Silbury Hill 180
Image by Meic

Rhiannon wrote:
I honestly thought you were joking? If you can't tell that it's a ten foot high NO then what on earth have we been discussing here? How could you think the following said yes?
(or are you just winding me up?)

If you want extracts from my immensely long post then here they are-

"If that means the general public can't wander around Skara Brae, Stonehenge, Silbury, then that's how it is. And we are the general public. Even though some of us might like to think we're extra special and the rules don't apply to us.

OF COURSE I'd like to sit in Skara Brae, who bloody wouldn't? But it's irrelevant, because the rule is no one is allowed to do that.

The question is, am I more special than everyone else, do I have some special right to bend the rules that apply to everyone else for the good of the site? What's more important in the long run, the welfare of the site or me satisfying my impulse?

The people looking after Silbury, Skara Brae, Stonehenge, you'd like to think they are people who have the sites' protection at heart, and they're experienced / educated people who have been hired for their expertise. So if they decide we shouldn't trample all over Silbury etc, in this case I'm willing to believe that it's quite a good decision)"

Erm. The question was about Avebury.

Did you read it Rhiannon? Or did you just react without reading it properly, thinking I was talking about the Skara Brae question?

oh THAT question.

Ok so it's all about damage to the site isn't it, weighing up whether there's too much of it. And if there is, restricting visitors.

No one's hammering the stones any more, they're just wandering round the very large landscape. So although there are a lot of visitors, they're well spread out. And the damage they do is probably to the grass, which isn't very exciting. And the NT have put in car parking and paths etc to funnel visitors around. I think they did cordon off the area where those nice tree roots are for a bit.

So it's all ok at Avebury isn't it? Or do you perceive there to be particular problems that mean visitors should be fenced off from the stones?