Tuesday 17 May 2016

megaliths and magic roundabouts

After leaving the port of Dover, the harbour dominated by an impressive defensive castle constructed under the reign of Henry II, and taking some time to get orientated—and the traffic gauntlet of first reacquainting oneself to driving on the other side of the road when fresh out of the ferry challenged with a lasso-like loop of a roundabout (and there were some compound traffic circles along the way) with other impatient drivers beginning their journeys, we embarked towards lands east.
Our first stop along the way was to the megalithic stone circle at Amesbury in Wiltshire County, conveniently just off the main motorway crossing the country.
Everyone is familiar with images of Stonehenge and has ideas about the enduring mystery of five millennia of this time out of mind cursus.
Many—unfairly, I think, would humbug this place as a tourists’ trap and not the best or most accessible example of this genre but the experience was pretty mystical and inspired us to learn more. We’d read the various complaints but barriers to appreciating the site had been removed, and we were lucky to visit when the place was not thronged with gawking crowds and got the full, unadulterated impression—the sort that requires one to exercise the imagination, which I don’t know if we always care to use while on holiday. What purpose do you think Stonehenge served?