Stonehenge Tours from London — Questions Answered

From $84 per person for a half-day with admission included, and up to about $260 for a departure that takes you inside the stone circle. Full days that add Bath, Windsor or Oxford sit between $95 and $135. Stonehenge London ticket prices for the monument itself are set by English Heritage and rise the later you book. The two private cars are priced per group rather than per person.

On most departures: return coach travel from central London, a guide on board, and — where you pick the entry option — English Heritage admission with the site shuttle and the visitor centre. Food, gratuities and hotel pickup are almost never in the fare. Each departure states what its own fare covers.

Yes, and earlier is cheaper. Stonehenge London tickets are timed entry slots sold in advance tiers, so one bought weeks ahead costs less than the same slot on the day. Every tour here that includes admission holds that slot for you.

By the tour operator. When a departure includes admission, the operator holds the timed slot and you travel on one ticket. There is no separate queue at the visitor centre and nothing to collect from a desk.

Yes. Every tour we list refunds in full if you cancel at least 24 hours before departure, in UK local time. Inside 24 hours the fare is not refunded and changes are not accepted, so move the date early rather than late.

Several of these departures offer it, and the booking page says so before you commit. It holds your seat and leaves the payment until nearer the date. It pairs well with the 24-hour free cancellation that every tour here carries.

English Heritage and National Trust members go in free on production of a card, and English Heritage members bring children free too. Everyone else needs a ticket, and the monument field is not open access outside the solstice and equinox mornings. A guided departure that includes admission is the simplest route for a visitor without a membership.

Between one hour and two, depending on the departure. The half-days give two hours; the three-stop full days that add Windsor and Oxford give one. It is the number that decides which day is right for you, and it is listed against every departure.

About two hours each way. The six-hour half-days spend four of those hours on the road for two at the monument, which is why almost every coach leaves before 8:30am.

Six to six and a half hours for a half-day, and nine to twelve and a half for a full day. The longest full days get back to London around 8:30pm. Pick a shorter one if you have a dinner reservation or a theatre ticket that evening.

Most check in between 7:30am and 8:15am and pull away within half an hour. The Victoria half-day departs at 8:30am and is back by 2:30pm. The sunrise stone-circle departure goes at 5:30am and the sunset one at 10:00am, both from the Millennium Gloucester.

Victoria Coach Station, Gloucester Road, South Kensington, Grosvenor Gardens, Bulleid Way or Earl’s Court, depending on the operator. Each tour names its own point and they are not interchangeable. Check yours the night before — several finish somewhere different from where they started.

Rarely. The two private cars collect from your accommodation, and the Southampton transfer picks up from selected central London and Heathrow hotels. Every coach departure meets at a fixed point in central London instead.

From London, usually yes. A single Stonehenge London booking covers the drive, the timed ticket, the shuttle and the commentary, and you are back in the city the same day without planning a connection. If you are already in Salisbury, or you hold an English Heritage membership, buying direct is cheaper.

It is if you have one day and want more than one place out of London. It costs you time at the monument: the combined days give an hour there, the shorter days give two. Decide which of those matters more and the choice makes itself.

The half-days and two of the full days give a full two hours. That is long enough to walk the whole circuit twice, take the audio guide at a normal pace and still see the exhibition. Anything that adds a second and third stop trims it to an hour or ninety minutes.

Two of them, and both are priced per group rather than per person — up to seven travellers on the Cotswolds day, up to eight on the Windsor and Bath day. They collect from your accommodation and set their own pace. For two people the coach days are far better value; for a family of six the arithmetic flips.

Yes, on one departure, which gives two hours at each. Avebury is the larger circle of the two, it is free to walk into, and a village sits inside it. That contrast is the whole point of the day.

One departure is built for exactly that: a one-way transfer from London to the Southampton cruise terminal that stops at the monument for ninety minutes on the way. Luggage travels with you, up to two hold bags and one carry-on each. On 4pm sailings it reaches the port between 1:00pm and 1:30pm.

Some offer it as a paid option chosen at booking rather than as part of the fare — a lunch pack on the coach, or a meal at a 14th-century pub in Lacock. Where a listing is not clear about food, the card here says nothing rather than guessing. Eat before you board and the question goes away.

Not on a standard ticket — visitors follow a path around the outside. English Heritage runs a separate Stone Circle Access scheme before and after public opening hours, and two departures from London hold slots on it.

No, on any visit, Stone Circle Access included. Staying off and away from the stones is the condition that access runs on, and it is what keeps the surfaces intact. You get close enough to see the tool marks, which is the part people remember.

An exhibition of Neolithic finds, reconstructed Neolithic houses you can walk into, and a World Heritage landscape of barrows and earthworks spreading out around the circle. Allow half an hour for the visitor centre if your departure gives you two hours.

A shuttle bus runs the gap and it is covered by your admission, so it is inside the fare on every tour that includes entry. You can also walk it across the fields, which takes longer and is the better version in decent weather. Both arrive at the same place.

9:30am to 6:00pm from 28 March to 6 September, and 9:30am to 5:00pm from 7 September to 19 March. Last entry is two hours before closing and the monument field shuts half an hour before the visitor centre. The site closes on 25 December.

Early, and out of season. Cruise-ship days push the crowd into the late morning, which is exactly when the three-stop coach days arrive. A half-day that reaches the field soon after opening sees the thinnest crowds of any option here.

Open, exposed and several degrees windier than London in every season. A windproof layer matters more than an umbrella, which will not survive out there. Bring one and the walk round is a pleasure in almost any conditions.

The tours run and the monument stays open — it is a field, and rain has never closed it. Only the stone-circle access visits can be curtailed in genuinely wet weather, and the guided walk beyond the walkway goes ahead instead.

Yes, for personal use, and the low sun early and late is the best light you will get. Drones and metal detectors are prohibited, and commercial photography needs permission from English Heritage in advance.

There is a café at the visitor centre and a shop beside it, both open through the day. There is nothing at the stones themselves, which are a shuttle ride away. Most coaches carry no food at all, so eat before you board or budget twenty minutes at the centre.

Some are. Four departures are described by their operators as wheelchair and stroller accessible, three of them with seven days’ notice so a suitable vehicle can be arranged. Most coach departures are not, and each one says so plainly.

The path around the stones is a level, surfaced circuit and the shuttle takes wheelchairs. The ground beside it is open chalk grassland, which is uneven after rain. The visitor centre, the exhibition and the Neolithic houses are all step-free.

Yes, and it works better than most historic sites because it is outdoors and the Neolithic houses are hands-on. One operator sets a minimum age of four; the private Cotswolds car does not carry under-fours at all. The long coach day is the harder part, not the monument.

Layers, closed shoes, a charged phone for the audio guide and your own earphones. Most departures carry no food or drink. A small bag is fine on every coach here; large suitcases are only carried on the departures that say so.

On some. Two operators state that luggage travels in the hold, which makes those departures workable on an arrival or a departure day. The Southampton transfer is built around luggage and takes two hold bags per person.

Neolithic and early Bronze Age communities living on Salisbury Plain. Not the Druids — they belong to the Iron Age, roughly two thousand years after the stones went up. The association came from an eighteenth-century antiquarian and it has outlived the evidence.

The first monument — a bank, a ditch and a ring of pits — dates from about 3000 BC. The stone circle you photograph today went up about 2500 BC. That makes the sarsens roughly contemporary with the pyramids at Giza.

The sarsens most probably came from West Woods near Marlborough, about twenty-five kilometres north. The bluestones came from the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales, over 150 miles away. How they crossed that distance is still argued about.

About 25 tons on average. The largest, the Heel Stone, weighs about 30. The Welsh bluestones are far smaller at two to five tons each, which is what makes their journey so hard to explain.

Yes, inscribed in 1986 together with Avebury as one property. It was among the first sites in the United Kingdom to be listed. The inscription covers the surrounding landscape of barrows and earthworks, not only the circle.

The axis of the monument lines up with sunrise at the midsummer solstice in one direction and sunset at the midwinter solstice in the other. A marker set into the path at the Heel Stone points along it. English Heritage opens the field for managed access around both solstices and both equinoxes.