To Stonehenge or not to Stonehenge

Lots of people go to see Stonehenge when they come to England. I can see why it is pretty neat looking and has a wonderful mystique to it. But honestly I have seen better.

We took a drive out there today as we had some time in the afternoon and it is only about 45 minutes drive from Marlborough. After we got the new car, see previous post about fun with cars, we wanted to get out of the house for a bit. So we grabbed a map and hit the road.

Unfortunately our map did not cover that area so I pulled out the trusty and oh so wonderful Google Maps on my Blackberry which we have done quite a bit of navigation by. Tied in a quick search for Stonehenge and off we went. We had some lovely roads to drive on getting there and had no trouble at all finding it as it is a fairly large ring of big rocks.

We got there at closing time so we could not park in the car park across the street from the rocks. So we just pulled into a small road a bit further down and walked back. No paying for parking here! As the place was now closed we could not go inside the main fence but you can still see plenty. Even if you do get inside you cant go up and touch the rocks or anything you are kept back on a pathway about 100+ feet away from the stones. Not really all that much to see and do here. So we decide to head down the road to a town called Avebury.

Shaun M had taken Ed and I to see Avebury and have a pint at the Red Lion back in Sept so I knew it was pretty cool. Basically Avebury is a larger if somewhat differently organized version of Stonehenge. Supposedly the Avebury site predates Stonehenge by 500 years. In this site you can walk all around the stones and really experience the site. You can even touch them, just tread lightly please. It is a much cooler experience than Stonehenge in my opinion and you can have a pint right across the road.

So if you have a chance to see only one 5000+ year or stone circle go see Avebury. But I guess if you have more time go see both. They really are not that far from each other. We managed to see both in about 2 hours.