have you no mercy?! Well, as it turns out, yes. The next morning, the sun was shining, the sky was clear, and - perhaps most importantly - apparently the all-pervasive mud had begun to dry up between here and Amesbury. (For those of you keeping track at home, Amesbury is where Stonehenge actually is.) So with a few trips to the Internet, and another to the Salisbury visitor's centre, we had our route mapped out - 14 miles following the River Avon - and were ready to set off. Aaaand... then we noticed a pizza parlour with an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. Eh! The weather'll probably hold out till tomorrow!

*Do you have any idea how hard it is to name a Celtic weather god when you need one?

The next day, thankfully, the weather did indeed live up to its end of the bargain. Conditions were good, our adorably small daypack was loaded with fruit and water and sandwiches and we were in high spirits, so we jumped on the bus to Amesbury to reach the start line of our 6-8 hour hike. Fresh off the bus, we set out across the fields, happily chattering and singing with not a soul in sight or in earshot (I hope). After around an hour of easy, comfortable walking up an easy, comfortable incline, we came across these:

The Kings Barrows. Neolithic burial mounds containing the bones and (hopefully) easy-going spirits of pre-Roman pagans who died around 2500 years ago. See, this is the kind of history we just don't have as much of in Australia. Specifically, the old kind. And next to the Barrows was a map, which showed us we were close. Just a quick walk through a field and over a hill, and there's Stonehenge!

In the interests of Tash's and my dignity, I won't go into how long it took us to figure out that we were meant to go *through* the field instead of around it. And in the interests of my own dignity, I won't mention that Tash figured it out straight away, and that by "us", I actually meant "me".

Finally, we crested the last mound, and there it was: Stonehenge. Standing as tall and proud as it has for thousands of years, surrounded by tourists, enclosed in 3 sides by a chain-link fence. As we stood for a moment, taking in its majesty and the carbon monoxide fumes from the busy motorway 15 metres to the left, an observation formed in my mind and was drawn out of my mouth by the ancient neolithic wonder: "Huh... It's smaller than I thought it would be."

Awww, lookit the widdle Stonehenge!!

Still, we pressed on. We crossed the field, walked up to the gap in the fence, and were approached by a young lady with an official-looking jacket and a snippy tone. "I'm so sorry, but I can't let you in. You don't have a ticket. You need to walk a long way away over to the visitor centre and buy a ticket. It's about an hour away, and a ticket's £25. Goodbye!" Well, damn. But hey, we'd been warned that there was a new ticketing scheme in place, so who are we to complain? We turned to start walking in the indicated direction, when that snippy tone called out to us once more. "Oh no, you can't go that way. That road's recently become our private property - if you couldn't afford to join a proper tour, you'll have to go the long way around."

Well, screw that! Looking closer, we noticed that ticketholders (because that's clearly all they were to those in charge) were being held behind a fence a good 15 feet away from the stones, so their view probably wasn't much better than ours. Cheerily, I took Tash's hand, and we set off in completely the opposite direction, toward the motorway. After a few precarious minutes, we managed to cross (don't try this at home, kids! Seriously, don't), and just stood and took our photos from the other side of the motorway, completely for free. And don't worry, I made sure to wave politely with a big grin to our would-be gatekeeper before we moved on, just to show her there were no hard feelings.

Next time: The long road home.
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