Trips to Stonehenge can be a little hectic. Tens of thousands of people turn up to celebrate summer and winter solstices and most other days the site is a place of bustle, excited conversation and selfie action.
But throughout August, English Heritage is offering visitors the chance to win some guaranteed solitude within the hulking stones.
Buyers of advance tickets will be automatically entered into a draw for 20 minutes of alone time at the heart of the monument.
To mark the initiative, said to be the first of its kind since admission charges were introduced 125 years ago, the Guardian was granted 20 minutes in the circle on Tuesday morning to sample the solitude.
Usually, the monument is cordoned off with the sort of rope barrier used for VIP areas in nightclubs, with visitors viewing the stones from a surrounding path.
For the Guardian’s visit, the supervisor Nick Morabito unhooked the rope shortly after 9am with a modest flourish.
Rules remain – you must not touch the stones, lean on them or sit on them. But there is more opportunity to appreciate the heft of the monument and also the details – the swirly, blotchy patterns created by lichens, the deep fissures, the thistles poking their way out from under some stones.
You can have a good look at carvings into the surface of the stones, including graffiti said to have been created by the architect Christopher Wren, whose family had a home nearby.
It is quiet, but not silent. The A303 passes a few metres away but the traffic sound is a hum rather than a roar and does not drown out the song of the skylarks, the bleat of the sheep and the warm, southerly breeze passing through what Thomas Hardy called a “temple of the winds”.
Most of all, you have a few quiet minutes to wonder who built the monument, why and, perhaps, what they would make of their successors 5,000 years on.
The spell was broken at 9.35am when the first shuttle bus arrived from the visitor centre. A German family speed-walked to the circle to be the first there. They were not allowed beyond the crowd-control rope.
Morabito said that while he loved helping make sure visitors enjoyed the stones, he cherished moments when he and fellow workers had a few minutes alone there: “At the end of a busy summer’s day it’s lovely to sit in the circle for a few minutes and remember what it’s all about.”
Security officer Ray Bulpitt said he relished the tranquility of a night shift: “You hear the hares and sheep moving around.”
Occasionally an interloper tries to gain access. “We had a couple last night,” Bulpitt said. “We asked them to leave – no problems.”
Georgia Butters, English Heritage’s head of operations for Stonehenge, agreed that spending a little time in the stone circle was special: “It is a spiritual place for many people but even if you’re not spiritual in that way there’s just something wonderful about the landscape – it has a presence, a stillness.”
There are a few other ways to get solitary access to the stones and fame is one of them. Barack Obama visited while he was US president during a trip to the UK for a Nato summit and former astronaut Buzz Aldrin donned a Mars T-shirt when he popped by.
At solstice time, people are allowed into the circle for nothing. But you will inevitably be sharing the space with many others and the sounds of skylarks will be drowned out by the banging of drums.
The only way usually to get solitary time in the circle is to shell out the best part of £1,500 for an “explorer tour”.
Butters said those who came out of the August draw were allowed to take along other members of their party who had booked at the same time. But they could opt to go completely alone.
She said: “Everyone’s different, aren’t they? Some may want to run in and out of the stones, some may want to have a cup of tea there.
“They’re massive stones and there’s something about standing right next to one and getting the scale of them. It makes you think, how did people get these things here 5,000 years ago?”
Some will want to take pictures for social media. “That’s fine,” said Butters. “But I’d like to think that they’ll be able to just spend some time and have a moment of peace.”
