We visited Avebury, in the Southwest of England, which is probably one of the most famous and significant world heritage sites. It’s called Stonehenge.
Stonehenge is the world’s best-known ancient stone circle, lying at the heart of one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Europe. Built around the same time as the Great Pyramid in Egypt, 4,500 years ago, the finished monument of massive and finely dressed sarsen stone was unlike anything ever seen across Europe. It is a powerful memorial to a key period of British and European history, a time of transformations when landscape was being monumentalised in completely new ways as part of communities’ changing relationships with the land.
The National Trust visitor centre was very busy with tourists from all over the world. It was like a magnet, drawing admirers to one of the most impressive prehistoric sites in the world.
Once we’d looked around the exhibition, we took a courtesy bus up to the site of the stones, where we could walk right around the outside of them. They were imposing, and the weather was damp, dull, and cold.
Our National Trust membership made the visit worthwhile as Stonehenge is covered despite being an English Heritage site.
