Avebury

This morning was cold and drizzly. John very kindly collected us and we made the long drive out of London and down the M4 to Avebury.  The outer circle is said to be the largest Neolithic stone circle in Europe. The amount of effort required to shift so many stones, some of them weighing more than 40 tons, and digging the earth works for the surrounding henge, is hard to imagine. The villagers in the 14th century started to push over the stones, probably for religious reasons, till one poor chap was flattened underneath a particularly large stone, which understandably discouraged his colleagues from further stone toppling. He was still there when archaeologists raised the stone in 1938.

The site is important for contemporary pagans, and there were a group there today communing with a fine group of four oak trees growing on the top of the henge wall.

For lunch we headed over to the Red Lion, a suitably quaint hotel in the village located within the perimeter of the outer circle and the hence. Nice to eat lunch looking out over the stones and the sheep grazing around them. After lunch we pottered around the picturesque village and visited the church of St James, where "All God's creatures are welcome .. dog treats in the purple Tupperware on the shelf." A bit funky but welcoming and with it's heart in the right place I think.

The area is rich with bronze age sites, and we passed another, even more impressive one on the way home. Silbury Hill is a huge man made mounf, which is said to have been the tallest man made structure (I guess a mound of gravel, chalk and Earth is a structure) in Europe till the middle ages. Once again, the scale of it and the effort required to build it are just stunning.

It was marvellous to see these sites and to think a bit about what it means to be human. We aren't so far away from the people who wrangled those huge stones, dug the massive henge,  and carried in the earth to build Silbury Hill.And it was lovely to get out and see some AONBs (that is, areas of outstanding natural beauty) and some of the lovely old towns on the old Bath Road, all with a genial and good humoured friend and guide. We feel very fortunate.

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