Thursday: Stonehenge to Portsmouth.

July 17, 2014

Visitors from the twenty-first century gather round Stonehenge.

In retrospect I could've went up yesterday evening when nobody was about and watched the sun setting beyond the stones of Stonehenge, but when its growing late, I just think of camping and pedalled along the road from the visitor centre, pass a narrow paddock with curious sheep looking out at me; beyond which, is a plot of rough pasture with an open gate by the junction of a busy A road. It was a good place to camp, notwithstanding the traffic noise. This morning I sweep back along the road to the centre for nine o'clock.

I didn't know the procedure as I cycle pass the big building and olive green shuttle busses for ferrying visitors to and fro, and cycle up the gentle incline going on for a mile until over a crest and along a little more where the stone circle comes into view. The jobsworth guard by a shuttle bus unloading, turns me back, saying unsympathetically, I'll have to go back to the visitor centre to buy a ticket.

There's something not right about this place. I was here in 1999, when the road passed close by Stonehenge and I viewed the stones without leaving the road. Later I find out by reading the literature. The road I was on then is now the one mile service road from the new visitor centre to Stonehenge and the rest of the road onwards is closed and in the process of being ripped up and returned to original pastureland; also, the old visitor centre at the side of the road opposite the stone circle is now a demolition site, as the old building and car park are being removed. In fact the whole area around is being returned to un-marked pastureland and the original grass avenue approach to the Neolithic site is being restored.

Field next new visitor centre, one mile from Stonehenge, perhaps as near as farming activity will be allowed in future as the area around the Neolithic site is returned to original rough pasture.

I'm in two minds about paying the fifteen pound entrance fee at first. I could do with sitting down before returning in any case.

"How far do ye ride a day?" asks the man looking at my bike leaned against the wall, after I'd been sitting awhile writing my diary. "I try to do a hundred and ten k" I reply. "Hundred and ten kil-lom-meters. What happens when yeah run out of water?" "I already have run out of water" I say, pointing at the empty bottles, ironically it being another warm day.

He asked and I answered other usual questions, then says "he cycled from Missouri to Washington" nodding towards a younger man, perhaps his son, who was standing looking on. "Not bad, from what was once the American frontier home" I quip, which starts him off on a conversation on American expansion west.

I decide to buy a ticket and go see Stonehenge close up. From the road the last time they looked small, probably the distance, but close up I get a true perspective of the height of the stones.

Back by the visitor centre, my ticket entitles me to enter one of the small round houses with thatched roofs. The National Trust guy inside says, they don't know for certain, but arqueological digs uncovered hard circular floors, made from compacted chalk; and around the circumference of the circles, stake holes were unearthed, so these perhaps supported walls which were double wicker fences, on the inside and outside edges of the stake uprights. They made a mortar by mixing chalk and water to fill in the wall between and plaster the outer-sides. On top they constructed a conical roof with more stakes and thatched it over with wheaten straw. They believe they grew a primitive wheat then and made a simple unleavened bread over an open fire.

The reconstructed village the people who built Stonehenge are believed to have lived in.

I try refilling on water before leaving, but the water in the toilets is automatic to the touch of human hands and not to plastic bottles, and besides its warm. There's also a long queue in the coffee shop, so I set off south to Salisbury waterless.

Salisbury would've been as nice a place to stop for a few days off the bike as Bath. I walk round the huge cathedral, then spend an hour looking around for a place to eat. I really want a place where I can charge batteries and eventually settle for coffee and carrot cake in a Costa with ample power-points.

There's then a busy road south until I turn off upon country lanes in the New forest.

Friday morning there'd been thunder and rain during the night, but it dawned bright, then became grey with a touch of drizzle in the air as I reach Poole cross channel port. Finding it quiet, I thought there's a sailing mid morning, but a man in the ticket office tells me, the sailing to Cherbourg is at eight-thirty and there's no other sailing today, but suggests I take the train to Portsmouth, where there's a sailing at four-thirty in the afternoon, which I do.

Salisbury cathedral. Note the old couple bottom right; he's in a white suit and she in full length white dress, to deflect the sun; looking like the warm weather dress style of the late Victorian era up until the sixties.

Today's ride: 100 km (62 miles)
Total: 1,565 km (972 miles)

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