This time we're on top of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire
visiting one of the wonders of the world the stone circle Stonehenge.
The iconic location is protected as a world heritage site and managed by English Heritage.
With over a million visitors a year booking in advance is essential. Check out the website on
screen now for booking, pricing and opening hours or click the link in the description. There are
also organized coach trips from London, Salisbury or Bath so you can easily see Stonehenge in a
day even if you don't have your own transport. So it's about a mile and a half walk from the
welcome centre. It's a beautiful day today to do that. Nice crisp morning, it's going to be
a lovely walk but you can take the shuttle bus as well if you didn't want to do that.
Buses run every few minutes from the welcome centre and if it's a gloomy day I might suggest it
but today is gorgeous and so please do take the 30-minute walk across the beautiful
countryside. One top tip though is to use the toilet before you head to the stones as there
are no facilities around Stonehenge itself. You can pick up an audio guide at the welcome centre
to take with you down to Stonehenge because there isn't really a lot down there
other than the stone circle itself. You can also, get an app that you can download
onto your phone and as long as you bring your headphones with you you can use that as well.
So you might just be able to see Stonehenge appear in the silhouette in the distance just past the
bus station that's in front of it as we're walking down.
We know that from carbon dating around the 1950s, we have a pretty good idea now that
Stonehenge was built some 5000 years ago, 3000 bc, by late stone age people and originally it
was a ditch and an embankment around the circles with some wooden dwellings inside. They found
that it was used as a burial ground with some 2000 cremated remains being put in the circle.
There's a one-way path to take you around the stones at the moment due to covid. As you walk
around you see all over the plains these mounds and I can count probably 20- 30 of those right now
as you look out over the Salisbury plains.
These are also burial grounds known as barrows there are over 300 of them.
Archaeologists know that it took about 1200 years to create the stone circle and they were
rearranged several times. In fact, this is the only one in the world that has the lintels on top.
You can just about see the ditch and embankment that forms the raised circle.
The ditch was dug by deer antlers and its early use was as a cemetery.
So the stones didn't end up in this position for no good reason,
they believe that they're in a calendar formation. Some of the stones line up with the midsummer
sunrises and also with the winter solstice sunset and thousands of people still come here
year on year to celebrate that period on the longest and shortest days.
The largest stones are called sarsens, a hard stone
and the tallest measures over 30 feet or nine meters high.
Two meters of which is underground. They weigh around 25 tons. They believe these
larger stones were dragged from up to two miles away from Marlborough downs. The smaller stones
called blue stones, a form of volcanic stone with a gray and blue colour came from the Preseli Hills
in southwest Wales, over 150 miles away. They were probably the first to arrive at the circle.
Incredible when you think all of this would have been done by manpower alone,
no machinery to drive them or cart them here. The wheel had not even been invented by then.
Back at the welcome centre, you can see a mock-up of how they might have moved the stones.
Sleighs consisting of tree trunks were used to roll them across the fields,
being pulled and dragged by oxen or men. The river Avon is not too far from here
so it's also possible that they floated them somehow closer to this location on the river.
Whilst we're back at the centre momentarily you can also see some neolithic dwellings.
These could well have been similar to those used by the people who built Stonehenge.
You can usually pop inside for talks and demonstrations but
COVID has put a stop to that for the time being.
This is the heel stone, a sarsen stone but this one has not been shaped and remains
as it was naturally. The heel stone sits at the end of what's called the avenue,
this runs for about two miles linked to the banks of the River Avon.
The bronze arrows point in the directions you can see the summer solstice sunrise
over the heel stone or the winter solstice sunset in the opposite direction.
So you can't get too close to the stones now. I think it was about 20 years ago they stopped
people from being able to walk in between the stones because people were just damaging it
too much by touching it, taking pictures and I think people were even inscribing their names
on it which is awful, but there is a special tour that you can do if you book in advance
on the English Heritage website. They will take you on a special guided tour into the stones
in a small group. It's quite expensive I'll put the price up on the screen now
and if you want more information on that then do check out the English Heritage website.
As we walk around the circle we arrive at what's called the back view. This side is not so well
built and some of the sarsen stones are not as tall or positioned closer together with a less
sculptured lintel on top. They think possibly this side was less important than the other
and so was maybe erected more quickly or not completed at all.
Many stones have fallen or been removed over the years as a consequence of this.
Look out for the stones with the knobble tops or tenons as they're known. These help support the
lintel, think of it as stone-age lego! We saw a tenon on the mock-up sarsen stone earlier.
Having enjoyed the stone circles there are a number of walking trails
across the plains you can take or as we did walk back towards the welcome centre.
There is an exhibition hall that continues your tour with neolithic exhibits and
continues to tell you the story of Stonehenge but sadly today that was closed due to covid.
The welcome center has a shop and cafe if you need to get something to eat and of course,
don't forget that Stonehenge is also in a good location to travel onwards to wonderful places
like Salisbury Winchester or even out to the georgian spa city of Bath about an hour away.
I hope you enjoyed the tour here at Stonehenge today, it's been a glorious day.
We've had a really good time. Remember to like and subscribe and join us on the journey,
we've got lots more on our channel, so thanks very much for watching and we'll see you again soon.