SUMMER SOLSTICE 1979

This is the Summer solstice 2025, but Chris McNaughton’s Facebook posting reminds me of this day in 1979. Jim and I were touring southern England with my cousin Peggy and her husband Pat in their caravan we were camping out on farms. On the way back o their home base, we were looking forward to a visit to Stonehenge. As we appoached the site, we were surprised to we many young people walking on the road.The second surprise was that there was no attendant at the entrance to the parking lot. Then there were police everywhere, including overhead in helicopters.

What’s going on here?

We parked and went to find out. I stopped to ask a friendly-looking policeman. “Well, he explained, “ This is June

21st, Summer Solstice. The farmer up the road allowed the young people to have a rock concert on his land, and it is just breaking up. When they saw that the Druids had a religious service at dawn, they wanted to have one, too. Rather than have a riot, we just opened the place up to everyone. So go ahead and look around.”

So we wandered in among the famous stones, actually touching them. There were some Hippir having a “parade”in there. They were singing and banging on bleachers bottles and other “musical instruments.” Some were carrying infants clad ibkt diapers. I felt for those babies on this chilly morning, but so must have been used to th then they were English babies and mothers got nervous about the heat when the temperature reached 70 degrees F.

I’ll never forget that June 21st!