Stonehenge question

Will you have a car? Most people do a tour because transportation to either site is difficult, unless they want to do one of the special Inner Circle visits to Stonehenge.

If so there is an excellent audio guide for Stonehenge that you get just past the ticket booth. It is included in the ticket price. You would not need a guided tour.

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/

Avebury, I've just walked around altho I visited it with 2 different tour groups (a day tour and a Rick Steves tour) which kind of gave an overview then turned us loose. There is a nice Visitor Center in the small village but I do not know if there are audio tours of this area or not.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/avebury

We will have a car, yes. Thanks for your reply. Interesting. I think a decent audio tour will do the trick.

I think the Stonehenge Audio guide is very good. I usually ride the shuttle from the Visitor Center out to the stones, then walk back thru the fields so I can get closer to the barrows and the Cursus. You can take the shuttle back to the Visitor Center as well. If it has been really wet, my experience is that the grass is pretty long in the fields so your shoes will get wet!

The cafe at Stonehenge is pretty decent altho crowded. There are several small restaurants in Avebury as well as the cafe run by the National Trust at the Visitor Center. I've only had soup there but it was quite good.

Spend some time in the Stonehenge museum. It's interesting. For some fun, you will see a wall of quotes about Stonehenge. One is not real. See if you can find it.

In 2013, we had a rental car and drove from near Heathrow Airport to visit Salisbury, see the town and famous Cathedral, then on the Stonehenge and Avebury, returning to our hotel near Heathrow. We did it in one day.

Make sure you have a GPS or nav system on your vehicle.

I think you have to book your visit to Stonehenge in advance now.

My beloved spouse, my adult daughter and I visited Stonehenge and Avebury early last June. We had a car.
We bought Stonehenge tickets online the night before. We chose the 9:15 AM tickets. Parked in the first row of the parking lot. We walked right in and boarded the bus to the Stones. There were 5 people, including us, on the bus. There were less than 10 people at the site. We got some incredible photos. Road the bus back to the Visitor Center. Museum was great. Gift shop was great. We didn’t eat but the restaurant looked pretty nice.

Drove to Avebury. Met a very pleasant and talkative guide in the parking lot. No lines or crowds. Walked directly into the fields with the Stones and the sheep. Wear waterproof shoes. Look down. There were some people who were having religious experiences with the Stones. Didn’t spend much time in the little town or museum.

I preferred the sheer awesomeness of Stonehenge. The ladies preferred the hands-on familiarity of Avebury.

I’m told that Stonehenge can get quite crowded by mid-day. Definitely well-worth the trip.

Are you also returning to Tetbury at the end of the day? If so, I agree that going to Stonehenge first is wise -- get an early start so you can beat the midday crowds. Then stop at Avebury afterwards. We did it in that order, and Avebury was all the more interesting because of having seen the visitor centre exhibits at Stonehenge. Oh, and before you leave the vicinity of Stonehenge, go see Woodhenge and Durrington Walls. It is just about 1/4 mile away.

If your itinerary takes you from Tetbury to somewhere else that night, you'll be the judge of whether doing the two in that order is too much backtracking. But whichever route you take on the back roads between the two, it will be scenic.

Agree with using sat nav- westbound A303 tended to traffic jam something fierce when we were in the area (it's actually kind of a nice view of the stones when you're at a dead stop in traffic) and being able to back road it to the visitor center is going to free up some time that would not otherwise be spent in the rental car.