Supply and Demand I guess and you can always join English Heritage. It's not just England though, when we went to France last year, pretty much everything was between 10 and 20 euros to get in to – Everyone cashes in on tourists. At least English Heritage is charity and keeps a lot of old/historic properties open and maintained – and that's an expensive business. If Stonehenge was owned privately, it would be a lot more than £6.90 to get in.
It's an obscenity. English Heritage are ethically bankrupt….Or exploiting a national treasure.
I'm not saying it's a reasonable price, but it's a non-profit charity. I guess you could argue that it exploits 'popular' attractions to subsidise other important properties – it's not like anyone else is going to do that.
I guess you could argue that it exploits 'popular' attractions to subsidise other important properties – it's not like anyone else is going to do that.
In theory I'd like to agree with you but I'm not sure they use their funds to the sites' best interests. They're lots of black holes into which 'not-for profit' monies can disappear into.
How do you think I felt paying the monumental sum of 12 of your English pounds for a private early morning ceremony with a little group of friends before the masses arrived!!???
I must be a mug as I have done that twice now. I'd say the energy is alive and well 🙂
I think I'd begrudge paying seven quid a lot less if you could actually get near the thing. I understand the need to scrote-proof it of course, but it's a bit galling when you pay your money to be told "that's it, over there."
One gent I was talking to said it was "for the upkeep".
It's not the forty road bridge ffs. Between the parking and the cafe they must be raking it in. No excuse imo. Just bleeding folk of their hard earned. Vert dissapointed. Glad I got to see it but still miffed.
That's a fair point HeathenWoods although I'm not sure how true that is in the case of EH.
You can join for 40 quid a year, which makes everything sound pretty reasonable given the number of properties you then have free access to. I'm clearly in a minority though 😉
A souless place, given the amount pissed up on the wall on repeated (and useless) enquiries, consultations and strategic future plans I'm hoping that some pissed up bulldozer driver and a mate with a grab lorry save us all a fortune one evening.
Try Callanish or Brogar and Hadrians Wall – actually worth a visit,
I drive past the bloody place twice a day and I never fail to be amazed by the amount of people wandering around. It'd be good if english heritage spent some of the profits from the site to make the a303 a dual carriageway past it.
I lived about 2 miles from there a couple of years ago, every time that we had family visit they all wanted to see it…. they all left disappointed. I agree that Avebury is much more interesting.
If we're talking about alternatives, I was down in Cornwall for a conference last week (feat. Ronald Hutton talking about Druids amongst others) and visited the Hurlers on my way down and up. That is an amazing place!
On my first visit there were bullocks charging each other on the edges of the central circle and on my second there were wild ponies and their foals wandering round the site. Beautiful!