Adam’s Grave

"Adam's Grave" - i am frustrated by the more recent names to this barrow and others. as someone who has made an informal study of West Kennet Long Barrow, i was gobsmacked when i approached this long barrow, and realised just how massive it is - and how much more colossal it must have been, 4000 years ago! WKLB was a pile of fallen stones over a mound, before Stuart Piggott expertly restored it. Other tombs have collapsed. Adam's Grave long barrow stands yet, even though its facade stones have been robbed for boundary markers and building material; and the side ditches are still there, even after 4 millennia of silting, unbelievable! i am maddly curious to know what is inside - could be anything or 'nothing', a symbolic barrow: i look forward to the day when such structures can be surveyed unobtrusively, like x-rayed, for example? i expected Adam's Grave to be vertiginous and barren and i couldn't have been more mistaken: the views are breathtaking and the grassland benign - the barrow balances Knap Hill causewayed enclosure and vice versa, with the Ridgeway ('Welsh Way', i read?) passing betwixt and descending to Alton Priors, bizarre setting of megaliths sat upon by disused(?) church, beside ancient yew, adjacent a bubbling spring ...

Amy Winehouse should come up here ~ a perfect de-tox, spiritually, mentally, physically ... yes, yes, yes :)

d'you know, the people who manage the Ridgeway refuse to acknowledge this leg of the ancient track, even though it is clearly labelled as such on the Ordinance Survey map? :-o they insist it turns right at Avebury, a 90º turn off Hackpen Hill: seriously?

:-|