ASIANOVERLAND.NET SYDNEY TO LONDON DAY 173: STONEHENGE TO WOKING, ENGLAND 

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in England, consisting of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet high, seven feet wide, and weighing about 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones, and inside these are free-standing trilithons, two heavier vertical sarsens joined by a lintel. The whole monument is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of ancient monuments in England, including hundreds of burial mounds.

Stonehenge was constructed from around 3000 BC, and the surrounding circular earth bank and ditch have been dated to about 3100 BC.

Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records apart from Stonehenge itself. The site, including the great trilithon, the encompassing horseshoe arrangement of the five central trilithons, the heel stone, and the embanked avenue, are aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the opposing sunrise of the summer solstice.

Britain was inhabited by groups of hunter-gatherers who were the first inhabitants of the island after the last Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago. The early Scots built the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago, including the well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney.  

DNA extracted from human remains across Britain shows that early European farmers  came from the Eastern Mediterranean, travelling west, as well as Western hunter-gatherers from western Europe. DNA studies indicate Aegean ancestry, originally from Anatolia. Aegean farmers then moved to Iberia before heading north, reaching Britain around 4,000 BC.

The Heel Stone lies northeast of the sarsen circle, beside the end portion of Stonehenge Avenue. It is a rough stone, 16 feet above ground, leaning inwards towards the stone circle.  At the Summer solstice, standing within the stone circle, looking northeast through the entrance, you can see the Sun rise in the direction of the Heel Stone.

Woking Farm is my Top Deck homebase to prepare a Double Decker bus, INTER, for a seven-week winter European trip starting 12 December,1980. My overland driver Gary Hayes is back from Kathmandu for a European drive. The trip takes me back to Istanbul for the third time in six months - Istanbul was an important stop on the London to Kathmandu overland from June to August 1980; and the return overland from Kathmandu to London, which finished on 3 December, 1980. The overland brochure is here – Top Deck Asian Overland Brochure 1979-80 Version 2.pdf

We haven’t travelled all this way from Australia to let the grass grow under our feet, so we head to Ballantyne to stock up INTER with dry stocks for a European trip. I pick up the Top Deck brochure, which tells me the itinerary, where we are going, and what the highlights are (meant to be). The punters have paid 310 pounds for the seven-week European trip, plus food kitty 84 pounds, so my food budget for the seven-week European trip is less than two pounds per pax per day. Luxury!!

Top Deck Europe Brochure 1981 (1).pdf

↑ Day 172 ↓ Day 174