“I’m not a native moonraker, I’m a Londoner,” says Julia Kirkland, one of two expert guides helping me decipher the prehistoric sites of the area surrounding Stonehenge. You wouldn’t know Julia’s a semi-recent transplant. She and her fellow guide James McCarraher have an encyclopedic knowledge of the area, and I’m captivated.
It’s in the high 20°Cs, yet feels hotter. But inside a Mercedes van with blacked-out windows and air conditioning, I can concentrate on the in-action history lesson as my small tour group is driven slowly among undulating fields, behind a sometimes-thick trickle of traffic. Our transport feels fitting high-end for the £295 ticket price of the new Stonehenge Explorer Tour, but I still need convincing.
It’s our hosts’ knowledge that starts to soothe my scepticism. They revel in storytelling. Being a tour guide was a long-held dream of Julia’s, while James has written a book on his expert topic. Lectures are on the local, as well as ancient, history.
The Neolithic landscape
From them, I learn of Gertie, a “turkey-sized” female great bustard, an endangered species, who lands on the stones each spring (and prefers women to men). I hear how, with the Ministry of Defence’s Salisbury Plain Training Area nearby, First World War pilots would attempt to “buzz” the top of the Stones. I learn that a dig discovered a Bronze Age barrow (a burial mound) that contained the skeletons of two young children, placed over the head of a cow. “Could it be that the cow offered protection or milk in the afterlife?,” says James.
In the van, I’m stuck on the term “moonraker”. It comes from an 18th century folk tale about smugglers in the Wiltshire village of Devizes involving cheese, brandy and the Moon. But it feels like a reference to the spiritual pull of the Plain, an area covering 300 sq miles. The force reeled in Julia.
The village of Amesbury, around two miles to the east of Stonehenge, has been inhabited for about 11,000 years, she explains. First it drew hunter-gatherers, then migrating farmers, many who travelled from the Middle East and up through continental Europe to settle here.
We’re en route to Durrington Walls, a Neolithic settlement dating to around 2,500BC – about the same age as Stonehenge’s Stone Circle.
What’s included in the tour
The tour is advertised as putting the Neolithic site of Stonehenge – the most-visited among English Heritage’s 400-plus strong stable of sites, monuments and buildings – in a wider context. It includes time inside the Stone Circle, three hours of guiding featuring Woodhenge (see more below), Durrington Walls, the Cuckoo Stone (a Neolithic or Bronze Age sarsen stone) and the overlooked landmarks on the monument field, plus a goodie bag, and a drink in the café. The price feels steep, but it does go beyond English Heritage’s other Stonehenge tours.
Standing on an section of land slightly above the surrounding countryside, I look at a field of yellow-green grass where it’s thought up to 4,000 people set up camp. This is a view towards Durrington Walls, which, unlike the stone circle its seasonal residents helped to build, is a henge.
Julia and James collect and trade facts like Pokémon cards: although the most knowledgeable punters will already know that a henge – a ditch and a bank – was there before the Stonehenge circle.
Less-known wonders
Less than a dozen other people stop at the Durrington Walls viewing spot in the half an hour or so we spend there. It’s similarly tranquil at Woodhenge, a Neolithic monument just across the road, at which concrete posts are positioned to mark where timber posts once stood in six concentric ovals – built to align with the summer solstice. These are the underappreciated treasures that get their due on this tour.
The latter was excavated by Welsh archaeologist Maud Cunnington and her husband, Ben – and named by Maud. Visiting here contrasts with the area around Stonehenge café where a tour group files in, there’s chatter in several languages among families with school-age children, and I count 10 coaches in the car park.
On peak summer days such as this, Stonehenge itself can attract several thousand visitors. The total visitor count for 2025 was 1,253,397.
Other ways to enter the Stone Circle – and how much they cost
It is the unhurried time in the Stone Circle of English Heritage’s best-earning site that will tempt many who book this tour.
Standard ticket holders miss out on this, warned off by rope and security. The three other ways you’re permitted in the circle are: the £70 Stone Circle Experience (a group of 52 is split in half for time among the stones), during winter and summer solstices (when up to 20,000 people gather, free of charge) and, just for August 2026, by winning a lottery among pre-booked ticket holders (pre-booked tickets from £27.03, without a donation) for access from 9.10–9.30am, before opening time.
Inside the Stone Circle
Stepping into the cordoned-off area, I fight a reflex to touch the first stone I pass. Our small group (tours are a maximum of five), seems drawn to the Altar Stone, a five-metre long trilithon lying flat on the ground.
This, the most precious stone, is also hidden from passing foot-and-vehicle traffic – a side benefit is that the slow-passing cars of the A303 are obscured from my view. A six-tonne hunk of red sandstone from Scotland, the Altar stone sits on the line of the solstice and, explains James, when the sun rises over the door stone opposite, a shadow is cast over the Altar stone.
He points out ancient and more modern markings made my visitors – there are around 700 on the stones. It’s only been a prosecuted offence to damage the stones since the 20th century. Human guests might be deterred by the uniformed guard, but a lamb and ewe from the site’s resident flock make excitable squeaks and dash towards the circle while pied wagtails flutter teasingly on and off the lintel stones. The sheep are shooed away.
We disperse and, with so few of us, it’s easy to find a solitary corner around the circle to try and meditate on its past. Such moments must feel impossible in a Stone Circle Experience group five times this size.
I study the shapes of the stones’ lichen and pockmarks and measure up to the sarsen stones, feeling reassuringly dwarfed in height and age. Forking out three hundred pounds for this Stone Circle experience would certainly feel worth it for a milestone birthday, or for a history enthusiast. It’s hard to find a direct, long-haul flight for £295, for comparison, while a peak season room in well-rated UK accommodation can easily top that price.
International tourists scoring off Britain’s biggest attractions seem to be a target customer group. Around 500 people have booked the Stonehenge Explorer Tour so far, and a fifth were British.
Why it’s worth the price
But it is the guiding, not included at solstice gatherings, and not covering the wider area in the Stone Circle Experience, that offers most value. The majesty of Woodhenge becomes clearest in the visitor centre, where the wood poles were depicted at their original height.
At the actual site of the Neolithic timber monument, a couple of miles from Stonehenge, Julia describes the area as “the Ibiza of the time” – a seasonal pilgrimage.
“We think people came here in autumn or winter.”
There were feasts – around 36,000 piled-up animal bones were unearthed – and they brought dogs.
Julia suggests the project of Stonehenge “brought the nation together”. Even if the idea of a nation is not what Britain is today.
A definitive answer to the question of how the stones were moved here – with the Altar stone travelling more than 400 miles (643km) – and into place, may never come. It could be the Salisbury Plain aura, but I leave wanting to know so much more.
“So much of what these people knew, we’ve simply forgotten,” says James.
The writer was a guest of English Heritage. The Stonehenge Explorer Tour costs £295 per adult and £195 per child (aged 12-17; the tour is not suitable for children under 12.) Booking is now open until March 2027. The tour takes place five days a week from now until November 2026, and three days a week from December to March. For more information or to book, visit english-heritage.org.uk/stonehenge