6/20 - Stonehenge

Back when we were first planning this trip, Max mentioned Stonehenge, and how when he visited as a kid, you could still go up to the rocks. He was disappointed that he wouldn't be able to do that this time. So, I was looking at the Stonehenge website, and saw a thing for the solstice. Hooray! On the solstice, you can go right up to the rocks! I was so excited about it.

Stonehenge closed early yesterday, so they could get everything set up for last night. The website said that there was limited parking in the special solstice carpark, or there was a bus that was going to run every 20 minutes or so from Salisbury. We decided to try and park, because we weren't sure if we were going to stay all night. The weather forecast didn't look good, and you aren't allowed to sleep there. So, we would have just been sitting for 10 hours. The big thing was the weather, though. Why stay for a cloudy morning when you couldn't see the sunrise anyway?

So, we decided to get to the carpark as soon as it opened at 7, so we could get by the stones and take some pictures. After all, the main goal of the day was to get close to the stones. We were nervous then, because we saw people walking from quite a ways away. We got most of the way there, and then ran into traffic. Like, we were stopped with the car turned off sort of traffic. But, we were really close to the carpark. We could see it - a huge field. It was 6:45. At 6:58, all of the sudden, we started moving again. I guess they were serious when they said it would open at 7. We were so close to the front of the carpark, it was unbelievable. We were really afraid that we would be stuck, but there were parking attendents, and they made sure that there were orderly rows with escape routes. There were also about a million police in attendence.

We were so close to the front that we got to the porta-potties before they were too gross.

We walked 1km, or so the map said, and got to the stones. Max had been convinced that, no matter how early we got there, the stones would already be mobbed. But, we walked right up to them and took our pictures. On all sides, we could see the roads were completely clogged. There were piles of people walking up to the entrance - along the roads, from the bus, in the fields, everywhere. But, we were among the first. We sat in the middle of the circle for a while, but there was too much smoking. So, we walked around the outside and took more pictures. It was filling up fast, and more and more *interesting* people were showing up. Lots of dress up.

After a couple of hours, as more weirdos showed up, and even the non-weirdos were getting drunker, we decided to go. We saw several people being escorted out. Since there were no glass bottles and limited alcohol allowed, there were bunches of groups sitting just outside the entrance drinking up what they needed to drink to be allowed in. I have never seen so many men peeing in the tall grass. As we were walking out, there was a guy who had to pull his staggering girlfriend out of the grass where she had either falled or decided to lay down. As many of you know, I abhore drunk people, so I was glad we chose to leave when we did.

As we were driving away at about 10, all of the roads leading to Stonehenge were still packed full of cars. There was an accident just a few cars ahead of us on the road out of the area, which then stopped up the traffic even more. We kept track - the cars were stopped for 3.5 miles behind the accident. The didn't include the other couple of miles that were stopped between the accident and the entrance to the carpark.

All in all, it was perfect for us. We got in before too many people were there for us to get close to the rocks, and out before the crazies got too crazy. :)