The night seemed colder than those previous; we were glad to
have our winter pyjamas, the excellent duvet that Chris’s sister had lent us and
the good insulation this motorhome has. We could say much against this camper
as far as considering the purchase thereof, especially since we are driving
around with a great big advertisement on the back suggesting a sale price of 16,395
GBP or similar. The body rattles and bangs and there a dozen other sundry
features which are so inferior to our own motorhome languishing in that paddock
in Christchurch, however all in all, it is superior to my earlier expectations
so what more can I say.
We have been chasing toilet chemical, that required for
portable toilets to assist the decomposition of the offerings and deodorise the
resulting scents, as mentioned yesterday. This morning we phoned the outfit
suggested by customer services at Tesco yesterday; the girl at the end of the line had no
idea what we were talking about. However on leaving Robin Hill Farm, we asked
our hostess who suggested a caravan and accessories outlet in Old Sarum’s
Industrial Estate, and so we headed there to test our luck, duly rewarded,
coming away with a one litre bottle of Aquachem, a product we are familiar
with. This frantic search can now be put behind us; thank goodness!
We headed north on the A345, back up through Amesbury to
Woodhenge, the less celebrated of these ancient prehistorical sites.
Archaeologists believe that some of the sarsen stones at
Stonehenge were shaped and put in place by the people who lived at the
Durrington Walls settlement about 4,500 years ago, a settlement discovered in
the fields below the car park at this spot. Here the gigantic Neolithic
earthworks of Durrington Walls can be traced; the site of the timber circle and
other ancient places.
The National Trust owns and cares for more than 800 hectares
of the ancient landscape within the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
Here at Woodhenge can be found evidence of a timber monument
with six oval rings of posts, built at about the same time as Stonehenge. The
wooden posts were of various sizes, with those in the largest ring possibly
standing 9 metres tall. The oval rings were broadly aligned in the direction of
midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, the same as Stonehenge. No one actually
knows how Woodhenge was used, but people placed many objects and animal bones
among the posts, even after some had rotted.
Here too on the Woodhenge site is the Cuckoo Stonefield
under which lie the remains of almost 6,000 years of human activity. About
3,500 BC early farmers built a long barrow here. Toward the top of the field is
a fallen sarsen stone known as the Cuckoo Stone. During the Neolithic period it
was placed upright less than a metre from where it lies now. About 2,400 BC,
when the settlement at Durrington was in use, people built a row of enormous
timber structures that stood just to the south of the concentric wooden
monument of Woodhenge. These may have been timber platforms or buildings
connected with the dead – later, during the early Bronze Age, the cremated
remains of three people were buried in pots near the Cuckoo Stone.
From here too are some early Bronze Age burial mounds, or
round barrows. These are known as the Cursus Barrows, because they were built
alongside the much older Cursus. The people who were buried here lived several
hundred years after the stones were raised at Stonehenge.
It
is not very far to Stonehenge from here, but Woodhenge is open to all for no charge, the sight offering a
number of walks. But Stonehenge, which once upon a time did the same, is now
highly commercialised and can only be accessed via the Visitors Centre which in
turn is accessed by the one purpose built road, contrary to years gone past. Over fifty years ago Chris came here with his family travelling in a Combi -van; they camped in the woods nearby, the recently deceased Dave skinned a road-killed rabbit for dinner and they all wandered over to Stonehenge at their leisure, viewing them up very close and personal.
Nowadays one pays an entry fee of 14.95 GBP, can walk the couple of miles up the access road or catch the shuttle bus, or do a combination of the two which we did today, has access to an excellent exhibition / museum, modern washrooms and a café which no doubt takes advantage of the captive public. Forunately for us, our National Trust subscription allowed us free entry although we did buy a souvenir booklet, so the experience was not entirely spend-free.
Chris
was initially very scathing of the changes and had suggested that we merely
drive past the site rather than be “ripped off” , however he did have to admit
the new “crowd controlled” systems are well done, and although one can no
longer stroke the stones, the tourist is still given value for money, and so we
spent a couple of hours or more here which rather altered our plans for the
day.
Stonehenge
is a prehistoric temple, its great stones raised about 4,500 years ago. It is a
masterpiece of engineering, with stones carefully arranged to line up with the
movements of the sun. The
ruin seen today is the end result of many different stages of construction and
rebuilding in prehistory. The first major event, 5,000 years ago, was the
construction of a large circular enclosure. About 500 years later enormous
sarsen stones were raised in a horseshoe and a circle, with smaller bluestones
placed between them. Later the bluestones were rearranged. Since
construction activities at Stonehenge ceased in the early Bronze Age, some of
the stones have been removed from the site and many have fallen. Some were
re-erected during restoration, which started in 1919, continued in episodes and
completed in 1964.
I
was interested to learn the very recent history of the site, that in 1899, Sir
Edmund Antrobus inherited Stonehenge as part of the Amesbury Abbey estate. His
son, Lieutenant Edmund Antrobus died in action soon after the outbreak of the
First World War. Four months later Sir Edmund died of a broken heart, and in
1915, the Amesbury Abbey estate, including Stonehenge, was put up for auction.
Cecil
Chubb, a canny lawyer was the successful buyer and soon after, gave it to the
nation in September 1918. His gift reflected the idea growing before the war,
that ancient monuments needed to be preserved and that the state should
intervene to do so.
Needless
to say, we had had low expectations of
our Stonehenge experience; the reality delighted!
Bath
was still our destination but the day was rushing away, so we set off further
west, on up toward Warminister, a hive of defense department acticities. We
pulled into the town, called into one of the supermarkets and bought up large
as we seem to do far too often these days, then walked up to the town centre,
up and down both sides of the centre’s streets, less impressive than those of
Marlborough but still with a certain charm.
Back
on the road we soon came to a sign that suggested our route ahead was closed
and so we set off this time following the “Diverted Traffic” signs, driving directly north to Trowbridge, a much
larger town of which we learned nothing except that our route took us this way
and that and finally we found the A366 heading west to Hungerford, location of Westwood Manor, Farleigh Hungerford Castle
and Ilford Manor. We continued on soon reaching the A36 from which we had been diverted, crossing over and soon arriving at this East Somerset farm belonging to our host. He is a man of many years, now alone but for his “lady friend” whom we might well have passed on the road, according to his advice. His farm of seventy acres is devoid of domestic livestock, a small Jack Russell the only four legged occupant. He grows wheat and a bit of hay and seems to spend his time driving his big old tractor with a massive farm trailer in tow, up one access lane then down another. Perhaps we shall learn more on further acquaintence; we have booked and paid for two nights. In the meantime, the forecasted rains have arrived; I just hope they have cleared by morning.
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