100 Pictures of Stonehenge (or at least, it might feel like it)

It's a good thing I blogged every day in the month of October because writing and photo editing took a serious hit in November.  Let's flashback to our last days of vacation, though, shall we?

When we knew we were going down south for our vacation it seemed like the perfect time to visit Stonehenge.  Stonehenge is almost as synonymous with England as Big Ben for Americans, and we knew it would be pretty horrible to show our faces back in America without having seen this historic monument.  So:  CHECK.  We did it, and we took lots of pictures.

As ever, English Heritage (who manages the property) had wonderful activities for the kids, and we all had our own audio guide as well.  When we first began walking up to the monument I felt a little underwhelmed.  Stonehenge is such an iconic place in the historical imagination that there was an initial moment of letdown; however, that feeling changed for me the closer we got to the famous stone circle.

If there was ever a boy who loved audio guides, it is this boy.  Though it was not intended for children with extensive comments and speculation about how the stones came to be here and why, James faithfully listened to each segment.

Maybe it's because KJ is writing a book that has some important scenes taking place at Stonehenge, but I felt like there was so much "scope for the imagination" here, as Anne Shirley would say.  There is such a sense of history, and it was fun to imagine people coming here in the past for so many years. It definitely helped that we had a gorgeous day to complete our walk around the circle at a leisurely pace and really enjoy it.  If it had been wet, rainy, or windy I'm sure we would have been in a hurry to just get back inside.

It really is amazing to think of the effort involved in moving the stones and smoothing them and setting them up.  It really is a perfect location for a structure of some sort, as you can see it from a long way off.  There are still old pathways leading up to Stonehenge, and it is surrounded by barrows, believed to be where important people were buried.

Because we weren't in any great hurry we took the time to walk down the paths to some of the barrows.  I was a little surprised you were allowed to walk around on them.  But first, I did take a few more pictures from different angles.  I wanted to make sure KJ would be able to describe everything perfectly.

I even found a face in the rock.

I love the autumn colors in this picture of James.

We had watched Big Hero 6 the night before so the kids were giving each other fist bumps and saying, "Fa la la la."  It was a good day out for the Pugh fam.