Stonehenge Solstice

Stonehenge Summer Solstice

Any bucket list of things to do MUST contain a visit to Stonehenge to see the sun rise on the Summer Solstice. It's something I have wanted to do for many years but something or other has interrupted or diverted my attentions. This year, 2023, a fellow geocacher by the name of Richard (Wandering Druid) posted an event for the solstice, meeting at a track about 5km away in the wee small hours of 21st June. I noted that many of the planned attendees were also cachers with whom we knew each other making this a no-brainer...

Arriving early we were offered coffee and hot dogs, and then soon we had a dark and misty walk up the tracks, bedecked with head torches and trying to navigate in the gloomy ink skies. After an hour of walking we could see a blue glow and a buzz of drums, horns, chants and chatter; and then the stones magically appeared out of nowhere!

We managed to move to the centre (at which a certain smoked air was omnipresent) and waited patiently as the dark progressed do a pre-dawn twilight and soon brighter skies approached... and then there was clapping and horns and panpipes and the sun peaked itself out from the northeast to the crowd's delight.

It was another hour before we made it back to our cars and then a return home for an hour's power nap before work... I think this was my first all-nighter in over 30 years and I survived it !