King's Play Hill Long Barrow View all content for King's Play Hill (17 posts)

I was a bit late getting started but the weather had been poor in the morning so I thought I would see if it got any better. I had decided to visit a couple of places I had never been to before. The King's Play Hill sounded interesting and wasn't too far away from my hone town. We arrived along the road/track just below the foot of the hill. It had been raining the past few days and the car was fi8nding it difficult to stay on the straight. Initially I couldn't find anywhere to park and so drove straight on in hope something would materialise (the road is too narrow to park on the roadside). I couldn't find anywhere obvious that wasn't in front of a farm gate so after a short while I gave up and turned round. On the way back down the hill I spotted a small place on the left about 50 yards past the stile the lead to the hill. I was a bit slippery but it was better than walking from the village. Rex and I traversed the stile and made our way to the top of the hill, which had a pathway of sorts. We stopped at some sort of concrete well structure while I worked out which way to go, as the summit seemed to be a fenced-off ploughed field. I after our little break I went left around the field, which proved to be correct. By now the wind had picked up and it was quite chilly. As we went around the field I could see the two round barrows ahead, perched on the very edge of the downs overlooking Heddington and the Avon valley. Arriving at the barrows and feeling quite exhausted I took my time top look around. The whole place had that familiar atmospherically bleak look about it. I could see what remained of the longbarrow in the ploughed field. I was almost completely gone now; the uncut grass the only real evidence of its existence. I walked over to the barrow and close up there is a discernible hump it was disappointing and quite sad really. However the views from the top of the rou8nd barrows is spectacular especially with the dark troubled clouds overhead. As it had started to rain now I decided to return to the warm dry car.

Posted by scubi63 26th February 2007ce

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