I figured it deserves its own post, seeing as how it’s the reason I came to Salisbury
The bus trip left from the train station, which is right by where I’m staying, so that was very convenient. I’d picked the bus tour option because it means I didn’t have to pick a time slot to go and see the stones, I could just rock on up whenever.
(A much more diverse crowd, age-wise, than the Bournemouth bus trip; I might have been the youngest person on that bus at times)
Bus takes you to the visitor centre, or more accurately the visitor centre coach park, and you slightly confusingly bypass one queue for the shuttle bus to the stones in favour of walking to the actual visitor centre to join an entirely different queue for the shuttle bus to the stones. I took the shuttle, but in hindsight kind of wish I’d walked, because seeing the thing as you walk over the hill would probably be a pretty awesome sight. If I go back, and I might, I’ll do that; I walked back, and it was quite pleasant.
It was simultaneously bigger and smaller than I was imagining; Taller, and the stones are somehow more massive, but also way more compact in its footprint.
I’m not really sure how one is supposed to ‘do’ Stonehenge, but what I did was to read the plaques, look at it and at the surrounding countryside, and do a very slow circuit of the thing, taking photos from time to time if I saw something that looked interesting.
As I said, I decided to walk back. It was a nice day, and it looked like a nice stroll through some fields.
The visitor centre had a bunch of interpretation exhibits, models of how the site had developed and been reworked, that sort of thing.
Second part of the tour bus trip was Old Sarum/Sarum Castle, one of those “absolutely everyone who ever lived in this area saw this hill and built stuff on it” spots with a history going back thousands of years. Most of what’s still visible as a construction is comparatively recent, so less than a thousand years old, but some the earthworks are much older.
It was a good day, and I’m glad I went.