Olympic torch relay organisers have reassured tourism bosses that the Olympic flame will visit the iconic backdrop of Stonehenge, after it was left off the official relay route through the West.
The Olympic torch will visit the Stonehenge prehistoric monument as part of its journey around Britain before the London 2012 Games
Instead of forming part of the public route through Wiltshire in July, the Olympic flame will be taken at dawn to the stones for a closed photo opportunity the morning after its overnight stop in nearby Salisbury.
The decision does mean, however, the public will not be able to descend on Stonehenge to see the once-in-a-lifetime moment it is carried around the Neolithic monument
English Heritage, which manages the stones, and Olympic Torch Relay bosses confirmed the early morning visit after publishing a route which did not include Stonehenge or Avebury.
Western Daily Press reader Margaret Scott said: "Obviously Stonehenge is one of the major tourist attractions in Britain and it just seemed ridiculous if the torch relay is going to Amesbury but not going a mile to the west to be run around Stonehenge. They surely are not missing it out?"
A spokesman for English Heritage said that they had been informed by the Olympic organisers that the torch would be driven to Stonehenge and back again early on July 12th, before it is scheduled to leave Salisbury Cathedral, for a photocall.
"Rest assured the opportunity to have the Olympic torch at Stonehenge is not going to be missed," said a spokesman.
The National Trust has also confirmed that the torch is due to be carried up to the top of Glastonbury Tor on Tuesday May 22 – again not as part of the published route, which merely suggests the relay will pound the streets of the town. But it appears there is not such good news for another of the West's historic sites.
An exploration of the parts of the Stonehenge world heritage site that most visitors miss out on. Starting at Woodhenge, the walk includes a visit to Durrington Walls, the Cuckoo Stone and the ancient burial mounds on King Barrow Ridge.
Why it's special
This is a trip back to 2500BC and beyond. While the Stonehenge stone circle was a place of burial in Neolithic times, Durrington Walls was where people actually lived and held feasts and rituals. The round barrows on King Barrow Ridge may also be around 4,500 years old.
Keep your eyes peeled for
Durrington Walls – the largest complete henge in Britain. The area outside the ditch and bank was once a settlement, perhaps containing hundreds of houses, making Durrington Walls potentially the largest village in north-west Europe at the time. Woodhenge stood nearby as an impressive timber circle surrounded by a bank and ditch.
Recover afterwards
In the restaurant of Amesbury's Antrobus Arms hotel , a 17th-century coaching inn where the Beatles stayed when shooting the film Help! on Salisbury Plain.
If it's tipping down
Head for the Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum in the King's House, a Grade I-listed building opposite Salisbury Cathedral, to revel in exhibitions of local archaeological finds (and there's fun stuff for kids too).
How to get there
From Salisbury railway station, take the X5 or the Stonehenge tour bus to Amesbury, then the 16 to Woodhenge.
Step by step
1 From the car park go through the nearest gate and head away from Woodhenge through the north field. Walk downhill into Durrington Walls.
2 Next, turn left and walk to the corner of this field. Pass through gates either side of the road, heading towards a stone (the cuckoo stone). From here continue to the next gate.
3 You are now on the route of the old military railway between Amesbury and Larkhill; turn right and follow the path.
4 When you reach a crossroads and National Trust sign to King Barrow Ridge, turn left and follow the shaded bridleway.
5 At the junction turn right through a gate to continue along the ridge, crossing the Stonehenge Avenue on your way to a line of 200-year-old beech trees and a view of Stonehenge.
6 Continue forward to New King Barrows, a fine row of early bronze-age burial mounds, originally capped in white chalk so they would have been visible from a far distance. Retrace your steps back towards the junction then turn right to follow the bridleway.
7 Take a left turn through a gap in the hedge to join the old military railway. This leads back to the gate in the corner of the Cuckoo Stone field.
8 Head across the grassland to Woodhenge and back to Woodhenge car park.
The stone slabs of England's Stonehenge may have been more than just a spectacular sight to the ancient people who built the structure; they likely created an acoustic environment unlike anything they normally experienced, new research hints.
"As they walk inside they would have perceived the sound environment around them had changed in some way,"said researcher Bruno Fazenda, a professor at the University of Salford in the United Kingdom. "They would have been stricken by it, they would say, 'This is different.'"
These Neolithic people might have felt as modern people do upon entering a cathedral, Fazenda told LiveScience.
Fazenda and colleagues have been studying the roughly 5,000-year-old-structure's acoustic properties. Their work at the Stonehenge site in Wiltshire, England, and at a concrete replica built as a memorial to soldiers in World War I in Maryhill, Wash., indicates Stonehenge had the sort of acoustics desirable in a lecture hall.
Stonehenge itself is no longer complete, so Fazenda and colleagues used the replica in Maryhill as a stand-in for the original structure. At both locations, they generated sounds and recorded them from different positions to see how the structure influenced the behavior of the sound.
At the replica, they found a reverberation time of just less than one second, the amount of time optimal for a lecture hall. Unlike an echo, which is a single response created when sound waves reflect off something, reverberation occurs when a sound is sustained by a quick succession of reflections arriving at different times.
Modern cathedrals can have reverberation times of about 10 seconds or more, while concert halls are designed so reverberation in them will last between two and five seconds, Fazenda said.
About one second of reverberation is "just enough for us to start becoming aware of it," he said.
Based on their work at Maryhill, the researchers believe the many stones within Stonehenge would have diffracted and diffused sound waves, creating reverberation. The large amount of diffusion and diffraction would have also lead to good sound quality regardless of where the listener was standing in relation the source of sound within the structure.
"What we found in Maryhill as a model for Stonehenge was you could almost stand behind a stone and keep talking with a good level of voice, and people would be able to hear you somewhere else," he said.
For the Neolithic people who built this structure, this sort of acoustic environment was likely quite unusual. They appear to have lived in smaller, thatched-roof homes made of wood, which would not have reflected sound as effectively. And the region around Stonehenge has no significant geographical features, like high cliffs, which are associated with echoes, or large caves, which are associated with reverberation, Fazenda said.
While some have suggested that Stonehenge was designed to create certain acoustic effects, Fazenda said he sees no evidence for this.
Rather than search for an acoustic motivation behind the construction of this mysterious structure, this research is intended to help better understand how the ancient people might have used the structure, he said.
Fazenda collaborated with Rupert Till of the University of Huddersfield in the UK and with archaeologist Simon Wyatt on this project.
