Neolithic landscape

Today’s guide led walk started at Durrington Walls and Woodhenge, then past the Cuckoo Stone before heading across the fields and approaching Stonehenge along the feature known as The Avenue. Then around Stonehenge before heading to the visitor centre. Key dates this week have been 3000BC, 2500BC and 1500BC. The understanding of Stonehenge and the wider landscape has increased hugely in the last 20 or so years. It wasn’t about druids and it wasn’t about the summer solstice - it was about the winter solstice, and it was about the dead. I’ve some good books to read.

The experience has all changed since I last visited, and for the better. The mess of tatty visitor centre and car parks adjoining Stonehenge has gone. The new visitor centre is brilliantly designed (Australian architects Denton Corker Marshall, see extra), miraculously blending into the landscape, and is a mile walk away from Stonehenge itself). All that’s now needed is to put the A303 into a tunnel.

After lunch (a pub marquee by the Avon) it was onto the Salisbury Museum and a talk by the Director. Another brilliant museum with fantastic exhibits. I hadn’t realised that the museum was in the cathedral close, so took the opportunity to go inside the cathedral and light a candle. We returned to our hotel via Old Sarum, built on an Iron Age hill fort.

I cannot believe how lucky we’ve been with the weather this week.