tjj
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 12, 2009, 14:40
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suave harv wrote: megadread wrote:
Your much better off visiting stonehenge for the winter solstice to be honest, chavs hate the cold.
Just my opinion based on experience. ; )
I much prefer the Winter solstice too, but if someone wants to 'experience the summer solstice at Stonehenge' I reckon the Winter one just won't work.
I'm going to try and get to the winter one again this year. Stop in a travel-lodge near Salisbury, meal in the town the night before, park on a verge the next morning. . a few hundred at the stones, cup of soup, a "blessed be" and job's a good un!
http://www.chavtivity.com/
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Penske666
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 12, 2009, 15:05
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To be honest you're best going to another stone circle, Think I'll be off to Bar Brook or Arbour Low mesen!
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megadread
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 12, 2009, 15:35
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Penske666 wrote: To be honest you're best going to another stone circle, Think I'll be off to Bar Brook or Arbour Low mesen!
Ooh, i'll be at Arbor low for this years winter solstice too.
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Pete G
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 13, 2009, 00:27
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I'd better stop selling tickets on Ebay then....
will be at the usual place on solstice morn?
Pete
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megadread
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 13, 2009, 02:30
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nigelswift wrote: "It's also full of 16 year olds with attitude, they've usually took along a bottle of coke, well i say a bottle of coke, it's 70% vodka in reality so they can get it past security, the hardcore chavs down several cans of special brew before entry too just for good measure."
... but where is the archaeological evidence that they aren't replicating the original gatherings very accurately?
;)
Neolithic tea lights, bronze age special brew, people with drums who can't play them, plastic tat "offerings", druids. !!!
You show me evidence and you got yourself a convert.
Need i say more. :)
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goffik
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 13, 2009, 07:30
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Heh!
I'm sure lots of people have very different experiences at these places. I know plenty of people who go to Stonehenge (and Avebury) every summer solstice and have a fantastic time without all the booze, tealights and tat.
That said, if I were inclined to go *anywhere* for solstice, I doubt it would be Stonehenge - it just seems like too ouch hassle!
For me, Avebury would be the preferred option out of the 2 in the area. Less restriction and herding. And you can stay all day and night!
But again - I've heard of similar things going on there, too. It's gonna happen at the more popular sites, innit?
If I had to make a choice, I'd go somewhere much more secluded and less well known than either of the places mentioned.
I know what Nigel's saying, though. I had a conversation with Andy Worthington some years back saying that I'd never fancied visiting these places when they're so hectic and busy, and often preferred solitude (obviously not necessarily at Stonehenge or Avebury! Lol!). We theorised that some places really seemed to "come alive" when lots of people gather there, likening them to churches. An empty church, for example, being a very different place to one full of people singing and having fun. (I'm guessing that's what happens in churches -
I've heard of mostly happy experiences at both Stonehenge and Avebury at summer solstice. There will always be elements that perhaps enjoy themselves in a different way to what a lot of people would like, but who knows - maybe it really WAS always like that, way back when! We just don't know, do we? :)
G x
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moss
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Edited Jun 16, 2009, 09:10
Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 16, 2009, 08:22
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Salisbury news on the Solstice at Stonehenge......
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/journalnewsindex/4437340.Thousands_expected_at_solstice/
also 'lyrical' moments by Laura Burton - Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/jun/16/stonehenge-bartons-britain
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nigelswift
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 16, 2009, 10:07
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"We theorised that some places really seemed to "come alive" when lots of people gather there"
Yes, well that's about the only possible clue we have to how people behaved in there.
Maybe we all carry a subconscious bias... Stonehenge is ancient and made of stone so it's a cross between a cathedral and a museum ergo a place for sobriety and reverence and attendants in caps keeping order, and chucking out promptly. Maybe all those things are the exact opposite of how it was. Maybe the EH people should strip off and egg people on to act outrageously for weeks on end. Or do they prefer to create Stonehenge in their own image of it? I demand evidence for their imposition of their particular notion of how solstice celebrations ought to be.
;)
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goffik
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 16, 2009, 10:45
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Well, of course! Who knows, indeed...
Personally - and rather selfishly - I prefer these places to meself. And by "meself", obviously I mean with the family.
G x
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moss
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Re: Summer Solstice
Jun 16, 2009, 11:02
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nigelswift wrote: "We theorised that some places really seemed to "come alive" when lots of people gather there"
Yes, well that's about the only possible clue we have to how people behaved in there.
Maybe we all carry a subconscious bias... Stonehenge is ancient and made of stone so it's a cross between a cathedral and a museum ergo a place for sobriety and reverence and attendants in caps keeping order, and chucking out promptly. Maybe all those things are the exact opposite of how it was. Maybe the EH people should strip off and egg people on to act outrageously for weeks on end. Or do they prefer to create Stonehenge in their own image of it? I demand evidence for their imposition of their particular notion of how solstice celebrations ought to be.
;)
Well as one who has been putting news up, I do feel people don't half make a fuss about the crowds... go to Bath, festival after festival, fairs in the park - people enjoying themselves. Glastonbury festival down the road, again people enjoying themselves...yet when it comes to Solstice we pussyfoot around the subject....does it have to be religious - no, the act of being alive watching a natural event unfold and joining in a social event....
Stonehenge is truly an icon, and everyone brings to it their particular viewpoint, you can't regulate or narrowly define its role in history, we all make up the story as we go along or what particular book we happen to be reading at the time - all to no avail cos there's always another one being written.....
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