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Thursday afternoon March 5, we drove a short distance from Salisbury to Stonehenge. I paid 24 pounds in freezing conditions to photograph a pile of rocks! Heather had more sense and went to the coffee shop instead. It really is a spiritual site though, and I certainly appreciated the opportunity to photograph it!

I can’t help but ask why was it built? It has no practical purpose. It was not lived in and could not have been defended, so there must have been a spiritual reason why Neolithic and Bronze Age people put so much effort into building it. This remains to be quite a mystery!

A remarkable aspect of Stonehenge is where the stones came from. The larger stones are known as Sarsen which is a very hard sandstone, small boulders of which can be found in the area around Stonehenge. But the larger Sarsen can only be found 19 miles north of Stonehenge, on the Marlborough Downs in north Wiltshire. The smaller stones are known collectively as bluestones. It is interesting that these stones are only found in the Preseli Hills of Wales which is over 150 miles to the west of Stonehenge. There is no doubt about their origin: the mineral composition of stones from Stonehenge can be matched precisely with samples from Presili.

The first part of transporting the stones would have been by land but water transport may have also been important. The River Avon, which flows close to Stonehenge, is often suggested as forming the final part of the bluestones journey from Wales. 

Malcolm the shuttle bus driver said he enjoys the cold weather. My photo certainly indicates that!