There is a tar path that winds around the stones of Stonehenge.  Ropes and small signs instruct you to stay away from the stones.  The crowds weren’t bad.  I could clearly see the stones and was able to take a photo without any humans in it.  Some people were standing by numbered stations listening to (I assume) a free app guide they had downloaded in their cars on the way here.

Since there would be a full moon, I had hoped to see it rising over the stones, but since summer solstice had just passed, the sun wouldn’t set until 9:30, and I wasn’t going to hang around for six hours.

As Lynn had said, Stonehenge was a bunch of rocks in the middle of a field.  Since I hadn’t read up on it ahead of time and the interpretive signs had other tourists huddled around them, all I could do was gaze at the rocks for a few minutes, tying to rouse suitable feelings of awe.  I have done this before—arrived somewhere so unprepared and exhausted that I cannot appreciate it.  But I’m too chicken to drive a car in the UK, so taking a coach had been unavoidable.

I ambled off toward the shuttle bus that ran back and forth to the visitors’ center.  Aaahhhh!  Air conditioning.  I enjoyed watching the other passengers boarding, one by one exhaling, “Aaahhhh!”

The visitors’ center may really have been a mile from the stones.  The views were beautiful, and if I had only had a hamburger and an ice-cold Diet Pepsi, I could have ridden it back and forth on it all day.  My plan was to “do” the visitors’ center, then go back to the stones with a greater appreciation of them.

First, I had a pasty stuffed with lamb and potatoes and washed down with a pint of local ale in the café.  Again, I could not get the Wifi signal on my phone.  Why do you care or need to get wifi? I asked myself. I’m a baby boomer who refuses to spend more than an hour or two a day on my phone, so the only social media app I have is Facebook.  It irks me when people go all the way to the Roman Coliseum or some other such world treasure, then post selfies on Facebook—their grinning foolish faces in the way so you can’t see whatever the site is.  They may as well be in Indiana.

I checked out the gift shop.  There were Stonehenge-themed tea towels, key chains, T-shirts, books, postcards, water bottles, chocolates, calendars, tissues, pens, flashlights, scarves, umbrellas, tote bags, decals, patches, matchbooks, snow globes, figurines, earrings and pendants, hats, sunglasses, socks, tea mugs, beer steins, board games, puzzles, posters, book marks, and of course refrigerator magnets. The usual stuff.  I picked up a few items, then felt overwhelmed and put them back.

I exchanged my voucher for my souvenir “real” ticket, which looked just like one of the book marks in the gift shop.  I looked halfheartedly through the tiny interpretive center, which was partly inside and partly outside.  These were some souvenirs from the Victorian era:

Why didn’t they sell things like these anymore?

There was a re-creation of how the stones were moved, from 160 miles away on the coast:

Then I came upon the thing that jolted me.  This is a re-creation of a man of the time, (3000 – 1500 B.C.).  He and his folk placed the stones.

There was a timeline of ancient sites and Stonehenge pre-dated the great pyramid of Egypt. I had no idea!  I realized I had always assumed that the oldest sites in the world are in Africa or the Middle East and were built by dark-skinned people, including my ancient Hebrew ancestors.

But apparently the people who lived in these huts looked like Brad Pitt.

Why did people come to Britain?  It’s so miserably cold and cloudy much of the time. Maybe they came “because it was there” and stayed for the same reason I don’t move to Arizona—friends and family and inertia.

What was that orange stuff?

Poppies! Apparently they would be harvested soon for use in medicines.

I hurried on, puffing and sweating, toward Stonehenge.  I passed wooden signs pointing to places called Ratfyn, Larkhill, and Netheravon.  There was a sign pointing to Middle Wallop, which I now see is nowhere near Stonehenge, but just in case I wanted to walk five miles in the opposite direction, I would know which way to turn. Note to self: One would pass Palestine to get to Middle Wallop, and one could also visit Nether Wallop or Over Wallop while in the vicinity.

It ended up being a four-mile hike, in 90F+ heat.  I didn’t encounter any bulls; I also hadn’t brought a water bottle or a hat or applied sun screen.  But what were a few age spots compared with the opportunity to see Stonehenge?

Now—would they let me in?  I walked along a dusty gravel road lined with caravans and tents.  Were they Travellers, or hippies, or what?  Many had placards declaring, “Free the Henge!” or “Make the Henge Free for ALL!” and “English Heritage are Selling YOUR Heritage!”  The protesters, who appeared to be permanently camped there, sat in lawn chairs drinking beer, smoking weed, and barbequing who-knows-what.  They wore uniforms of tie-dyed shirts, dread locks, and lots of tattoos.  Some were friendly, some were menacing.

Gee, I thought, this wasn’t a very appealing entry to such a historic site.  Some people might find this scruffy protest charming, and if I hadn’t been tired and hot and thirsty and in a hurry I might have stopped and chatted with the ones who appeared nonthreatening. I gathered that they were protesting that English Heritage charges people admission to Stonehenge—£18.20 for adults.  I can understand how, if you are unemployed as all these people appeared to be, that would be a prohibitive amount.  However, given that the road was strewn with cigarette butts and empty beer cans, Stonehenge could look like Glastonbury post-concert in no time if they let everyone in for free.

I kept trekking and finally presented my printout to a guy wearing an English Heritage vest.  He did that British thing—the low sucking in of the breath and clenching of teeth.

“Oohh…I’m very sorry miss,” he began.

Damn!  I was afraid of this; he wasn’t going to let me in because I was 25 minutes late.

“This isn’t a real ticket, you see,” he said as he shook his head and looked at it as if he wished he could wave a magic wand and make it a real ticket, whatever that was.

“You’ve entered at the wrong end.  You’ll need to go to the visitors’ centre and exchange this voucher for your souvenir ticket, which is what we collect here.”

“Wha … where is the visitor center?” I asked with trepidation.

“About a mile down that road,” he waved in the opposite direction to where I had come from, “You can’t see it from here.”

“But I just walked four miles!” I groaned.  “This place isn’t set up for ramblers, is it?  It’s all car centric.”  I intentionally used the word rambler instead of walker, hoping he would feel that, despite my Mee’-neh-soda accent, I was sort of British, and he should let me in because this was my heritage.

He hesitated and then, after looking shiftily from side to side, said confidingly, “I’ll let you in, but you have to promise to go back to the visitors’ centre afterwards to exchange your ticket.”

“Oh I promise!” I lied.

“There’s a lovely café and gift shop there, too,” he added.  “And you can take a shuttle bus.”

He had me at café.

—

Stonehenge.  When I had asked Lynn and Richard and Possum at breakfast what they thought of it, Lynn had replied “It’s a bunch of big rocks in a field.”

And so it was.

Stonehenge was the latest in my grand tour of ancient sites, including Machu Picchu, the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul; Petra, in Jordan; Tikal, in Guatemala; Lalibela, in Ethiopia, and multiple other places in Israel/Palestine, Peru, Mexico, Malta, and El Salvador.  At least I was in, which is more than I can say for the Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni in Malta, which was closed for renovation when I arrived.

Sunday morning.  After breakfast at the hotel, I was off to Stonehenge.

“See you soon!” we all said as we hugged good-bye.  It was nice to be “over there” for an extended period of time.  Saying good-bye meant au revoir—until we meet again.  When I’m texting “good-bye!” to friends in Britain as I board a plane back to the States, I always wonder if I’ll ever come back to Britain again, if I’ll ever see them again.

Of course, it works the other way around, too. When I’m in Britain I miss my friends and family in the States, and when I’m here I miss my friends there.

My ticket for Stonehenge was for 15:00—3:00 pm.  The tickets actually said something like, “Please be on time or we cannot guarantee you admission.”

All I had to do to get there was take the tube from Barbican station to King’s Cross, then to Victoria, then find the Victoria Coach Station, then catch a coach at 11:00 for Amesbury, find the Econolodge and dump my bag, then figure out how to get to Stonehenge, which was some ways out of town.  How hard could it be?

As usual I had planned like I was on a military special operation.  I got to the coach station easily.  It’s on Buckingham Palace Road, which is a laugh because like all bus stations it’s seedy and run down and full of lurkers—but also nice middle aged couples probably going to visit their children at college.

My phone connected to the wifi in the station, albeit very slowly.  It wouldn’t connect at all during the three-hour coach ride, but it snapped up the wireless signal in the Econolodge.  All over Britain, I found that wireless would work on one bus but not the next, on the train one day but not the next, and so on.  Was it my phone?  Was it the wireless? I tried to be zen about it, whatever that means.  I was in the front row of the coach, where adverts prominently declared, “Free WIFI!”  “Now it’s so easy to stay connected!” “Download our free app!”  When I did finally connect at the Econolodge, there were a slew of emails from the coach company thanking me for my custom, urging me to sign up for special deals, asking me to complete a survey, and reminding me to download their f-cking app.

I pulled out my printed map and checked the route for the 10^th time.

Gulp.  The bus stopped south of the motorway, but the Econolodge was on the north side.  How would I get across?  Was there a bridge, or would I have to climb over a fence and dart across six lanes of speeding traffic like a deer?

As we pulled into town, I was elated to see a pedestrian underpass.  I jumped off the bus and hurried toward it, forgetting to ask the driver where the return bus departed.  In minutes I was north of the motorway but there was no Econolodge.  I walked back under the motorway, accompanied by some scruffy henge groupies, then back north again.  Then it dawned on me that this was all set up for people in cars.

Think like a car, I said to myself, and after walking through the bushes along the motorway off ramp, I found the motel.

I asked for a walking map to Stonehenge at the front desk and the woman did that British thing where they pull back their lips, clench their teeth, and suck in their breath, while looking down and away from you.  This means, “Oooh, that’s a very bad idea but I’m not going to say so.”  She handed me a map and advised, “Watch out for the bulls.”

“It’s two miles,” she said.

Two miles? Easy peasy.  I walked briskly. The views were fantastic.  The fields appear dry, I think, partly because we were in a heat wave with 90F+ temperatures.

Two miles … three … I saw the henge in the distance.

“Wow!” I exclaimed aloud.  If I had known this was the best view I would get all day, I would have savored it, but it was already 3:15.