""You don't need eyes to see - You need... " a Stonehenge Travel Page by Ken-out-of-Bath

Thanks to Maxi Jazz for the quote.

To all the people that complain that they went to Stonehenge and just saw a pile of rocks ...

And to the people that moaned about paying £5.20 for the privilege ...

And for the skinflints that said, "You can see enough from the main road, if you're careful with the cars and stand on tiptoe to look over the fence." ...

I say, "You just don't get it!"

The inner circle of stones were manhandled over 400km, from Wales.

The outer circle came from much closer, just 100km away from the Marlborough Plains. Still a long way when you need to move them with manpower alone.

How did they move them? Why did they do it?

The large stones have one third of their length buried in the ground.

How did they lift them up?

There is a theory that every town and village in the area had a manpower tax applied, each had to provide men to move the stones and set them.

Over the years stones have been removed for building purposes and at one point a local blacksmith made his money by hiring out small hammers so that visitors could take a piece home (this will answer the people who ask why Stonehenge is roped off). I believe we are very lucky to have anything of Stonehenge left at all.

Some of the stones that have fallen down go red when they are wet so, for a while, people believed that the redness was blood and that the stones must have been used as sacrificial altars.

In fact the stones have a high iron content and the redness is just part of the oxidisation process.

For years people believed that Stonehenge was were where Druids worshipped but the stones are much older than that.

I prefer the theory that the area used to be a trading site and that the Henge was erected by local business men to show how great they were, a practice that has survived to the modern day!

Visit Stonehenge, start to ask questions, you won't stop and the answers will only ever be a best guess on an area that has had a Henge for over 5000 years.