Summer Solstice at Stonehenge and a visit to the ancient spring of Blick Mead
My recounting of our magical pilgrimage within our longer pilgrimage - the day before solstice, arriving at the henge, sunset, the night we spent at Stonehenge, and sunrise.
Good day, Earth Weavers family!
I’ve been digesting and processing and integrating and savouring the otherworldly sweetness that was our summer solstice at Stonehenge for a week now. Us being there for that was a seed of an idea that we planted over a year ago, and it ended up blossoming into the most wildly unexpected and beautiful experience I could have imagined - truly one of the most blessed and beautiful days of my life, through a series of unexpected synchronicities.
We discovered a pilgrimage walk to Stonehenge thanks to a new sweet friend of mine I met on an online course, as I alluded to in my most recent post. Fortunately Chris was able to get in with a ticket just two days before. We spent a day walking with the musical Druid apitherapist (healer who works with bees) Chris Park, herbal alchemist Charlotte Pulver, and award-winning folk singer who sings with nightingales - Sam Lee, along with ~70 other beautiful humans from all walks of life. It was every bit as magical as it sounds and then some.
Our first destination was an ancient sacred spring called Blick Mead, which we were incredibly fortunate to visit as it’s now on private land and not open to the public. Blick Mead is a special spring - it is the reason for the nearby town of Amesbury being the oldest continuously-inhabited settlement in the British Isles… when the ice age was ending and the glaciers began to retreat, hunters would follow the aurochs (giant ancient horned cows) to the spring, which stayed a consistent 9-11°C - warm in the winter but cool in the summer. Based on archaelogical records, this site was visited or inhabited from around 10-11,000 years ago.
Our entrance to Blick Mead was marked by Sam holding hands with a Welsh singer with a stunningly haunting & evocative voice, and all of us toning while we walked through the portal created by their hands and across a bridge laid with rose petals over the River Avon. I couldn’t make this stuff up. As I crossed the bridge, I felt a stirring in my blood, and tears began to flow… I’d never felt so immediately, so strongly connected to a place that I had never physically been in this lifetime. I know with certainty that I’d had ancestors visit here, drink from here, bathe here, and connect with others from far and wide. This felt like a homecoming in a way I hadn’t even expected.
We were invited to consider how touching these waters was directly touching the past, and touching all water on Earth - our bodies in the present and the spring itself and all bodies of water are made of the same molecules of hydrogen and oxygen that have merely been recycled over and over again into different forms, and by touching this water with intention, we were in direct connection with our ancestors of the past, and all water-worshipping peoples across time. (Here’s a new word I learned that day - hydrolatry - worship of water).
We were treated to some storytelling there, some music from Irish tin flutes, a song by the incredible Welsh singer Bethan Lloyd, and invited to spend a good bit of time solo, in quiet connection with the waters. We filled our bottles, said prayers, washed our faces, wept, and washed our faces again. It was so healing.
Here we also created a little water ritual, where all of us on the pilgrimage had brought waters from various places to go into one vessel - Chris and I brought some waters from the Chalice Well and the White Spring in Avalon/Glastonbury, where we’d just been, and there were waters from Scotland, from the Ganges, from other sacred wells, and more. Each of these waters were poured into a vessel which was then topped with Charlotte’s rose petals, and ceremoniously carried to our final destination of the Stonehenge.
The day was hot. We connected, listened to more beautiful songs, marveled at birds, giggled at adorable bouncing, screaming lambs, communed with a giant ancient tree at the foot of a king’s burial mound, painted our faces with chalk, and added floral adornments on ourselves as we walked.
The final procession up to the henge was entirely in silence - in a solemn, sacred silence to fully absorb the feeling and to honour our ancestors who had made this pilgrimage over many thousands of years. I felt so powerfully connected to the land and my ancestors in a way that was nourishing to my soul.
For the majority of the year, Stonehenge is fenced off from visitors - most who come to see it aren’t permitted to get close to the stones, to go inside them or to touch them at all. They only open it up for close encounters twice a year - at the summer and winter solstices. An unexpected surprise was that by arriving on foot, we were actually the first people to get to access the stones, up close and personal. Out of a crowd of what ended up being around 15,000 people, we were amongst the first 100 to be there, to get to walk up to the stones, place our hands on them, and tone together as a group (toning is humming or singing a constant note to tap into different levels of consciousness - and it sounds and feels really amazing to do in a large group). We ceremoniously tossed ladlefuls of our collective water vessel onto a special stone known as the Heal Stone, stating our prayers out loud.
I cried tears of joy multiple times throughout the day - what a joy it was to be here with my beloved and a dear friend, and so many other beautiful humans. To be honest, I thought it might be a little bit cliché and touristy (and the henge has been modified and some would say ruined by attempts to “reconstruct” it)... but this place definitely still holds SO much power from many thousands of years of intentional visits from across the British Isles.
It is a marvellous thing to witness the 30 ton stones standing straight, and to speculate with utter awe how on earth they managed to work together over generations, to move stones so far (some of them come from Wales!), to get them to stand upright, to dig them in so that ⅓ of their length is below ground, to place capstones on top with grooved notches to keep them in place…. It’s all so extraordinary. What would it take for our modern society to be able to take on an intergenerational project of such magnificence & significance, with shared intention and a common vision?
We watched the sun setting over the horizon, as we watched the full moon rise directly across from us on the other side of the sky. Having a full moon land on a solstice is a rare event that hasn’t happened since 1985. Another one of the blessings. People cheered, the drum circles in the centre of the henge erupted, and we prepared ourselves to spend the next 7.5 hours with the growing crowd until sunrise.
A line of cars flooded into the site all night long - people arriving in droves. It was like a music festival without the music - and we were moved by how positive the atmosphere was. Everyone was respectful and kind, no fighting, no belligerence, only reverence and gratitude to be there.
The sun rose over the horizon at around 5AM, to a crowd of 15,000 people cheering and filming the moment as if it’s not something that happens every single day - it was just such a special thing to witness it in this sacred place, with so many people stepping away from their busy lives to be here, together.
I chose to document this day through photos and to share it with you all, because despite it being so precious and sacred, I realize not everyone will have the privilege to experience something like this. I want to share it with you because I want you to experience it, and I also want to preserve it for myself - without photos and some audio recordings of the songs, I don’t think I could have believed how potent and beautiful this day was. I hope that my sharing of it with you sends a little of that magic your way - that you can take a moment to connect with the next glass of water you drink as a way to touch your ancestors and your descendants across space and time, that you can marvel with me at the sheer fortitude & brilliance of the ancient ones who constructed Stonehenge and the thousands of other stone circles, monuments, and temples around the world.
May we consider how we can leave behind beautiful gifts for our descendants to marvel at generations after we’re gone. May we have renewed appreciation for those who came before us. May we have an abundant season of summer ahead.
If you enjoyed this story, I would love it if you would share it with someone else you feel would find it nourishing.
Thanks for being here.