Stonehenge: A Timeless Wonder

I hate expectations when it comes to travel. It is something that I preach often – when you travel to a new place, go there with an open mind. Try not to judge a place before you go there. But even I have trouble with this sometimes. Sometimes, you just can’t help having some sort of expectation of a place before you visit. For me, I have this problem the most when it comes to popular tourist attractions. A lot of people go to these places with high expectations, but for me, I always kind of expect to be disappointed. Sometimes this turns out to be true, but quite often this works out in my favour, because I end up being pleasantly surprised by the place. This is exactly what happened to me when I visited Stonehenge.

Stonehenge

I even considered not bothering to make the trip out to Stonehenge when I got to England. After all, it is essentially just a bunch of rocks in the middle of an English sheep paddock, right? I had this vision of going there and fighting through hordes of tourist groups just to get a glimpse of some famous fenced off rocks. I literally expected to not even see much of the place – kind of like trying to view the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. The only reason I made the decision to visit was that my wife wanted to go to Stonehenge, and the fact that I couldn’t really go to England and not see one of the country’s most famous landmarks.

Our visit began at the new visitor centre, located about 2kms away from Stonehenge itself. No, you don’t just park across the road anymore – another expectation that I got wrong. The visitor centre has some excellent displays and information on the history of Stonehenge and the surrounding area, so you can learn all about the famous stones and the people who built them before you visit, kind of like a build up to the grand finale. I was already impressed with the place before I even got to Stonehenge. Although I knew that the stones were very old – I really didn’t know much about the history and size of the place. Stonehenge itself is really just a tiny portion of a huge Neolithic site that extends for miles and miles around. There are burial mounds all over the countryside, and we passed several of them as we walked through the green pastures of the paddocks that separate Stonehenge from the visitor centre.

An example of how the people who built Stonehenge might have transported the huge stones

A Neolithic style hut at the visitor centre

Fields and burial mounds in the distance on the walk to Stonehenge

First glimpse of Stonehenge in the distance

Sheep graze in the paddock next to Stonehenge

As expected, there were plenty of people at Stonehenge, but it wasn’t the chaotic madness that I expected, and visiting the stones is done in such a way that you get excellent views of the entire site as you walk around it. It is true that Stonehenge is a bunch of rocks in the middle of an English sheep paddock, but it is so much more than that. There is a kind of timeless awe about these stones, and a true sense of mystery, as if these ancient stones may know things that we don’t. I’ve been in some old places before – walking the ancient streets of Rome and the interior of the Colosseum, for example, was incredible, just being in the presence of something that old and steeped in history – but Stonehenge was built 2000 to 3000 years earlier than the Colosseum. In fact, there is evidence of human activity and building in this area for the last 10,000 years.

Perhaps what is even more intriguing about this place is that we know all about the Romans and why they built structures like the Colosseum, but we don’t and perhaps never will really know for sure why Stonehenge was built. There are only theories, and this adds to the mystery of this ancient monument. Who really built it, and why did they go to so much trouble to cart these huge stones – some from as far as 150 miles away – to this particular place? Given the fact that hundreds and hundreds of people were buried here and the continuous activity in the area for so many thousands of years, there is no doubt that there is something very special about this place.

The Heel Stone

The ancient stones of Stonehenge have stood, watching over this important place, for nearly 5000 years. They hold secrets that we will probably never learn, and there is no reason why they won’t continue to stand where they are for another 5000 years. There is a timeless wonder to Stonehenge that I’ve never seen before. My expectations were blown away.