Vicster

One way to avoid the problems of parking on the A4 lay-by and risking your wordly belongings, is to walk to WKLB from the village of East Kennet.

If you walk past the church (and the groovy house with the amazing wood carvings) and follow the bridle path, it takes about 15-20 mins and affords fabulous views of both East Kennet Long Barrow (on your left hand side) and Silbury.

This way, you approach WKLB from the “front”, walking up the field directly opposite. Excellent.

When we visited last week, some idiot had chalked graffitti all over the stones. At least it was only chalk but it was still infuriating. Noticed the same thing at Woodhenge and was even more annoyed by the “peace and love” messages scrawled there.

A note re: the Out of Hours Access.

If you can afford it, do it!

To see the stones up close and with only 12 other people present, as we did on Saturday evening, was a completely different experience to the standard “tourist” one.

Forget about the security man in his bright yellow coat, texting his friends and ignoring all questions; forget about the fact that they close the toilets and the cafe, so the fact that you may have paid TWICE as much as other visitors doesn’t count for anything when you need to go to the loo or want a hot cuppa whilst you are waiting to go in; forget about the fact that you know EH are cashing in on the fact that some people feel a need to see more than a quick view from behind a guarded wire. Forget all that because.....

.....we spent an hour, walking among the stones, kiddy as kippers with a dozen like-minded folk and were able to take some fantastic photos. As the sun set, the golden glow of the sun against the blue sky was contrasted with the grey of snowclouds gathering. And just as the first few spots of sleety rain fell, a rainbow arched over the site. Just beautiful.

I got to nosey into the excavtion site (only shown to “day tourists” on a live feed in a  marquee by the car park) and we could wander round freely (as long as we didn’t stand on the stones or light any flames) enjoying this site in all of it’s glory (almost)

I had been wary of visiting SH for a number of reasons but this was actually a very impressive visit and one which, whilst not ideal, is better than most get these days. As a birthday present, it was hard to beat.

Visited in Aug 2007 with my mum in tow. Lucky to have quite a fine day and the views across the water were breathtaking.

The visitor centre is interesting; certainly from my mum’s point of view she found it helpful to have some info about the landscape, geology and the history of the site. Without this, I imagine the actual arachaeology side of it would be rather dull! The huge Scots Pine which is located in the centre is also pretty stunning.

When you get out, you walk among the bog past lines of stone walls; I actually got a bit excited about it all but can appreciate why it may be beyond the interest of the casual observer!

There are the remains of a domestic enclosure which is also really interesting but overall the most spectacular thing about this site is the location. Amazing.

Despite the rather unattractive chicken wire which holds the renovated cairn in place, this site was really intriguing to me. Later than the other burial chambers, the remains of 5 people (3 adults and 2 children) were found here and it is the most elaborate of the sites at Carrowmore.

What fascinated me though was the fact that, despite it having been partially excavted, the packing stones which held the lovely big capstone in place on the orthostats are untouched. I love this fact – what we now see is exactly how it was when it was first built. Fab.

Unfortunatley, the weather was too overcast for us to see the curved rock art which is carved into the capstone.

This is one of those sites that takes your breath away. Despite the rain and mist, which meant we didn’t get to see the site in the context of the surrounding landscape, this felt like one of those places where things just fit together.

I was with my mum, so decided it would be worthwhile taking the guided tour, so that she could have a better understanding of what we were looking at. As it turned out, I too ended up feeling like I understood this place better after spending an hour with the fabulous OPW guide. She was interested AND interesting, answering questions but also asking for our opinions and she skillfully avoided responding to the only other 2 people on our tour who seemed to be into biblical/creationist archaeology and kept referring to Noah a lot! Odd. Mind you, it was raining quite heavily.

She led us on a (chronological) spiral journey through the various sites, explaining the relevance to the surrounding hills (which we couldn’t really see) She also advised us which of the other sites (which weren’t on the tour) we should visit and went into detail about which sites had been excavated and/or altered, so that we got a sense of how this landscape would’ve looked when littered with these amazing burial/ritual sites.

If you come here with non-stoney folk in tow, I would recommend taking the tour for their sake as my mum was as giddy as a kipper by the end of it all – she said she could now understand why I am so enthusaistic about all things old and stoney and spent most of the next day asking me hundreds of questions. Some achievement!

Directions – Great Urswick; the stone is built into the field wall on the opposite side of the road to the school.

Now broken and set into the base of the field wall, this stone once stood in the adjacent field. Named the Priapus Stone, it was village custom to decorate the stone at Midsummer in the hope that harvests would be fruitful.

There is no definite record of it being ancient but this custom apparently died out at the begining of the 19th century.

If it was complete it would be similar in size and shape to the Middle Barrow stone, less than half a mile from here. From this field you can see Great Urswick burial chamber.

A local woman showed it to us but said she believed it was medieval. I’d like to believe it predates this period by a few thousand years!!

Ooooh, this is a fab site! The first time I headed out here I was alone and it was bucketing it down – trying to drive through torrential rain whilst looking over hedges on a windy road isn’t my greatest skill, so what I didn’t realise is this; you can see it quite clearly from the road!!!

I can’t think of a similar site anywhere else in this area, it looked like it should be in Cornwall or Wales or Ireland.

Although somewhat destroyed, there is still a sense of how this would’ve stood in the landscape and if you scrabble between the fallen stones and the prickly old hawthorne you can look through the remaining stones towards an obvious dip in the hill opposite. I loved the fact that the natural stone surrounding this chamber made if feel like it was part of the landscape. Fab.

The walk from The Hurlers to the Cheesewring is magnificent. As you walk across the open land, you can see the site getting bigger and bigger and more and more spectacular.

This really is an amazing landscape and once you venture to the top, it really is one of those “top if the world” feelings.

Fabulous.

Just returned from a trip here and suffered the same fate as Jane and Treaclechops did on their trip – a party of 4 adults + dogs strewn across the circle which made photography and, more importantly, investigation of the site a no-no.

It didn’t help that I misread Cronezone’s directions and had walked back to the 2 footpath signs and taken the right one from here, rather than from where I had parked the car. So, I had already spent 45 minutes stagggering through pretty high bracken wondering where on earth the blighter was!

Anyhoo, I hung around for few minutes and explained that I wanted to take some photos but they weren’t for moving, so headed off again. At least I will know where it is, next time I visit! Oh, and the views across the bay are amazing.

2nd visit – 4 weeks later. Came back determined to get some good pictures and with Vicky and a picnic in tow. What we hadn’t expected was the travellers camp which had set up just across from here! Once again, there were a few folk around but this time they were more than happy to vacate the circle so we could get some pictures and have a proper nosey round. This is a cracking site but I think it is just too accessible in a way – there were the remnants of a fire bulit in the centre of the circle and evidence of a couple other fire pits on the path; this combined with the red paint on one of the stones made me think that this merely a party-spot for some. Ah well.....

Finally!!!! After driving past this site lord only knows how many times and making a hundred promises to myself to visit, I finally made it on Saturday. Inspired by a certain Dr Burl, who we had just witnessed giving a rather humourous talk in Penrith about Cumbrian stone circles, we jumped in the car and headed out, mapless but determined. Fortunately, Dom has a great sense of direction and I had vague memories of having checked out the route when I had planned to visit previously and we found Gunnerwell Farm without too many u-turns!

We parked on the road and walked down to the farm – I don’t know whether the farm was ever sold but if it was, the new owners seem as friendly and welcoming as the previous ones. We did see the stone standing in the field outside the house but weren’t sure whether this was just one of those cheeky old glacial erratics which manage to get everyhere round this bit of Cumbria.

From the farm, you just go through the gate and follow the field straight down – access is easy and no longer do you need to take your life in your hands and climb over dangerous walls. Jane will be pleased!

The M6 wasn’t too busy and it was a stunningly beautiful day so we pottered around for some time – Dom mentioned the resemblance to Croft Moraig and I have to admit, it is equally as “messy” – it looks as if 2 groups of peope were trying to out-do each other and it just ended up as one big stone-fest! There are a couple of those lovely pink stones you find at Kemp Howe and Gamelands too which looked fab in the sunshine. Perversley, you actually get a better sense of this circle as you drive by on the M6 than when you are stood in the centre of it, so we climbed up to the top of the field to look down and see it is all of its glory.

A fabulous site to visit after being so inspired by Dr Burl and a good way to end the day. Bliss.

After yet another visit to this intriguing site it seems clearer than ever that the entrance to the henge is aligned with a notch on the hill which is due east. This appears to be the point where the midwinter sun rises.

Whether I will ever be brave/foolhardy enough to trek over boggy fields to spend a few hours on this wind swept land in the middle of winter to check this out for myself remains to be seen!

I would advise that you visit in winter so that you get a better idea of what a huge site this is. Even without the leaves and foilage, it is a hard site to decipher when you first enter but after we had walked the entire circumferance of this mighty henge, we had a better idea of what we were looking at!

It really is rather huge and impressive.