I thought it was about time I revived this thread.
Last Saturday, I visited Stonehenge - the closest I'd got before was driving by on the A303 road, over 20 years ago, and I thought was about time I saw it properly. I'm glad I did: obviously it's one of the best known prehistoric sites in the world, with pictures and information readily available from many sources, but going there provides a sense of scale and of place that I think is impossible to gain in any other way.
How did I get there? I walked. OK, only from the new visitor centre, which is about a mile and half from the stones. It saved me a long wait for the shuttle bus, but it also seemed appropriate that I should approach this most ancient site in the same manner as the people who built it and used it must have done. It also helps a lot with the sense of scale and place that I mentioned: the path from the visitor centre leads over a gentle ridge, so that as you come around a corner of woodland, the landscape opens up, dropping gently to a river valley in the distance, with Stonehenge itself a small and almost continuous cluster of stone on a low rise about a mile ahead. Dotted around all over the visible landscape are barrows (burial mounds) and other earthworks, some newer than Stonehenge and some even older.
From the ridge top, a well-worn path leads down to the stones, and I joined the steady stream of people heading towards them. Ahead, I could also see the shuttle bus stop, and the much denser mass of people walking the last hundred metres to and from the stones, and around them. It seems ironic (or perhaps very fitting) that Stonehenge, apparently built as a temple some 4,500 years ago, should once again have become an object of ritual visitation; perhaps the sheer number of people now taking part makes up for the lack of formality in the observance.
The number of tourists visiting Stonehenge means that the site is also a study in how to balance the competing requirements of access and conservation. There are something like a million visitors each year; it would be very easy for the site to be "loved to death" - as indeed was happening up to 1977, when the stones were roped off and the public prevented from getting closer to them than a few metres. I would have liked to get closer, even between the stones; I think the layout would have made more sense from the inside. But if I could, everyone could; and then something unique and irreplaceable would be worn away, footstep by footstep, touch by touch. The current arrangements, with a path and grassed area providing a complete circuit of the stones for visitors, are probably as good a compromise as might be hoped for.