It was the time of the day and the moment, yet here in the midst of the most populated area of one of the most heavily populated lands on earth was this great stretch of emptiness. We were only a few miles from Stonehenge now, and already we had begun to feel the aura of the place - that indefinable sense that so many others had mentioned. We parked our car. The British national monument people, who are a part of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, have been scrupulously careful to do nothing that would lessen the impact of the circle of stones standing alone in the immensity of Salisbury Plain. The parking lot is in a fold of the ground, almost out of sight.
Rest rooms are underground.
You come to Stonehenge, and it still stands alone as it has stood for so long. You walk up to it - and you become a part of it. It is a very strange place indeed. Technically speaking, Stonehenge is a cluster of dolmens - dolmen being a Cornish word that means holestone, namely any large stone upended and fixed in a hole in the ground. There are dolmens of one sort or another all over southern England and much of Western Europe.