American Reacts Ancient Sites of Great Britain - Rick Steves' Europe Travel Guide 

When I went to Stonehenge in the 1960s there was no building, fences, visitor centres, guides, tickets....... you just walked up to the monument and climbed on the stones

Hadrian's Wall is not the northern most defensive wall the Romans built. The Antonine Wall was constructed between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde about 20 years later.

I wild camped for 3 nights in the back garden of the little chapel, by the crossroads, right in the centre of Avebury stone circle. It was Autumn 2022 and part of one of my cycle tours. Clear skies, brilliant starscape (as good as from the top of Glastonbury Tor). I swear, I could hear/feel the ground humming/vibrating at night. It's only a little village there, but the people are pretty decent. Unusual for huge swathes of the British countryside. I've noticed at all the neolithic sites I've visited the people are pretty chill. I wild camp battle sites and neolithic sites and other notable places (if I can) all over Europe. Spookiest place? Towton Battlefield. Weird stillness about the place. Not scary, just weird.

It took quite a decent amount of time for the Romans to eventually get so far north and build settlements and fortifications. You can almost track their progress when you look at the dates each city was founded. They first invaded in 43AD and their first major settlement was Camulodunum, (Colchester) founded in the same year. Londinium, (London) Naviomagus Reginorum, (Chichester) and Durovernum Cantiacorum, (Canterbury) were all founded in 43AD. Venta Icenorum (Norwich) was founded a bit later, unknown date but approx first half of 1st century (Boudica raided their fort in 61AD) Letocetum (Lichfield) founded 50AD, Isca Dumnonoruim (Exeter) founded 55AD. They founded Cambridge (Duroliponte) in AD70, York (Eboracum) in AD 71, and Chester (Deva Victrix) in the mid 70's. Mamucium (Manchester) and Vinovia (Durham) were not founded until AD79, and Carlisle (Luguvalium) between 72-89. They began building Hadrian's Wall a full 79 years after they first conquered Britain, in 122 AD.

Unless you're into looking at a pile of old stones, then don't make it a "Day Out", do it as part of seeing other attractions. The raised floor of the Roman fort was more likely an underfloor heating system, not for storing grain. Many Roman houses had underfloor heating.

I live at Avebury in Wiltshire about 400 yards from the stone circle. I volunteer each week as a visitor guide for Bothe the stones and the Manor House dating from 1557. It's a magical place maintained by the National trust. A much larger site than Stonehenge, we have around 250 volunteers throughout the week. It gives us a sense of community and continuity. we let people touch, experience and if they want we inform them of the history. Some, don't want that..., they miss out... enjoy.

Connor, if you want to touch the Stones you have to go there on the longest day of the year or the shortest day of the year , the 21st of June or the 21st of December .

I love Avebury. So much better than Stonehenge, because you can walk among the stones and touch them, too. Plus, the pub is VERY nice.

You could once go amongst the stones of stonehenge but people were chipping bits off for keepsakes and carving their names in the stones so it had to be cordened off.

I have, within 1 mile of me, three Iron Age forts. It's pretty amazing to walk around in them knowing they predate the Romans arriving here.

The Romans sailed all the way up to the Orkney Isle North of Scotland. They had forts as far North as between Inverness / Aberdeen. They just didnt hold onto them as long as Hadrians wall was held.

Crazy thing about the Romans and Hadrian's wall. The mile forts are exactly a mile apart, regardless of the strategic positioning of them. Some are in quite vulnerable spots and moving them to another location just a few dozen yards away would make them more viable and defensible. But Romans being Romans they had to be a mile apart exactly, regardless.

Avebury is my favourite place. Plus Silbury Hill and West Kennit Long Barrow near by.

I live near Hadrians Wall - was up there the other day walking , hardly anyone around. I love the wildness of Northumberland - very grateful to live here. Lots of sightings of ghosts on the military rd, still waiting to see one!

I wish they'd get away from this "They moved massive boulders to know when to plant crops" myth; they'd have to be producing a surplus just to be free to build them, which presumably took quite a few crop cycles, and wooden stakes would do the job as well as boulders anyway.

Romans did sail north of Scotland to see how long the Island reached! passed orkneys and then southward again.

Gnaeus Julius Agricola led an army into Scotland and by 84AD had reached high into north eastern Scotland with a fort at Inchtutil in Perthshire amongst others controlling the Highland passes and forts up the coast for resupply. He was recalled to Rome in 84AD. There are Roman sites in Glasgow and Roman finds from Dumfries and Galloway to the Shetlands.

Stonehenge is deeply underwhelming when you go there. I genuinely believe it is best viewed from a nice stylish photograph

People don't realise that, as old as Stonehenge is, the visitors centre is actually 400 years older.

Yes the Romans knew the extent, not only by sea but they moved through it on foot, intending to conquer it too. The building of the wall was really a decision that what lay beyond wasn't worth the trouble it would be to take and hold it.

Yes, being stationed at or on the Wall was bleak (see Auden's poem 'Roman Wall blues' and there are extant letters from soldiers, writing home to ask for britches and socks). However, most of the garrison hailed from Celtic lands in northern Europe (modern Belgium, Holland and Germany), so might have been more used to the weather.

It has now been shown that the smaller blue stones at Stonehenge were originally built as a circle in the Preselli Hills (Wales) near to where they were quarried. At some point the monument was dismantled and relocated to the Wiltshire site which is now Stonehenge. What we see there now is a result of a later (though still prehistoric) rearrangement and rebuilding with the giant sarsen stone lintels. These megaliths come from somewhat closer by. Moving and erecting them is still impressive. But the greater mystery is still why and how the original henge was moved several hundred miles to the East, probably bringing the ancestors bones with them for reburial under the relocated stones.

It’s funny you should mention that there was a river at the mouth of Bristol. They’re absolutely is, and it’s called the river Severn. And believe it or not, we have found sunken stones in the river Severn which were meant for Stonehenge, which is how we know they how they transported it because we found the rolling logs and everything. I that the sunken stones must’ve been the cause of some prehistoric swearing.

Even the Netherlands has some neolithic grave structures called Hunebedden. Standing stones with a large stone as roof stone. South of Tilburg, in the south of the Netherlands, you find grave hills in De Regte Heide.

The rivers would be the Severn and then the Avon.

The old smaller stone circles - I’m fairly sure most have been “reconstructed” in much more recent times - like Stone Henge was (look at the images from Victorian times - when people were often chiselling off chunks as souvenirs too).

The biggest stone site is in France, it's named Carnac. The tallest standing stones in the world are also in the same place as Carnac in France ! In terms of size Stonhedge is not very tall. The biggest one who still standing is 31 feet tall, it's call "the Menhir of Kerloas"... The largest menhir in the world (collapsed) is called "the Great Broken Menhir of Er Grah", not far from the Kerloas menhir . It's funny because the french region with all theses menhir is called "Britain" !

The conquest of Scotland was never completed due to the political situation in Rome. The Picts (native Scottish) were decisively beaten at the battle of Mons Graupius by general Agricola. but Rome's emperor at the time (Domitian) was afraid of his generals in the provinces getting too powerful and being able to overthrow him, so Agricola was recalled to Rome and the conquest stopped. Hadrian built his wall some time later. (Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius). There was another conquest of Scotland during the reign of Antonius Pius some decades later and another wall built much further north, (Antononr Wall) but this was abandoned after a few decades and the Romans withdrew to Hadrian's Wall. Ruins of the Antonine Wall and forts still exist (near Falkirk particularly) but nowhere near as well preserved.

We visited Stonehenge in the 1950s when I was a child We stopped on the way back from our holiday in Devon In those days people could walk right up to the stones and touch them My father took photos of us next to the stones I’m glad that we had the opportunity to do that then , as last time I went there on another trip to Devon they were all fenced off

There is public access to Stonehenge at the solstices. Druids and Pagans and people who just want to celebrate, hsther there to see the sunrise. I am a druid, but have never made it to a solstice celebration. You're right about their construction. Just like Lego. I'd love to go to the Scottish sites. I'm familiar with a lot of the English, Welsh and Cornish sites. Take a lookat some of the tombs, West Kennet Long Barrow, Belas Knap and Wayland's Smithy.

The Romans figured that the land and resources north of the wall weren't worth the effort to subdue the local population. If you read about the Emperor Hadrian one of his goals was to secure the borders of the empire (he also built walls in North Africa and Germania) to areas that were easier to defend and, in his view, worth keeping. So he also gave up the areas in Mesopotamia and Armenia that his predecessor, the Emperor Trajan, conquered for the Romans. Trajan extended the Roman Empire to its greatest extant and Hadrian pulled back from some of the conquered territories to not stretch Roman military resources too thin.

For a while the Romans controlled southern Scotland too, but they gave this up; although they later called the southern Scots 'foederati' (confederates). Later those dwelling north of the Forth/Clyde line were called Picts ('painted men', probably an insulting alteration of Pects, their own term, meaning the 'people of the shares of land'). There has been a great puzzle as to what was so distinctive anout the Picts; it may simply be that they were self-consciously and proudly fully independent of the Romans. The Roman Governor of Britain about 40 years prior to the building of Hadrian's Wall, Agricola, sent the Roman fleet around the top of Scotland. I believe he then sent the record of that to the great library of Alexandria, where the geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus used it in his Geography, so we know the names of major geographical features of the Highlands back then. I agree with other commenters: it wasn't economically worthwhile to conquer Scotland. The rest of Britannia may well have been conquered for its minerals, particularly lead. Our lead deposits contain an amount of silver, which can be separated out. The Emperors gained much of their prestige from producing the currency - Jesus alludes to this - and there was a shortage of the silver they needed. The Stonehenge stones were linked together rather like Lego - the joints are called 'mortice-and-tenon' joints. I really like the way that Rick Steves gave you such an understanding that there are many other megalithic monuments in Britain, apart from Stonehenge, to which you can have unrestricted access.

There being a large formidable population in Caledonia could be one explanation of why the Romans did not go further North, but another explanation would be that gold, silver and oil deposits would not be discovered until many years later, the land was less productive and the taxable population was small compared to the area which would need to be controlled. I would imagine that if there was a productive silver mine in Scotland at the time, or even copper or tin, the Romans would have been very interested in staying, at least in that area.

River Avon I believe , these stone monuments give off a very peculiar feeling to me it makes think of our Ancestors who came before us . I live in south Devon so Dartmoor isn’t that far away from the stone circles

On the continent the northern Roman border was in the Netherlands around Utrecht/Houten ( river Rhine)

Conor l think your'e right. On the stonehendge structure. Held up by " a hole and a knob" It never fails

The Romans were mostly interested in the Lead, Copper and Tin mines which are in England. Scotland didn't have resources they required. The English Celts also had a device (equivalent to today's combined harvester) that could strip the ears of Celtic wheat which grew at different heights; also interested the Romans, to improve food yields.

I’m surprised he talked about Silbury Hill and didn’t mention the far older West Kennet long barrow which is just a stones throw away!

On the way home from a holiday in the lake district with my wife daughter and her friend we decided to stop of at part of Hadrians wall. Pulling into the carpark Helen my daughters friend said. And i quote, "is that it? It's just a pile of bricks " when we see or hear about Hadrians wall we always think of Helen and her response to seeing it for the first time. Good video Connor

Scorhill is on Dartmoor But Dartmoor is in Devon not Cornwall. Rick Steves has a bad reputation in the UK for minor errors like that.

Mybe Rick should go to Shetland and Chester. No the Romans got further up in to the start of the Highlans and built a second wall. Musellburgh near Edinburgh had a huge fort and it was huge from Inveresk on the hill down to Musselbourgh race cours and the River Lieth. In Comrie thet have a Roman road and a nearby village has a very compleat fort, the Romans loved to roam but we kept thwartiong them and they stayed knowere long.

I live 8 miles from Avebury and Silbury hill, next to Silbury is West Kennet long Barrow.....Stone Henge was virtualy a pile of stones until in the 1920s major restoration work rebuilt the stones as we see them today.

The romans were so powerful they couldn't beat us Scottish and we didn't lie down to them like the english did 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

House? That's a street matey...

The River SEVERN rises in the Cambrian Mountains in mid Wales and is famous for the Severn Bore. This is a tidal bore that surges its way upstream against the flow of the river.

I was actually quite disappointed the first time I saw Stonehenge. I must have seen some clever, close-up photograpy, as I'd expected it to be very much bigger than it is. I do seem to recall when it was announced that, owing to concerns about the longer-term future of the stones given the ever-increasing numbers of visitors to the site, it had been decided to severely restrict public access to the actual stones, although druids would still be allowed in for their solstice celebrations... I think I was in high school at the time, so it's likely to have been in the late 1970s. Avebury is actually much more interesting and dramatic because of its sheer size; but best of all in my opinion, is Callanish / Calanais, on the Isle of Lewis - as you're not only free to wander up to and around the stones and touch them all you want; it is generally agreed that they are around a thousand years older than Stonehenge! Nor is there just a single stone circle, there's a burial chamber in the middle of them, as well as a large rectangular space enclosed alongside - and several other smaller stone circles or monuments nearby, that appear to relate to it...! Of the two within walking distance, some of the stones are missing, or may simply have sank into the boggy landscape. Together they suggest there was some kind of network or networks of stone circles places at intervals apart that somehow, the habits of both the sun and moon appear to have something to do with; but of all the other possible networks, the location of these seem by far to be the most mysterious! That said, ongoing studies taking place in the Orkney Isles (where the Ring of Brodgar forms another, large and fully accessible circle and there are also other antiquities of the same neolithic period - such as the burial chambers at Maes Howe and elsewhere and the significant finds of the almost perfectly preserved stone age dwellings at Skara Brae and on Papa Westray), suggests that there may well be other such dwellings lost under the sand dunes (as Skara Brae had been) - and possibly also now under the sea, whose levels have gradually been increasing ever since! Suggesting to these researchers that Orkney might have originally been a very significant neolithic settlement indeed; it also could suggest the network - if such a thing existed; might have been enclosed by an outer circle of such sites, some of which were sited on offshore islands. As for building materials. Lewesian Gneiss is one of the oldest and hardest rocks on the planet - hence it is no great surprise that these antiquities have stood the test of time. The river you're thinking of near Bristol is the Severn, which does indeed rise in North Wales and empty out into the Atlantic, although I'd say the River Wye is more likley to have been used to float stone from Central Wales down to its junction with the Severn which would then have been crossed, to give access to the River Avon, which may have been made navigable through Bristol, Bath and Bradford before petering out on the north-western edge of Salisbury Plain. Unfortunately, the Kennet and Avon Canal was still some millennia off, and so it was presumably dragged across the land from there!

I used to travel to work along the road at Hadrians wall. Been to many of the forts too. It can be horrible up there in winter, so Romans guarding the wall or in those mile castles must have been pretty miserable, lol. Occasionally we go along that way for a day out too

I remember as a kid in about 1978 we just walked up and hugged the stones. No one cared!

Very interesting.

The comment about the border running pretty close to the Wall is somewhat misleading. The two run in different directions (E-W and NE-SW), so there is no question of their running in parallel, for example, and they never actually meet. At the eastern ends where they end at the North Sea coast, they are 60 miles apart. That might be regarded as close in the vastness of the USA but is regarded as a not inconsiderable distance on our crowded island.

Watch 'standing with stones' produced by amateurs, it is a fantastic, fascinating look at Megalithic structures all across Britain

Stonehenge has remained untouched since the Victorians...they moved many of the stones around.

200miles to Wales from Stonehenge!! What was this guy smoking? Depending on which direction you go, at 200miles you are either in the sea off north Wales or you are in Ireland if you go more west

Hadrian's wall may have been built by the Romans, but it was made in Britain! Made in Britain, see this label and you see quality.

Well - be jelous. Even you are free to be inside the circle at the summer & winter equinox.

Rick lives in Washington state which is nearer to me. I'm in Vancouver, Canada.

Google the Antonine Wall & La Hougue Bie.

Where I grew up there are foundations of a 2000yo Roman bath house lol

So different being American instead of Brit. But my ancestry is shallow in the US compared to my pre-colonial ancestry from Cornwall to Orkney ;-)

You've already seen all this. Its just a compilation of clips from his full videos

Connor asks 'how do you get it on?' Well, time to ask the parents, methinks...

It is simple...ancient Britons just loved the stones. Why was wood not used? Well it was alive and provided housing and fire. They also knew wood rotted.

"That's not a hedge Consul, that's the Scots".

It's a shame that the narrator ignored Scotland and Wales!

hi bud feeling better today ?

The river Avon I think

If memory serves the Romans who went north I think got their butts kicked at mons grappia - been a while since I looked at it so may be completely wrong but climate and the harsh aggressive locals would also have been a factor

Could be for witches

Research the 9th Legion who went North never to return.

Has Connor ever said no he won't react to that 🤔

How can Spartan barracks be built by Romans? Surely they'd be built by Spartans!

Nobody knows for sure. It's all guess work.

Shame he never covered Skara brae

Surprised these smaller stone circles have survived all the later religions, like Christianity? That thought, right there, tells us a lot about Christian intolerance.

What did the Romans ever do for us!?

Stone circles etc. would have survived due to superstition around them.

Never heard of Hadrian's Wall before? Seriously, where do you start your history lessons? With Christopher Columbus? Or later? Only in 1776?

They didnt want to get the glasgow kiss

#14

They were built buy the natives of the UK before an English man existed the druids built alot and there not exstinct more like they breaded with alot of people lol

On my aunt and uncles farm in Wales there was a Roman burial mound……you cannot disturb these areas in any way.