thesweetcheat wrote:
Thanks for the link Nigel. I note the reference to "hundreds" of people climbing each year. I hadn't appreciated it was so many, I assumed (probably naively) that it was a few dozen. I've never seen anyone up there myself, but I've only ever been there (to Avebury) in the day and not that often. Have I underestimated the scale? Are we talking "mass climbing" in groups, or lots of solitary visits?
Over the last two years I have been passing Silbury on average 4 times a week, I regularly speak to people that monitor the hill, and a couple that have views of it from their windows. If it isn't raining or foggy, and sometimes even when it is, there are always vehicles in the car park, the lay-bys, and sometimes in that field entrance just east of the monument. Climbers are regularly seen, and sometimes movement around the lip of the summit points to people already being up there. At weekends when it is fine you not infrequently see people climbing up as others are coming down. Mass climbing only takes place usually on such as solstices or following some provocation such as a crop circle or ufo sighting. Most of the time it is just a drip, drip, drip, of individuals, couples, carload, or small parties taking the footpaths, some over from Avebury, Swallowhead, or WKLB.[Just curious, rather than going anywhere with this.]
Let's face it we all know the temptation is great, but it simply has to stop and a reasonable solution found.
It's in The Times today, so Prince Charles now knows not to climb! :)