Wow. I don't even know where to begin with this one. So I guess the begging would be a good start...
After carefully considering our game plan for the evening/morning and learning two important new pieces of information (1. that they weren't letting people in to Stonehenge until 10:00 PM and 2. that we were only allowed to bring two cans of beer per person with us), we made some slight changes to the initial itinerary. Instead of leaving at 8:00 we decided to take the last train to Salisbury (the nearest train station to Stonehenge), which left London at 10:27. We used the extra time to do a power hour and fill several large water bottles with very strong screwdrivers for the train ride.
We got to the train station 20 minutes before our train was supposed to leave. We promptly spent about 18 minutes trying unsuccessfully to obtain tickets via the automatic ticket machines, which all bore an overwhelming prejudice against our American credit cards. Hearing the conductor yell, "Last call, all aboard!" and not willing to miss our once-in-a-lifetime trip, we sprinted to the platform and boarded the train without tickets. It wasn't until we were safely on the train and it had gotten up to full speed that we started to worry about what we were going to say to the conductor when he came by to check everyone's tickets. Had we not been drinking so much before hand we probably would have considered this topic earlier, but as it is its probably best we didn't over think this one. Luckily the conductor was very understanding and let us pay cash for our tickets on board (we even got a group discount for having for people that we wouldn't have gotten from the ticket machines). After that the four of us settled in to play some drinking games and finish our screwdrivers.
When we got to Salisbury we took a bus for another 20 minutes to get to Stonehenge. On this bus ride we met some pretty interesting characters. A British hippy girl who I'm pretty sure was on some sort of hallucinogens managed to convince one of my flatmates to let her draw a butterfly on his cheek in glittery paint. Without knowing my flatmate its difficult to convey how funny this was, but let's just say he's up there with Mike Tyson and Dick Cheney at the top of the list of people I'd never expect to let a tripping girl draw on their face with glitter.
While this was happening I learned an important lesson about judging people by their appearance. I struck up a conversation with a guy sitting next to me who looked like he would be an interesting and nice guy. He turned out to be kind of an asshole. He claimed to be American, but said he "wasn't really American anymore" because he had been living abroad for the last ten years or so. That was fine, except he was more of a dick to me about my being American than any of the europeans I've met while I've been here. He went on to tell me about how he was stationed in Okinawa while he was in the Marines, but I found this story a little hard to believe considering the picture he showed me that was allegedly him in uniform was of a white guy with a little rim of blonde hair poking out from under his dress-hat, and the guy sitting in front of me was black with three-foot-long dreadlocks. I was glad to get off that bus when we finally arrived at Stonehenge.
Once the bus dropped us off we had about fifteen minutes of walking through fields before we got to the actual stones. This was pretty exciting because we could hear drums and the sound of revelry coming from the top of the hill as we completed this final stage of our journey. I was also pretty interested to see how close they were going to let us get to the actual site itself. I knew ahead of time that they fenced off the stones sometime in the late 70s and that tour groups were forced to gaze in wonderment at this awesome, mysterious structure through chain link from about a hundred yards off. What I didn't know was that the summer solstice is one of the four times a year that people are actually allowed all the way up to and INSIDE the circle of stones. According to news reports, this year's celebration drew a record-setting 36,000 people.
After politely demonstrating to the security guards that I was carrying only the allowed four cans of beer, we made our way through the crowd up to the stones. Maybe it was our slightly drunken but very awe-inspired determination, but before we knew it we had made our way right into the heart of the crowd.
In the middle of the stones we met a very interesting individual that on first sight I could only assume to be a wizard. He had long, unkempt grey hair down to about his elbows and a pointed beard that ended at the same place as his hair. He was also wearing robes, a hooded cape, and carried a tall wooden staff. Naturally, I engaged him in conversation at the first opportunity. His name was Mark, and as it turned out he was not a wizard, but a devotee to the druid religion (and an incredibly nice guy). He was born on a farm a few miles away from Stonehenge and has attended the solstice celebrations his entire life, with the exception of the fifteen years from 1985-2000 that the site was closed on the solstice following a violent clash between visitors and police in 1985.
At this point we were wedged between two of the fallen stones from the monument, one of which Mark was sitting on. I asked him if it would be alright if I stood up on the other (there were already lots of other people doing so, but I figured its his religion so he'd know best). He paused contemplatively for a while and responded that it would be alright, as long as I did so "with respect in my heart." I figured I could get on board with that sentiment, so I climbed up to get a better view of the celebration. This is the sight that greeted me:
You would think that a loud, noisey, crowd that looked more like it belonged at a music festival than at one of the world's most ancient landmarks - combined with all of the drinking and a strong smell of something "magical" burning nearby - would have taken away some of the sense of awe and wonderment I was feeling. But this absolutely was not the case. Throughout the entire night I somehow could never quite shake the feeling of amazement that I was actually standing in the middle of Stonehenge.
Earlier today I got online and found an aerial view of Stonehenge, from which I was able to figure out where the rock was that we stood on all night (its marked with the red dot):
While up on the rock I met Mark's son, Tim. He was dressed normally, but I couldn't help but notice the irony that he shares a name with the wizard from Montey Python and the Holy Grail. When I told him, "You're Mark's son? Dude your dad is so cool!" He just sort of quizzically shrugged his shoulders and said, "Umm, yeah I guess..." - pretty much the same reaction I would probably have if my dad was out in public dressed like Gandalf.
One of the really cool things about Stonehenge is that on the solstice the sun rises directly through the middle of the three openings in the pillars from the picture above (not the one with the red dot, the one before it). Sadly, there was enough light cloud cover that we couldn't really see the sun come up as a big circle in the sky. But witnessing the dawn break over the crowd of people who stood their together all night was still a remarkable experience.
Even when it was undeniably morning, we all kept our vigil for as long as we could.
Part of me wanted to hold out until most of the crowd had wandered off so I could have as close to a quiet moment as I could hope for, but my flatmates were all getting tired and after a night spent on my feet rather than sleeping I didn't really trust myself to make it back home on my own if I stayed behind. Somehow, though, despite standing on one of the stones, occasionally having to defend my spot, for a little over seven hours, I actually felt pretty chipper - albeit a little brain-dead. This is evidenced by my very enthusiastic but somewhat dopey pose for this final picture:
The rest of the story is not really that interesting. It involves a lot of unnecessary walking trying to find our bus back to the train station (we received bad directions on several occasions from well-meaning but poorly informed security staff), sleeping on the train and almost missing our stop back in London, getting home, taking a most blissful shower, and finally going to bed at about 11:30 am.
I know that this was a really long post (sorry, but it was a really long story), so congratulations to those of you who made it to the end with me. Here's your song of the day (I hope the significance is obvious):
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