The Summer Solstice: bimbling with the druids
by Nidhi Bhaskar
On the longest day of every year, the medieval city of Salisbury and the surrounding villages come to life as they welcome hundreds of visitors for the annual Summer Solstice festival. This festival bears its origin in long-standing pagan rituals and has chosen the south of England as home due to the proximity of these cities to the iconic landmark of Stonehenge. The summer and winter solstices mark the only two days of the calendar year that the rope boundaries to the site of Stonehenge are removed and visitors may go up to and touch the stones. In this week’s Bimble blog, I’m sharing my one-of-a-kind experience of visiting Stonehenge during the Summer Solstice and will be taking you through some of my favourite recommendations in the surrounding cities of Salisbury and Stapleford, where I stayed. Come bimble with me on a wild odyssey.
After landing at Southampton airport around 8 PM the night before the Solstice, I caught the first train to Stapleford, where I would be staying. Due to the popularity of the festival among those in the know, lodging usually books out weeks in advance for the Summer Solstice. But since my trip was an impulse decision, booked the week before, my friend and I just about got away with getting one of the last rooms at the Pelican Inn, located about 5 miles away from the stones.
With lodging secured, the next order of business usually deals with getting to the stones themselves. Be warned — on this day, most bus lines only operate until 2:30 AM and are sold out in advance. Likewise, local cab companies are usually overbooked or shut down altogether due to the sheer volume. The best way to prepare is usually to book a bus ticket in advance or hire a rental car (pack about 20 pounds for parking!) and arrive at the site at 3 AM to make sure you catch the beginnings of the sunrise.
If, like us, you do neither of these things, prepare yourself for a three-hour trek through cornfields, along the side of the highway, and over a couple of barbed wire fences. The silver lining to this route, at least, for a city dweller like me, is that Salisbury Plain is a notoriously pastoral area, far removed from urban smog, and has perhaps the best opportunities of stargazing I’ve ever experienced.
Because of the incline of Salisbury Plain, the stones themselves seem to fade into sight, alongside the silhouettes of the crowds in the misty orange early-morning light. Walking past the few food stands and carpark areas, we were immediately met with the sounds of drumming and the clamor of voices and singing coming from the site.
One thing I wish I’d known before going was that getting into the center of the Stonehenge circle was easy, but required us to be standing for a while, as more and more people pack in until the room to move slowly disappears. Closer to the sunrise, the drumming got louder, and the subtle morning illuminated the crowds of people wearing pagan costumes, complete with expertly twisted flower crowns, long colouful robes, wooden walking sticks, smoking pipes, and about ten different varieties of instrumental horns.
Beside me, two men hug either side of an enormous vertical stone, leaning in with eyes closed, arms almost touching, and listening as though they were absorbing some long-forgotten wisdom from a pipeline directly from Mother Nature. As the first shades of orange light come up across the sky, most of the people in pagan costume begin chanting, blowing their instruments and singing louder and louder. For the actual sunrise, however, for a few surreal moments, almost everyone there, fell silent, speaking in hushed tones and collectively reveling as the sun rise directly aligned with the heel-stone, as promised.
The festivities continued long after the sun risen. As the day got steadily warmer, people begin to play instruments and sing with a renewed energy. The unlikely amalgamation of people gathered at the site intermingle and disperse across the nearby fields. Near the heel-stone, two women in full Druid regalia fall deep in conversation with a group of college students from Ireland. A small crowd gathers around a middle-aged man attempting to scale one of the stones, as the police rush to the scene to pry him off. The two of us stayed for a while, just to take it all in and appreciate this gathering of the unlikeliest group of people on the longest day of the year for one of the strangest pagan festivals in the world.
When it finally comes time to leave the site, the trip is remarkably uncomplicated as compared to the odyssey we went through to get here mere hours before. The bus takes us directly to the city center, where we got pancakes at the Boston Tea Party before crashing into sleep for several hours.
To celebrate the longest day of the year, my companion and I returned to the Salisbury city center in the evening to see the city. We had some delicious Thai food at Thai Orchid and later walked around the city center and the outside of the cathedral. After a relaxed dessert of ice cream at Sprinkles Gelato, we returned to the inn for a night of stargazing in the plains and packing up our belongings prior to our train ride back.
All images courtesy of Nidhi.
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