Sunday, July 01, 2007

Stonehenge

It is 0430 in the morning. In this part of the world the sky is light and on this particular morning surprisingly clear. Frank has roused me from bed with the promise of a farmer’s breakfast . He won’t tell me where. “Just get going boy, we need to beat the crowds.” Crowds lining up for a farmer’s breakfast in England?! I have to see this. He grinned as he went out to warm up the Antichrist, the nickname for his treasured VW Combi. We drove into a clear day, clattering down lanes and between hedgerows wide enough only for the AntiChrist. In some places so narrow the oaks and hawthorns gave us a firm brushing clean. Pity help us if anyone was coming the other way. But at this time of the morning no one was about. Which was Frank’s point all along – there were no crowds at Stonehenge. Only the two of us. No traffic humming past. No ignorant commentary around us. Just the silence, a clear sky, a couple of unseen larks, and a warm sun. And none to see us jump the fence (access is normally via a steep fee and through a tunnel under the road from a car park a few hundred metres away) in order to get a decent photo. Then off to that breakfast. Well earned by the time we got there. And no crowds in the diner either.
May 1995

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