For the first time since 2008, the summer Solstice falls on Saturday morning, which means that the crowds might be bigger than in years when the solstice falls during the working week. Last year, about 20,000 folks turned up to watch the sun rise. Back in June 2008, 30,000 people turned up to wait through a cold, wet and misty night for a dawn that proved equally cold, wet and misty. It's a bit early for a weather forecast for the solstice weekend and the Met Office have cocked up the weekend forecasts for this part of the world for the last two weekends running, so I guess the forecast is uncertain. We might expect a bigger crowd than we saw in 2008, simply on the basis that: "Summer 2014 has got to start at some point" and the Solstice weekend is as good a time as any.
The big difference this year is that it is the time the A344 has been closed for the summer Solstice, so the traffic problems that this might cause in the local area are a bit of an unknown, though we can speculate that it isn't going to be pretty. The biggest question of all for us here at WiSBAng is whether it will cause more problems for the A303, where the weekend traffic situation is already nightmarish, and in the surrounding villages where rat-runners are making life even more unpleasant.
The English Heritage and Wiltshire Police traffic management plan for the solstice period is shown on the map below - please click on it to enlarge.
Basically, EH plan to close access to Stonehenge itself at 14:30 on Friday 20th June and then the new Visitor's centre, arrowed in green on the map, will be closed from 15:00. The two Byways (Byway 11 and 12) that are close to the stones have been closed under a temporary Traffic Regulation Order to a point about 500 metres south of the A303.
Apart from a few of the byways, bridleways and footpaths on the MoD ranges which are closed for a live-firing exercise (look out for the red flags), ALL other byways, bridleways, footpaths and roads in the vicinity are open. That is a little contrary to to English Heritage's Summer Solstice 2014 Conditions of Entry and Information document which claims at the top of page 6 that the A344 is closed. That is untrue, the route is still open for walkers, cyclists, horse riders, carriage drivers and invalid carriages, but English Heritage would prefer people not to walk along the route of what once was the A344, as they have provided an off-road route to the stones just for the Solstice.
We expect that motor vehicles stopping and waiting on the A303, the A360 between Longbarrow Roundabout and Airman's Cross and on towards Shrewton will be prevented by the usual coning-off of all likely stopping places. So anyone wanting to stop in the area is going to have to move further afield.
People arriving at Stonehenge Visitor's Centre, after it closes and before the Solstice car parks are opened at 19:00 on Friday 20th of June, are going to be asked to wait on the B3086 that runs north from the new Visitor's Centre towards the Bustard Crossroads. So there is the potential here for a bit of chaos, as this section of road is a favourite part of the Friday evening rat-run when the A303 is jammed. Hopefully, no-one wanting to attend the solstice will turn up until after 19:00. If lots turn up early, then there is a potential for gridlock. At the very least, it's likely to see more traffic heading for Shrewton on the London Road (B3086), though where they might go from there is anyone's guess. They may strike out west on the B390, hoping to rejoin the A303 from the A36, or they could head south on the B3083, here to Winterbourne Stoke. Some, wanting to see Stonehenge, may head back east on the A360 towards Airman's Corner, adding to the confused, bemused and possibly bloody-minded, heading for the Solstice; let alone the locals just heading home for the weekend.
This is all going to happen during the Friday commute home and coinciding with the weekend peak traffic flow on the A303 (16:00 - 21:00). English Heritage are trying to persuade everyone wanting to attend the Solstice to go to Salisbury and take public transport up to the World Heritage site; it might persuade some, but again it's an unknown quantity. Roadside signs, from the M3 westwards, will warn people to stay away from Stonehenge if it gets too crowded. At 19:00, the two new Solstice carparks (marked in blue on the map) will be opened and then people will start to flood in, which has the potential to cause further chaos on all routes in to Airman's Cross as people rush for a parking space. We are told that these two car-parks have a similar capacity to the old Solstice car-park.
So, we have a fair degree of uncertainty about how things will unfold. On the one hand, it may be freezing cold and lashing down with rain. People travelling to the West Country may choose to avoid the Stonehenge area entirely, reducing the back-ground traffic flow on the A303. Solstice-goers may largely choose to take a bus to Stonehenge. Those few that decide to arrive under their own steam may choose to arrive after the evening peak traffic flow and those that arrive early may follow the advice to wait on the B3086. With luck, no one leaves the A303 in a desperate attempt to avoid traffic jams, as it is flowing freely. No-one stops to take a snap of the henge as they pass and no-one crashes their cars having been distracted by the herds of flying pigs, performing synchronised acrobatics overhead at the very thought of such a possibility.
Ah, bliss!
On the other hand, Friday 20th June 2014 may turn out to be a balmy night to be followed by a glorious sunny weekend. Tourist's flood to the West County in their usual droves and follow, lemming-like, their normal routes. Solstice-goers turn up as usual, on foot or in the usual mix of barely legal motor-vehicles and ignore/miss the exhortations on social media and in the Press to use public transport. The B3086 is soon blocked, so this leads to problems in both directions on the A360, which eventually spill out onto the Longbarrow Roundabout. Aging vehicles heading for Stonehenge overheat, blocking the westbound A303 near Stonehenge Bottom and the eastbound traffic just east of Winterbourne Stoke. Westbound, Eastbound and Northbound traffic on the A303 and A360 will converge and collide, probably literally, around the Longbarrow Roundabout as a result of impatience and short-tempers. Longbarrow Roundabout grinds to a standstill by mid afternoon and remains grid-locked for hours, and hours. The last of the broken down and crash-damaged vehicles can't be removed until sometime on Saturday - after the peak of the great slog home has passed. All those who are stuck on the A303 decide to cut their losses and visit Stonehenge as they aren't going anywhere else; the A303 becomes a large carpark.
Of course, it could get even worse. God forbid there is a serious accident on any of the surrounding roads, but it is a Friday, and they are such a regular occurrence...
...then we have the possibility that some of the visitor's decide to make a weekend of it, or an impromptu rave or free-festival kicks off.
The reality is likely to be somewhere between these two extremes, but it would be a brave person who is prepared to put hard cash on the outcome. We will, of course, see what happens in a few days time.
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