It was high time for a weekend away so we hopped in the car and sped about an hour down the road to a place we'd always meant to visit and never really got around to. Stone Henge.

Hundreds of thousands of people pass it everyday and kids crane their necks out the back windows of cars as the busy 303 whips right by across the plains. Recent withdrawals of Government funding to tunnel means this is going to go on happening for many years to come.

Fine, more people get to witness this international treasure but there is truly nothing that compares to stopping, putting on your waterproofs and yomping out to greet the stones in person. They are more magnificent and potent in the flesh than you can possibly imagine, especially on a day when the wind whips across the flat fields and the rain comes at you sideways, drowning out the sound of traffic and focussing your energies inwards.

Theories abound as to the genesis of the henge and the site is now armed with an audio tour to talk you through the more popular ones. The visitor centre is very simple and effective, the parking is abundant and the staff on-hand are the old-school national trust types that you'd like to expect. In short, there is blissfully little to disrupt your direct communion with the ancients... except that you can't get within 20 feet of the stones. Understandably -but frustratingly- the stones themselves are now off-limits and you have to go down the road to Avebury if you really want to hug a hunk of rock.

In many ways the stones at Avebury are more impressive still. Less well known that their big brother, they occupy a much bigger site and pass right through the village, even overhanging the road at one point. Again their origins can only be guessed at... which provides great entertainment over dinner... once you get past the hackneyed images of aliens and dinosaurs working together for the Egyptians on a time-travel tour.

We stayed at the Old Mill Hotel in Salisbury, which must be the best kept secret in Wiltshire. The river runs through the restaurant and meanders off across the floodplains right to the cathedral close. A ten minute walk from the Old Mill through protected meadowland and your in the heart of the city.

The next day we spent with an Ordnance Survey map rooting out more ancient burial mounds and sites of particular historial interest. The area is littered with them and it's extremely rewarding to pull over in an unmarked layby, cut across a ploughed field, stomp up an unlikely looking hill and discover a barely maintained but tangible relic of a time before recorded history. I'm not normally one to shun public transport but I can imagine nothing worse than being ferried around on a tourist bus right past such sites to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the peak season at Stone Henge and Stone Henge alone... before moving onto Bath for afternoon tea and Edinburgh for dinner. Take your time, it's not going anywhere..