Stonehenge rocks at summer solstice
25th June 2011

As we climb the hill we join others moving in the same direction and soon we are at the edge of the crowd. We press on, working our way into the throng. The night is filled with laughter and the beat of jungle drums, the scene lit by camera flashes and blue arc lights.

We force our way to one of the stones. Nick finds an opening and eases himself to the ground, sitting with his back to the rock. I squeeze in beside him while Sylvia and Jeanie move further away across the grass.

At my back the stone is dry and warm, covered with tufts of scaly moss and a mosaic of lichen. A spider legs it up a thread of web and scrabbles into a crevice. Clouds boil overhead but the night is dry and warm.

Around five thousand years ago a group of people stood where I am sitting and hoisted this stone, hewn from a quarry in Wales more than 200 kilometres away, into the position it has remained ever since. It is massive, as tall as a house, as broad as a flat deck trailer. Is is just one of dozens forming a rough circle, some constructed as arches with equally massive cap stones, some standing alone, others lying where the arches have collapsed or where they were placed at the dawn of history.

I heard about people gathering at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice so we have come to join the crowd and watch the sun rise on the longest day of the year.

I hoped to witness pagan rituals led by druids with long flowing beards and robes decorated with Celtic runes, to see near-naked women writhing in ecstatic trances to the haunting music of a panpipe, their bodies smeared with ashes or painted in fantastical designs. I wanted mist and mysticism.

Instead we finds ourselves at a rave. It's as if there was a text frenzy to every young person across southern England – prty @ s'henge! They've arrived with beer and groundsheets and camera phones and they are partying hard. The centre of the stone circle is a heaving mosh pit of drumming, dancing, shouting humanity. Periodically a wave of energy rises like a bubble of gas in a lava pool and bursts across the crowd in a cheer that rolls down the hillside.

The mood is festive, the drunks amiable and the police, dressed de rigeur in top-to-toe high viz, have little to do but fend off banter and tend the inebriated.

Near us a man with a Liverpool accent stands beside one of the stone arches like a night club tout. He welcomes each person who walks through the arch with a hug and some scouse wit.

“Come on, luv. Dis is de way in.”
“The way in to what?”
“To me f... house! Ha, ha!”

A woman dodges his embrace and he turns to us.

“Aagh, some people jus' don't get it. Ha, ha! Happy solstice!”

I wander off to watch a young man juggling with fire sticks. Jeanie, Sylvia's sister, is attracting attention. She wears a long calico shift on which she has painted a full length voluptuous nude woman, complete with nipple ring. She poses for photographs with young men and joins a group of dancers who cheer her contortions.

The first grey flecks of dawn appear. At the edge of the crowd a small group of bearded and costumed characters are chanting. They are more Dumbledore than druid and, warming to the crowd, break off chanting to lecture us on the British government's discrimination against pagans.

The dawn climbs up but at sunrise's appointed time the horizon is just a grey smear. A young man solemnly kneels and bows to the east. He leans forward slowly and vomits on the grass.

The sound of drums continues to swirl but we join the crowds wending across the grey fields. Looking back I see Stonehenge unmoved among thousands of tired bodies and a sea of flattened beer cans, plastic bags and burger wrappings, our offering to the gods of mid-summer.