Rhiannon

It’s not that far a walk from the car park to Bryn Celli Ddu. But far enough that my mind was full of thoughts of what it might be like. You can’t particularly see the tomb until you pop out of the hedges right at the end. So my expectations were high. But I felt weirdly underwhelmed by this place. I suppose I have got a problem with distinguishing reality and imagination. But what more do you want Rhiannon, it’s got everything you’d think you’d like? Perhaps it was so different from your average stone-in-a-field or collapsing dolmen that it felt wrong to me. Too messed with. Too neat.

When I went inside I was really appalled at the amount of tat (sorry, respectful offerings) inside. I wanted to sweep it all into a bin bag and take it away. I probably would have done but there were other visitors and I was vaguely aware they might think I was being disrespectful. Particularly egregious were the hand prints and crosses painted on the stones. Conceivably, the builders of the tomb might have liked your sea shell or even that hideous leather owl. But a cross?? Painted on?? Just stop imposing your 21st century beliefs on someone from 5000 years ago.

Yes I felt quite irritated by now, at myself for not “feeling the vibes” and feeling a bit flat, and also at the graffiti.

Then I noticed the gorsedd. I really liked the gorsedd. It felt like the important bit. I should have found a way to get to it. But it was starting to rain and I felt Mr Rh had been imposed upon enough. If I came back I’d go over there straight away.

The latest imposition at Trefignath is the building of the Holyhead Hydrogen Hub. A worthy effort I’m sure, using renewable energy to produce hydrogen via electrolysis. But I hope it doesn’t obscure the mountain beyond too much. The business park at Parc Cybi is still mostly empty fields otherwise. You’d like to think the stones will still be there when everything else has long since fallen down. They’ve managed to make it so far.

It’s probably heresy but I think I liked the bedrock parts of the tomb better than the tomb itself. But maybe that’s what the creators liked too and that’s why they stuck it here.

There isn’t anywhere particular to park a car but the wideness of the verge of the big new road gives you plenty of options. I liked that they’d designated the stretch of the original lane into a cycle path / for pedestrians.

I visited one of the nuclear power stations yesterday, and was delighted that when I asked one of the guides “Where’s the Pixie’s Mound?” they did not look at me like I was mad, but explained exactly where it was (next to the roundabout) and that I’d have a good view.

At the moment, at least, there are no check points you need to go through to get to the roundabout (the second now along the road). Though I imagine you’d potentially cause a bit of a stir if you stopped to get out. Especially if you were wielding a camera. But if you gave them some spiel about prehistory and fairies, it’d probably be put down to eccentricity, who knows? Maybe it’s not worth the risk. I imagine you’re on CCTV simply everywhere. The England Coast Path does skirt the edge of the field though, so perhaps you could view it more leisurely from there.

I enjoyed the fact that there seemed to be two thorn bushes on the barrow. I was also pleased to see that the road into Hinkley ‘B’ was named after the Pixie.

I explained to my colleague that it would definitely be bad luck for anyone to disturb the mound. He thought it was probably best if the builders of the new nuclear power station kept the pixies on their side.

I’ve not been up here for a very long time. Perhaps you’re guilty of the same sort of thing – tending to overlook local places for new and exciting ones that are further away. But my sister and I found this excellent, complete with its air of weirdness. (A couple of vaguely peculiar things happened while we were here, although normal people wouldn’t have given them a second thought. Maybe you find more weirdness when you’re expecting it.)

It was exposed here but dry, and we could see great globs of low dark cloud moving across the landscape, pouring on less fortunate places. There’s a 360 degree view – quite uncommon round here where lots of high spots are joined onto bigger bits of land like Salisbury Plain.

We were mostly here for the wildlife (we saw kites, a yellowhammer and oil beetles among other things) and specifically for the snails. It got hilariously competitive as we hunched over little chalky scrapes out of the wind, my sister triumphantly brandishing a tiny shell a few millimetres high – What?! Why haven’t I got that one... (Competitive snailing eh, whatever next. But it’s amazing how much variety there is, and because they’re empty, you don’t have to feel too guilty about collecting a few shells.)

On reflection I suppose we climbed the hill in a spiralling way like the shape of a shell. Much nicer than the more ghastly straight-up approach – it’s precipitously steep in places. Most of the hill is so windswept and open, but the quarried area on the south is such a strange muddle of lumps and bumps. They loom up over you and it feels strangely enclosed and surprisingly claustrophobic. But the quarried area doesn’t take up the amount of space that you expect from the carpark. It’s only a little area really.

There are other earthworks too -the Iron Age ridge that circles the hill for one. It doesn’t feel very usefully defensive but maybe the slope would be enough to put most people off storming up. I did start to wonder, did anyone ever really live up here? The top isn’t particularly big or flat like nearby Scratchbury and Battlesbury. You can imagine people in their huts there but not so much here. Yet Martin and Dave from the National Trust did find some here with their resistivity experiments.

This strange isolated hill advertises itself from all sorts of spots for miles around. You’d want to know who was in charge of it. And who was buried in the Bronze age barrows on top? It’s funny to sit in their lea and have the same sort of view that people have seen for thousands of years (if you ignore industrial agriculture). There’s also a linear dyke that’s said to cut across one of the barrows, dating it at least a bit.

We also walked down the amazing sunken lane on the hill’s south (part of the Mid-Wiltshire Way) – recommended as another numinous spot.

I’m not saying Mr Rh and I are unsociable, but we do seem to tend to head for the emptiest reaches of beyond on holiday these days. And the beach at Bostadh does feel like quite a long way from anywhere. You need to leave the Scottish mainland for Skye, catch the ferry to Lewis, drive up north and over the bridge to the island of Great Bernera, then aim for the furthest tip of that. It should probably be called the Outer Outer Hebrides if you ask me.

I can promise you pale sand and properly blue water that wouldn’t look out of place in the Caribbean (it’s just a bit draughtier). It was nice to just sit and watch the local birdlife flying around and bobbing about. But if you walk to the back of the beach you’ll spot a thatched mound, its roof held on by long ropes weighted with holed stones. It’s a recreation of the houses that once stood here in the Iron Age – a number were revealed in the 1990s when a storm blew away some of the dunes.

You must cross a little moat (which unfortunately isn’t putting off the rabbits who are eating the roof – they’ve got the sense to use the bridge like you do) and descend into the sheltered low doorway. Then ducking down (even I had to duck) you enter the house.

It’s absolutely pitch black, and although you can hear a welcoming voice telling you all will come clear in a moment, and inviting you to sit just there (or somewhere thereabouts) – well it’s just as though you’ve gone blind. But gradually your eyes adjust, and in the meantime you can listen to the superb soft Lewissian lilt of the lovely and knowledgeable woman who is the house’s curator. Eventually you’ll believe her that it’s even possible to read a book in this dim light.

I thought I might like to live in a house like this, cosily out of the draught, with my strongly-scented peat fire burning, doing a bit of weaving.

I thoroughly recommend you visit, it feels like time travel.

Moss recently posted a link to Jim Leary’s paper on the Marlborough Mound. Towards the end of it there is a section discussing ‘other potential prehistoric mounds in Wessex and beyond’. Sherrington motte is picked out as very promising, ‘given its low lying setting next to the river Wylye and with springs nearby [it] is surely a contender for a Late Neolithic mound.’ So today, encouraged by what feels like this year’s first view of the sun, my sister and I made a visit.

We parked just opposite the Codford turnoff on the A36 and walked down the narrow lane towards the River Wylye. As you may have noticed, it’s been raining a bit recently, and the ditch along the side of the path was full and running swiftly. Running over the chalk the water is so beautifully clear. Growing up amidst quite different geology, I always think chalk streams are rather magical. The Wylye always strikes me as rather magical, weaving about so cleanly in its valley.

After you nip across the railway line, the footpath is obvious and bends round a couple of amazing houses. One had swans lounging in the garden – the river was up an absurd amount. This became very obvious when the two of us had to cross a footbridge across it, barely above the water. Here the river wasn’t clear at all, it was murky and speeding rather scarily.

To see the mound, go into the churchyard. It’s on the far side of a seemingly still ‘moat’ though with restricted access it’s hard to see how the water connects up with all the rest round here, but the river’s very close. I imagine there’s a little more water in the moat than usual at the moment. Leary’s article says the mound is 48m in diameter and 5.5m high, adding encouragingly that ‘mottes are quite rare in Wiltshire.‘

I’m sure you would also like the painted Jacobean wall texts in the dinky church of St. Cosmas and St. Damian immediately opposite, while you’re there. And back at Codford St. Peter there is a superb bit of Saxon stone carving. It was a very nice stroll. There are some more photos of the mound on Paul Remfry’s website . He says the moat is full of water all year round (which at least in the present would be in contrast to the situation at Silbury and Marlborough).

Don’t you find it interesting when something that strikes you about a site isn’t mentioned at all in other people’s fieldnotes. For me, one of the things here is the Dorset coast stretching out into the distance. Maybe that’s because I’ve spent 95% of my life a long way from the sea, so I enjoy it more when I see it. But for me it gave the massive view a bit of a focus and more of a sense of distance. We’d been down on the weird Chesil Beach earlier (with its curiously sorted pebbles, pea size at West Bay, potato size at Portland, said the notice) and bits were still dropping out of my pockets when we got up here on the hill. I wondered what the prehistoric inhabitants would have thought. You couldn’t live this near the sea and not eat fish now and again. The view completely distracted me from the slope below (I didn’t realise its suicidal steepness until we were driving back down and I saw it from afar). It’s got a rather similar feel to Westbury with its dry chalk undulations.

The other thing that really grabbed me was something you can only see from the northwest point of the fort. It’s a line of rocks sticking out from the hillside ahead. It’s a curious looking thing, I mean obviously it’s some strata of harder rocks, but it’s strange, a ledge jutting out from the smooth slope. I felt certain it should have a name, and looking on the map afterwards I see it does: Bell Stone. oh how there must be / must have been a story to go with it. John Curtis has a photo as I saw it from the hill on Panoramio; also a close up here.

Also I was interested to notice a bronze age barrow (cut in quarters like a currant bun by some treasure hunter no doubt) – it was interesting to think it was preserved by the later builders of the fort. And speaking of barrows, there’s what I took to be a massive disc barrow next to the road – obvious enough to draw the eye.

Practicalities: the turnings off the A35 are tiny and easy to miss but we came off at Askerswell and parked at the top of the hill in a sort of decently offroad council-approved spot at SY549948. Then you can walk in a level straight line across a couple of fields (hopping the stiles) to end up at the original entrance to the fort. You do have to climb up a bit to get in though – as if the almost encircling slopes weren’t enough defence. And there are some lovely brownish sheep up there at the moment, with curly horns, I suppose they are looking after the chalk grassland for the National Trust.

Smoo Cave. You know it’s going to have something about it, just from the name :) Though it’s supposedly one of those daft names like River Avon that means the same thing twice. Perhaps that makes it even better.

Although it should be a pretty remote spot, there were a good deal of tourists stopping here, some in massive buses having come all the way from Austria. But somehow, the site’s just about escaped being over-domesticated. There are fences to stop you falling to your doom, and some nice interpretation boards next to the car park. But the balance seems alright.

Firstly, up on the land, there’s Allt Smoo, a babbling stream that disappears suddenly into a hole in the ground in an alarming way (for fans of the mysterious karst feature, that’s the origin of part of the caves). That’s quite a strange thing to see. And then you can wander down many steps into the curiously long inlet from the sea (Geodha Smoo) and into the massive cave entrance itself to see the golden-brown peaty water emerging back out into the world. You can’t help imagining what such a huge interior space would seem like to anyone from countless centuries who’d have never otherwise been in such a place. Today we’ve been to big halls, shopping centres and so on and rather take it for granted. But this would be something quite novel. Not that you yourself are likely to have been in such a big sea cave before, it’s said to be the largest in Britain. So you’ll be impressed, but possibly in a different way.

Once inside the cave you can pad around on the earth floor looking up at the strange shapes of the rocks above you, but then you can hear the sound of the water pouring in from the stream, and you are drawn to the narrow entrance into the next part of the cave. In this smaller chamber there’s some natural light that spills down with the waterfall, and the noise from the water is very loud. It’s rather impressive and elemental. Everywhere smells mossy and earthy and damp.

The waterfall chamber is completely flooded, and you’re only there easily because of a little platform that’s been built. It would be quite something else to have had to paddle or wade through to see it in the gloom. You might have felt a little reticent.

There are even further chambers, as Carl mentions. They’re lit up with amber light in my photo. But I just can’t imagine wanting to have ventured in there with a burning torch, ducking under the low rocks. I’m a bit of a coward when it comes to dark, enclosed, water-filled underground places. I don’t think that’s too unreasonable.

If the people who lived here in prehistoric times thought Strange Things about this unusual place, I wouldn’t be surprised. They may have just thought it was cool. Which would be fair enough.

I spent a very tranquil afternoon at Shapwick Heath today. It was so sunny, and when you’re wandering along the tracks in the dappled shade, dodging the soggiest peatiest spots, and being followed by dragonflies, it’s just marvellous. We sat in a hide for ages, looking out over one of the lakes, listening to the rustling reedbeds. It really is so quiet and remote feeling, you’ve got Glastonbury Tor poking up on the horizon, and you feel miles away from modern life. It’s very good for me. But to get to the point, at the moment, English Nature have opened the path that follows the line of the Sweet Track – it’s not always open as often it’s too wet. But at the moment you can walk through the wet woodland, brushing through all the sedges and the ferns (there are Osmunda royal ferns mmm) and walk pretty much where the builders of the track walked, back in 3800BC. How mad is that. It was a total pleasure. I recommend it very much.

There’s even a very decently surfaced path to where you can see (imagine) where the track was – EN take access pretty seriously at Shapwick. The other tracks around the reserve are variously accessible (most very much so), and of course they are all pretty flat, it being the Somerset levels. The specially-opened track does require you to climb up and down a few steps, wind along a narrow path, and hop across trainer-swallowing squishy peat though.

There’s some good information about the way the Sweet Track was built at Digital Digging. (And I finally discovered today that it’s called the ‘Sweet’ track because Mr Sweet was the man who spotted it. Just in case you were wondering too.)

Taking advantage of the decidedly spring-like weather I have just made my first visit to Scratchbury. There’s room to park just off the roundabout at ST914437 and then you can walk up the slope of Cotley Hill and across the down to the hillfort. I am not built for slopes and it nearly killed me (it’s not that bad really and is quite a decent path. There’s a stile right at the bottom and a kissing gate further on). The advantage of physical exertion and lack of oxygen to the brain means that when I do finally get to the top of these places, I’m feeling slightly peculiar. And this adds to their sense of being above the mundane. You can see and hear the traffic below but you’re well out of it in another world. I do like that.

Cotley and Scratchbury are an SSSI and there will be very interesting things to see there soon
https://www.english-nature.org.uk/citation/citation_photo/1001995.pdf
Today I was accompanied for some way by my first butterfly of the year, a brimstone. The plateau is full of peculiar mounds and dips, some of them clearly barrows, some of them more mysterious. Lumps of flint and chalk are everywhere. As usual I had my eyes peeled for that elusive arrowhead, in vain.

When you get to Scratchbury from this direction you are met by a huge bank. In fact the whole place is much bigger than I was expecting. I see now from this photo at Last Refuge that there is also a distinct inner enclosure. I was quite happy sitting on the very prominent barrow overlooking the view and unusually didn’t feel the urge to pace round the whole perimeter. I felt quite at peace. Thus I can’t really comment on the parking / climbing opportunities from the other direction. But I enjoyed the walk to and from the fort. I saw half a dozen people while I was up here, a positive Picadilly Circus compared to many similar spots.

It was rather restorative. I think I’ll be back.

The track up here is atrocious: you really fear for your car’s suspension. But there was a notice when I visited yesterday and it seems this month they are closing the track for repairs. So if you visit very soon, you’ll probably have to walk up. but it’s not far, just a bit steep.

I suppose it’s unnecessary to repeat what everyone else has said about the inner ditch but I can’t resist. This place does not feel like a fort. For one thing, where’s the extra reinforcing outer bank round the entrance(s)? Where are the extra banks you’d expect on the flatter side? Why is it so awfully symmetrical feeling? And as for the inner ditch... well it’s just not Normal is it, especially so far into the middle of the area, it’s not like it’s right next to the outer bank. Nah, this place is a bit weird. The banks felt like they were keeping out Prying Eyes, but you could still see the panoramic view from the central area. Or maybe the banks were for sitting on to view whatever was going on in the middle, who knows. I wouldn’t buy anything about cattle enclosures either because the young ones here quite liked the challenge of the ditch.

There was a steady stream of visitors. I guess it’s free and near Salisbury, I don’t blame them but I was expecting to get the place to myself. Also you’ll find a lot of sloes in the hedges around the car park, so if you visit you’ll soon be able to gather some for your sloe gin. The rings themselves are an SSSI and there are lots of nice chalkland plants to check out.

It’s a long time since I was last here and it wasn’t quite how I remembered it. There are some huge stones here. One good thing about the masses of vegetation at this time of year, is that you can spot strangely flat areas that probably hide more stones. But mostly the nettles and the grasses hinder movement and stop you seeing the stones. But it’s a great spot, and clearly visited by others as you can tell by the trampling of the plants. It was soothingly peaceful and shaded from the hot sunshine. I sat near a superbly large stone on its edge right in the middle of the barrow. Below it there was an intriguing dark hole veiled by another smaller stone and a spider web.

But I found it kind of concerning that there were loads of large flat stones kind of stacked up at the far end. They looked strangely unmossy/licheny as though they’d been uncovered or moved quite recently. Surely no-one would bother moving stones from the barrow? I felt confused. I’ve posted a photo, if anyone’s familiar with the site and can comment.

This long barrow is so cute, because it’s very small. It’s clearly a haven for sheep, but today there were no sheep in the enormous flat field, and it was very tranquil indeed. I was impressed by the view – you can see out to Wales through a gap in the hills, and back to Wiltshire in the other direction. It did feel like the barrow had been unfortunately nibbled at over the centuries, as though it was much smaller than it should be, but it still has some height. It was deliciously shadey in contrast to the dried out field. There were a lot of small stones around but it was hard to decide if there’d ever been part of a wall – maybe the barrow looks like that through and through. It just had a very nice atmosphere here. And it’s extremely easy to find (and park near).

I wasn’t really expecting the barrows to be so low in the landscape. They’re kind of in a dip with very little view – so I guess the view is all focused on them (although trees have been planted one side of the road, so I don’t know what the view that way would be). They seem to follow the lie of the valley.

I read Wysefool’s suggestion that maybe a now-lost spring here was the reason for their location. (although what about the significance of his beloved nearby long barrow?) But in support I can tell you that I didn’t dare drive my car up the track to the small car park, because there was a huge patch of deep mud I was scared to get it stuck in – surely the only mud in the whole county on this baking Sunday, so maybe there’s still something springish here.

There’s a kissing gate into the field, which is a nature reserve, and currently full of rough vegetation that you have to kind of wade through. I spent a lot of time looking at all the weird plants (dropwort, quaking grass, knotted clover, I won’t go on) but my best moment was when I suddenly realised I was looking at a disc barrow, its shape suddenly leapt out at me. It was extremely serene here and I lounged under a beech tree on one of the barrows. The only noise was the occasional passing car and the sound of hundreds of crickets like tiny machine guns constantly firing away.

I liked it here although there wasn’t much to really see. You wouldn’t really know there was anything here at all if you hadn’t been forewarned. The barrow is where there’s a rough patch of ground (awash with lovely pyramidal orchids at the moment) and across some confusing lumps in the edge of the wood. So it’s hard to understand what’s what. I was totally taken though with the huge flattish stone lurking under one of the trees, I was very pleased to spot that, I had to give it a pat. Perhaps others would be easier to find at another time of year when there’s fewer leaves about. Also it didn’t help that the sun was extremely hot and I was starting to feel a bit odd. Fortunately it’s only a short flat jaunt back to the road (there’s masses of space where you can park your car).

I caught sight of this in the corner of my eye as I hurtled past down the hill. After a rapid bit of uphill reversing to the space opposite the top cottage, I trotted cheerfully across. It’s so nice that such curious things have managed to survive, and its neighbours are clearly proud of it, judging by the boldness of their house signs for ‘blowing stone cottages’.

I ought to admit that the first thing that popped into my head was that cheesy film from my childhood, Flash Gordon. You know, that stupid bit where the bloke off Blue Peter plunged his arm into the tree stump full of holes and got fatally mauled. Surely you remember. My point is that there are just so many holes in the Blowing Stone. How would you know which one to try blowing into? You could be there all day without instruction. Quite a few of them contained snails. I balked and chickened out. Partly because of the snails and partly because I could hear the occupants of the nearest cottage in their garden. I thought I’d save them from having to listen to me spitting and coughing.

There’s a little box containing postcards and leaflets – the leaflet by good old Mr Grinsell.

There’s a round flat stone right in front of the Stone – I’m intrigued to see it’s probably the same one raised up in Wysefool’s vintage photo?

This place is totally mad. It’s impossible for me to take photos that describe it. That’s because for one thing, there are these mad ‘earthworks’ – they’re not really earthworks, they’re dry chalk valleys. But from some angles you’d think you were looking at a hill fort with snakey defence ditches. Secondly, once you’ve climbed up to the top, the slope drops off in an insanely steep way, very suddenly. And thirdly, you are confronted with the most enormous view. From the vantage point of the round barrow on the crest, you have a 360 degree view – one way out to the north and west out over the steep slope and away to goodness knows where (I felt like I should be able to see the glitter of the sea, but that’s a bit too much) – but with a quite different feel to the south and east, which has that vast minimalist curveyness like the Salisbury Plain.

The long barrow is barely perceptible, but you just think: what on earth is it doing where it is? You had that view and you stick it there? Clearly the builders’ priorities were different from mine. Surely it is knowingly near the Edge but yet deliberately not near enough to see the view. A liminal spot but not on the distracting boundary. I don’t know. I’d love to know what others would think.

Having footled about for a bit I sat for a while looking out in the late afternoon sun. There’s Heddington church at the bottom of the hill but a place like this has surely always to have been better for thinking about stuff.

(I left the car backed up to a tree near a barn at SU010656. This is the old Bath-London coach road – you can rather imagine it when you know? Then I walked back and through a squeaky gate near the sign ‘dogs to be kept on lead’ (not the track through the open gate to the sign’s right). This side of the fence is open access land with a little on the other side of the sunken lane. Then it’s not too badly uphill a walk for long, just rough grassland underfoot, though don’t go too near the water trough or the reservoir, as the ground’s craftily boggy :) Aim for the corner and the world opens up in front of you).

East Kennett and West Kennett couldn’t be much more different really, not in our century at least. I wondered whether to write these fieldnotes, it’s like drawing unnecessary attention to something that’s quite happy nice and quiet and unknown, despite its proximity to the show sites of Avebury. Not to mention the fact it’s off the footpaths and I shouldn’t really have been there at all. But your tma-ish type values EK for what it is. And most normal people don’t want to trudge to an overgrown hillock somewhere up a muddy track. Besides, there’s nowhere obvious to leave a tealight. So maybe EK’s ok.

Even as you walk up here, you can see that the place is massively, surprisingly, tall. I thought it was an optical illusion until I got very close up and then I had to believe it. As you’re walking up the track, the barrow glowers ominously above you. But on arriving, the near end seems like the less important back, it shuns the view of West Kennett’s fancy frontage and Silbury hill. With the wintery lack of undergrowth I could walk along the barrow’s crest, to the far end which is higher and more sheltered. That has a much more enclosed feeling. There’s a kind of amphitheatre effect, with the skyline at a single level all around. But curiously the skyline isn’t consistently close, some of it’s made up of much further away bits of landscape, but it all overlaps to give this constant line. It’s totally different to the open feel of the other end, with its distant views to all sorts of places that make you go ooh! when you recognise them.

It was very quiet indeed at the far end. It’s riddled with burrows. Flakes of chalk and pointy flint nodules are everywhere (as are spent shotgun cartridges). A rabbit sprang out of one of the holes just in front of me and I don’t know who was more startled. Partridges muttered in the field below but otherwise it was just that distant treetop noise like the sea. My crisps ruined the atmosphere really. I liked the distorted writing on some of the beeches and all the tiny snail shells with their strange little umbilical holes.

On the way back (after another guilt-ridden dash silhouetted against the sky) there were loads of yellowhammers to be seen and heard along the White Horse track. If you keep going straight down, the path comes out where the road crosses the Kennet. It’s amazing to watch, a beautifully crystal clear chalk stream with its vegetation waving about in the current. It was a nicer way to walk back to where I’d parked near the church.

If you’re coming from the direction of Tinkinswood, this place is well signposted, and there’s just enough room to park at the side of the road. It’s a short uphillish climb to the stones (through a kissing gate at the edge of the rough field) and then you can’t help wondering why this place gets all the height and view compared to its neighbour just down the road. The sign at the road said ‘burial chambers’ so I thought I was supposed to look for something else, so like SwastikaGirl, I got confused by the (ex) ring of trees. It might be nothing old but it’s a peculiar sort of thing in any case.

The tomb couldn’t be more different from Tinkinswood and yet it’s equally impressive. It really is like a giant greyhound’s kennel, any giant greyhound would be happy to live here out of the rain chewing on a bone. I had the urge to draw it from all four directions, it’s just so sculptural and solid. The drawings didn’t come out very well but it was enjoyable at least, I felt like I’d seen it properly. Unlike Kammer it didn’t occur to me to leap up onto the capstone – I’m sure you’d feel on top of the world up there – it would have been an undignified failure in any case.

Any sensible person might travel a long way to see either of these places. But here you have two top quality megalithic destinations just down the road from each other. What more do you people want.

Ooh I did enjoy this place very much. It’s such a pleasant walk across the field, and then there it appears, with its tidy and inauthentic herringboned stones at the front, looking like a little thatched cottage sunken into the ground or something. But when you see how big the capstone is – I couldn’t help smiling. It’s amazing. No one else has mentioned this, so it must just be me being weird, but there was only one obvious course of action to me. I had to leap up on the top and lie down immediately. The stone is like a gigantic golden mattress, it really is, albeit a bit on the hard side. But lying there you’ll realise it is at the perfect angle for gazing at the sky, it’s gently sloping and very comfortable. I watched the clouds float past. It was a bit like being anchored at the centre with everything moving round. ?Or is that just my overactive imagination. And of course you’d get all the benefits of the Ancestral Wisdom seeping up through the stone. Imagine what it would be like to look at the stars from here, just marvellous. It was a bit cold this afternoon to be honest, but when the soon-to-be-setting sun peaked out from the clouds – and it happened to be directly at the right angle for the capstone – the stone turned such a beautifully warm colour.

It’s slightly galling that you can see the disguised top of the brickwork pillar in the top of the capstone. It’s not so bad as from the side. But where did the missing side of the burial chamber go? And I was interested to see the curved stone chosen to define the front entrance ‘portal’ too.

I didn’t stay half as long as I’d have liked. But even so my imagination had been further carried away by the time I got back to the first of the kissing gates. It had a rather interesting multi-note squeak which I couldn’t help thinking reminded me of the Authentic Prehistoric Music :)playing in the gallery at the museum in Cardiff, where I’d been earlier. If tma had an mp3 facility for gate noises, I’d have been tempted to record it.

The site is well signposted from the main road in St Nicholas, it has a proper hard parking spot, and the path (although undulating) is very smooth. No mud today, Postman. There are two kissing gates though, which I don’t think can be avoided. The sign says it’s open from 10-4 but I didn’t feel too naughty being a bit later. Perhaps it’s to discourage stargazers and those wanting to do a bit of dreaming like in the folklore. I tidied up the usual tea light cases as you can imagine.

Some of the barrows here are easy to see as they line up in a field, but the wood hides many more. Fat chance of seeing the latter today though, as it was all I could do to remain upright. The snow amusingly obscures all the dips containing freezing water and slippery leaves -hilarious.

The geology’s a bit weird here. I visited on the pretext of sampling some acidic soil, which isn’t that easy to find in this part of the world. And it turns out there is igneous rock here, andesite, which is quarried a bit further along the ridge. It’s not really what I expected in Somerset. I wonder if the prehistoric types that frequented the ridge were able to use it.

Anyway all the be-wooded barrows and earthworks will just have to wait until spring. But there’s a great view from up here, especially in today’s snow. Glastonbury Tor looked cool.

I came up here at the weekend for the first time. It was quite a steep climb for a weed with the sun bearing down, but I certainly felt refreshed at the top because the wind coming over the crest was relentless. And that’s what struck me most about this place, that its various sides are quite different. I kept feeling quite disorientated.

There’s the side you see from the road, with the horse and the obelisk, and more interestingly, the swoopy undulating dry valleys (one has a very closed entrance making a better manger than at Uffington). But once you’re at the top, this side doesn’t seem so important. Also the obelisk, which is so overbearing from the road, doesn’t even seem in the ‘right’ place. It points aggressively up to the sky, but your mind isn’t on the sky at all now, you’re looking out over this enormous view. If no-one’s got any objections I suggest we blow it up. It’s only commemorating some toff’s ancestor and it’s falling apart anyway.

Looking to the southwest there are some more intriguing valleys at Calstone Down. I particularly liked that direction. It was fantastically blowy though and I had to sit behind one of the many, many banks and hillocks. It looks so clear on the map, but seems so complex when you’re here. I wondered if some of the rounder dips were dewponds. It was lovely though amongst the woolly thistles and the anthills and the harebells. There are lots of windswept hawthorns that add to the atmosphere too. It was warm and I could have fallen asleep.

Walking round to the flat area ouside the banks to the east, I was delighted to spot Silbury Hill, as large as life. If you’re on the road you have to wait some distance for a glimpse, but up here (as often happens at such places) everything was starting to fit into place. There was absolutely no-one around now, which was surprising considering the numbers of people over by the obelisk. And now somehow out of the wind, that gave the place a strange air too. I walked along the high banks back to near the horse and sat down for a bit.

I felt like my mind was working very clearly (for once). Maybe being up here in the fresh air, elevated above mundane things, encourages a clarity of mind. I wondered if the prehistoric people that lived up here felt the same. Or perhaps they were indifferent once they were fed up of the draught through their roundhouses. I skittered down the chalk path and back to the road.

You’ll probably have to take your life in your hands crossing the A303, but walking along the track to the Normanton Down barrows is very pleasant. It does feel ancient (I imagine it is). Chalk and flint are everywhere. I liked the way there were apples (albeit a bit sour) and other fruit plants along the way. Once up on the ridge you get a great view of the Bush barrow and a disc barrow, with other barrows beyond. A board informs you that the barrows are all on private land. I was a little disappointed but hardly surprised. The sheep were happy running about on them at least. On one side you can see down to Stonehenge and over to the King Barrows on the horizon; on the other side there are the Lake Barrows, most of which are hidden in and behind the trees.

Well Cursuswalker, the machine dispensing leaflets seems to have been dispensed with full stop. Oh well. It’ll save people having to enter the circus that is the Stonehenge car park on a summer afternoon. They want £3 off you if you’re not paying to see the stones. I, like many other people, chose to park for nothing on the side of the byway that runs up to the Cursus. And after queuing for a lockless and fairly mangy toilet I headed up the track. It’s not long before you get away from the mayhem. It’s amazing how few people bother – and yet, you get a completely different view and understanding of the stones.

It’s heresy, but I kind of feel that Stonehenge is, has to be, a sacrificial site – I mean, sacrificed to tourists. EH can make huge profits out of it, and they can sink those profits into other heritage sites. This is surely good. All this aspirational stuff about a new visitor centre far away, and ‘walking to the stones’... people on the whistle stop Stonehenge tour don’t want to walk. If they did, and they had time, they would already be walking over the landscape, and they’re not. I was virtually alone.

Just keep walking and before you know it (wafted along by painted lady butterflies) you are there slap bang in the middle of the cursus. It’s immense, disappearing off as far as you can see in both directions. Cows roam on one side, sheep on the other, and you can walk the length of it if you please. A board shows you the brawny prehistoric builders digging the ditches and building up the chalk sides – thus it was originally even more dazzly and impressive.

So I urge you to make the (relatively minimal) effort and walk up here. Maybe it’s for the slightly geeky – but that’s you anyway isn’t it.

I’ve never been to Woodhenge before, and I’m not sure what I was expecting – it looks so accessible near the road, and it’s so near Stonehenge, but surely there’s not much to really see? But I enjoyed my trip today. There’s a perfectly good carpark, but I felt like commandeering the bus stop below and walking up. It felt like more of an entrance – and it made me realise that Woodhenge is indeed raised up from its surroundings. It gave me that ‘top table’ feel, like it was quite deliberately sited here for its superiority of position. But for various trees, you’d have a super 360 view. The River Avon is extremely close by – again, hidden by those dastardly trees?

At the top of the path I stopped to look at an ‘interpretation board’ – and suddenly I realised I was staring out at Durrington Walls, which was quite a revelation. It’s huge and you can quite clearly see the banks. Durrington had post circles within it too. Such an enormous site must have been buzzing with activity once. The Riverside Project
shef.ac.uk/archaeology/research/stonehenge/intro.html
suggests that there were once hundreds of dwellings inside.

Through the push-gate into the henge, and there are the rings of concrete posts in a nicely mown circle, surrounded by pleasantly unmown grassland full of wildlife (yellow rattle, scabious, butterflies, the peculiar sound of crickets). I sat down at the edge for some lunch. It was only by sitting down that I could really start to imagine how all the concentric circles of posts must have interacted – how your line of sight to the middle would have changed according to where you were. Some of the posts were just huge – one circle in particular has concrete markers a couple of feet? in diameter. That’s quite a size.. and then you start wondering about how tall these posts would have been, and if or how they might have been decorated. Would it have felt claustrophobic amongst them? Was that the intention??

I walked to the fence – one thing you really can’t see from here is Stonehenge, and I think that’s more a matter of slope than trees. If only I’d been more prepared I would have known that the Cuckoo Stone was somewhere in front of me.

Another thing that set me wondering was the presence of ‘additional’ posts – posts that (to the untrained eye) look pretty randomly placed and aren’t in line with any of the concentric circles. What were they all about? The mind boggles. Also to confuse there are two posts straddling the apparent N entrance – but then two more at a Strange angle off to the NE.

So don’t just write this place off because it doesn’t have its own stones! From an empty little field with concrete posts, you can conjure something up that is huge and imposing and mysterious, and that starts to fit into its surrounding landscape.

The A4 is a race track here and there is nowhere safe to park – I left the car up the road at Fyfield (a bus between Calne and Marlborough would stop here too). There is a footpath all the way back, though it’s a bit terrifying with the lorries flying past, and then you still have to make a mad dash across the road. But then it’s a quick hop over the stile, you’re in, and it’s an oasis of calm.

Fittingly there were lots of sheep mixed in with the stoney ‘greywethers’. But they weren’t impressed with my intrusion and quickly set off, bleating madly.

I had had some daft idea to walk from here to the stones at Fyfield Down, but soon realised that there was more than enough to occupy me here (and also it was way too far for me today). If you can’t get to Fyfield Down, but want to see the sarsens in somewhere that feels a little bit more remote than Lockeridge Dene, then Piggle Dene would be the place.

Some of the stones are little, and some are really huge. Lots of them have extraordinary shapes – sticky up bits, curvy bits, dippy bits. Most of them are smothered in lichens of all colours, many of which are rare (contributing to the SSSI status of the site).

Some of the stones have been split – I found a few where I could see where someone had attacked them, but others to the untrained eye looked unchiselled. I wish I knew more about the subject.

I stayed here for a couple of hours and didn’t see a single person – though I was the star attraction for many many pairs of sheepy eyes.

I couldn’t help feeling that the stones were like a river in their dry valley – a valley that feeds down into the Kennet. I also had this strange feeling that they were bursting out of the ground – that the ground was producing them. It’s true I wanted to lay my head on them and see what I dreamt. More practically, because they’re in the bottom of the valley, you can examine just about all of them without doing any climbing up and down slopes. You just have to watch out for the nettles and the sheep poo.

A Spring visit this time and it’s currently the haunt of partridges. This barrow must have been really something once – it’s still reasonably high and I felt irritated that the other end of the barrow is totally flattened. It made me ponder how many other barrows must have existed but been wiped clean away. I couldn’t see any of the big stones I’d seen in winter as plants cover everything – but there are a great deal of little flat stones round about, and I did wonder whether they could be from some Cotswold Severn style walling?

I was pleased to spot the barrow’s twin* for the first time, through the hedge on the other side of the road. It seems directly opposite – it made me wonder how old the road is. The crops are only just sprouting so the barrow was clearly visible by its contrasting tufty grass. The multimap aerial photo shows it was ploughed, but it’s quite clear on the Google map now. The farmer obviously looks after it now, which is excellent – surely the poor thing’s been hammered enough over the millennia. It’s on top of a small rise, but in the middle of the field so you can’t really get to it. You can get an easier but not quite so clear view from the field entrance (which is blocked by some huge slabs of stone, which I did wonder about too).

*[gah – now looking at Magic it appears someone’s changed their mind and this is now down as some round barrows – though there’s no additional information. They are pretty much parallel to the long barrow though. I liked it when I thought there were two long barrows. Oh well. At least they make their own appearance on the SMR.]

Sometimes I look at some of the photos people post of hill forts on this website and think, uncharitably, yeah yeah another photo of a ditch. But, walking round Battlesbury, I realised why people feel compelled to do this. If you’re lucky, the banks and ditches at hill forts are impressive. They can be pretty monumental. They’re utterly sculptural. The light catches their shape. I felt an overwhelming urge to capture that at Battlesbury – but not being a photographer, I soon ended up with a series of weedy snaps. It was frustrating. I’m sure many people make a much better job of it, but I can’t. And it’s not just the forms – it’s how to capture the space outwards, and the strange combination of silence and noise – the wind howls so hard your ears hurt, but yet it’s tranquil and still up here.

I was thinking of the name ‘Battlesbury’ and how probably inappropriate it is. Well it seems appropriate as you walk round and see the firing range and the shells of tanks – directly next to the fort is the off-limits military part of Salisbury Plain. But truly, how much battle did this fort see in its day? It reminded me of something fitzcoraldo had said about ceramics – that the revolution in everyday life that this new technology must have brought seems barely discussed. Ok sherds are used for dating sites, but who needs pottery when you’ve got sharp pointy weapons to talk about. Maybe wars and skirmishes did go on, but there have been plenty in historic times too, yet most of the time people are getting on with ordinary life.

It struck me walking round that ‘those banks and ditches didn’t dig themselves’ – they were a great deal of work to undertake. But it would have had its symbolic value, to bind the local people together, as well as to act as a clear visual symbol of their determination and strength, besides being a good physical defence. It’s actually in a super spot here, as there are steep hills around on all sides. You’d be bloody knackered before you got anywhere near poking someone with a spear.

Exhausted after dashing up here in my usual half-panic I sat down with the view directly out to Cley Hill. This would definitely have been my favourite spot if I’d been living here in the Iron Age. I can tell you, Iron Age people definitely wore hoods, or if not, ear muffs. You wouldn’t last ten minutes up here without them at this time of year, it’d be far too painful. I wondered about the other people whose favourite spot this had been too, looking out at Cley Hill all those years ago. I wondered if they knew the people who lived out there, maybe there were friends and relations and people they fancied. It’s funny how these forts are so empty today and it’s just you and the sheep, yet at the same time my thoughts are always centred on the experience of the people that lived here. I know it’s just imagination to consider what went on, but you always know that the view and the weather were there the same.

[on a more useful, gradient related note: I think you can drive pretty much up to the level of the fort. I left the car opposite the footpath at ST 896462 but the path is steep and goes up some steps before levelling out – there’s a kissing gate to get in. I think really you could park higher up the road (don’t be put off by the enormous tank) and use the track at ST 898464, getting a pretty level walk to the fort (presumably there’s then a gate). Once at the fort there’s some element of clamber to get on the banks and walk round.]

I unexpectedly found myself near Windmill Tump today, so popped in for a visit. It’s quite different at this time of year, without leaves on the trees, and without the tangles of vegetation beneath, and all the lumps and bumps are exposed, making it much easier to understand what you’re looking at. Crunching through the beechmast I expected to see more stones around the side chambers, but everything was mossy or covered by a carpet of short grass and other plants.

I did some sketches, but the length of the barrow kept squashing itself up on the page. I tried to draw the stones with some pastels, but the colours eluded me. Never mind, the process of drawing gave me that curious ‘attentive / relaxed’ meditative state, and I felt peaceful.. apart from the racket that was coming from somewhere nearby, out of sight.. something agricultural maybe. It would have been a blissful picnic spot there today but for that noise.

A word on access – there’s a steep bit up from the road (a few feet) and you can either step through a little squeezy bit at the side, or I did notice the big farm gate is unlocked, so you could open that. The 200m(?) to the barrow is a nice flat wide path (with loads of daisies), and then it’s a short flat nip across the oil-seed rape (look out for all the bright blue speedwell in between) to the barrow (the wide gate here was propped open). So I’d say it was pretty accessible now (compared to when Kammer visited), assuming you can make the distance from the road.

I did notice on the barrow that there were patches of violets, strawberry, dogs mercury, arum, and something decidedly oniony looking which I assume will be in flower soon, along with the patches of bluebells. So, I heartily recommend it for a spring visit soon.

It’s really very nice here. I’ve put off a visit for a long time because I wasn’t sure about the access: it looks like one of those sly long dashes from a footpath, with the potential of shotgun pellets in the rear. However, fear not, because the local farmer(s) make the footpaths very clear, and there is actually a permissive bridleway to the barrow (from ST810532). What nice people.

To me, the obvious thing in the landscape as I sat at the middle of the barrow, was Cley Hill on the sw-ish horizon. Of course, certain modern features do tend to make you look this way (the chestnut trees and the hedge behind you, the field margin to the left all block the view), so it could be irrelevant, but it didn’t feel it.

The stones are a soft orangey pink, flat, and pocked with tiny holes on their narrow edges. The Countryside Stewardship notice about the path mentions ‘nine stones’ but there are certainly more than nine.

I think the atmosphere would make it easy to stay hours here.

---

Looking for more information on the web, I see there’s supposed to be a ‘geocache’ here. Well if I’d known (because the site was beautifully litter free on the surface) I’d have dug it up and blown it to smithereens. So that’s something to do next time. Miserable, unappreciative dimwits.

AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY MAKES ME CROSS?? The git who left it there copied MY cheesy phrase from this website.
geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=07f8c21b-bcc6-4edb-ac19-91a47a85eb80
It makes you want to give up doesn’t it. TMA is surely an attempt to make people value their environment and prehistory. What can you do if some people use that information for making a mess of the place? The box apparently contains golf tees and ‘dinos’ and all sorts of shite. Why do people leave this 21st century detritus at these special places?

I noticed the large sarsens under the church – I had forgotten they were here, but they’re big enough to draw the eye. I had to feel they were useful foundations (the church is a real mismatch of materials and styles – interesting but locked). But at the end of the day, where did they come from? If they were from a circle, incorporating them was making a statement one way or the other. Maybe they weren’t and were just lying around – it’s not so far to the greywethers. But it’s all very interesting.

I assumed from afar that the ones in the boundary (mentioned below) were gravestones and did not look at them properly.

Well this is really very curious. The mound is much bigger than I expected. My imaginative instinct is to compare it with the huge Wiltshire mounds near water ie Silbury etc. The water’s even mentioned in the name of the place. But perhaps I should restrain myself – it’s not that big. But it is big, and it is in a direct line with the church. I didn’t see any ‘venomous vipers’ though I can believe they might frequent it. I did spot two (plastic) swords on the mound’s summit, so the local children can’t be that scared of them.

If I run down the road a bit from our house, there’s a super panoramic view. On a very fine day (or with binoculars), the furthest obvious thing you can see is a very distinctive group of three tree clumps. I’ve kept seeing them from all sorts of places – lots and lots of people must be familiar with them. There are two closeish together, and then another on the right, slightly further away. Today I was determined to find out where they were. So I jumped in the car and headed off in something like the right direction.

As you can imagine, my driving was a tad erratic, as I kept gawping at the landscape. But finally I arrived safely – and they were at Hackpen Hill, right on the Ridgeway.

It is, as Jane and Moth have said, fantastic up here (if a little chilly), and you can see a long way (the back of Cherhill Down is clear, and beyond that over to the edge of Salisbury Plain, and with binoculars, the mast near Priddy on the Mendip edge. There’s lots to the north, but I didn’t recognise much). Birds of prey were hovering over the slope, and the shadows of clouds made strange swirls with the patterns of chalk in the fields below.

I sat with the white horse, and on the far side of the road, a black horse stood admiring the view. Something was missing from my horse, so I collected some burnt wood from an old camp fire and made him a nice black eye. He’s quite a dainty animal. But he’s getting a bit green and may need a bit of a scour?

After walking up to the car park I thought I’d visit one of my tree clumps, so walked along the Ridgeway (serenaded by grasshoppers) to the first one, right by the track. It’s mostly beech trees, and you can walk a circular path through them. I spotted my initials carved on one of the trees. You probably would as well, as there are so many.

I have to agree with Scubi – the elder tree is getting huge and the right hand stone is completely inaccessible behind brambles. I feel like something ought to be done before the whole lot disappears under a mound of vegetation. Not that I want a pristine site devoid of plants, but this is starting to go too far. The big slab is still relatively clear and touchable though, with its lovely pinky colour and soft dips. The size of the stones makes this place really Monumental.

As I was walking up from Little Sodbury, I suddenly realised what a racket I was making – I came here for a bit of peace, right? – so I made more effort to move quietly. It turned out this was totally futile, as when I found myself in the fort’s ditches, all I could hear was the reverberation of shotguns. I snuck along the ditch wondering what would happen if I stuck my head above the banks. Actually it was only some people clay-pigeon shooting inside the fort. But it did made me think about the (prehistoric) advantages of sneaking up invisibly to a hillfort, but the disadvantages of being totally ignorant of what might be waiting inside.

If you only see this fort from the main road, you’d think there was no view at all – but actually the land drops away on the west side, and you can see for miles and miles, out into Wales. Because I’ve never understood this, I’ve always thought of it as a ‘little fort’ but seeing the double banks and ditch made me realise what a mammoth effort went into building this place. Like Moss, this, together with the violence of the guns, made me think about the nice and not so nice things that might have happened here. But (as I ate my crisps) my thoughts turned to more everyday arrangements, like what the inhabitants ate and drank, and what they might have carried their own packed lunch in.

I walked northwards through the camp centre and I wanted to walk back round along the east side – but I could not find the path round the back of the buildings. All signs were mysteriously missing (except the cotswold way ones) and even brandishing my map I didn’t fancy an earful from one of the posh house owners. So I gave it a miss – but it’s probably easier from other direction.

Windmill Tump is marked on my road atlas and I got here without an OS map. Since Kammer’s visit a smart brown sign has gone up at the gate. It’s a small one on a stick like a footpath sign, but it clearly shows the English Heritage symbol and the barrow’s name, so if you’re looking for it it’s enough to make you swerve into the layby.

Well, this is a strange place. It’s partly so neat that you wonder what’s real – the enclosing drystone wall echoes Stoney Littleton’s, but it ends neatly and abruptly every time a tree appears on the margin. On the other hand, the barrow’s untidy and rather bumpy and muddley on top – partly the fault of the big beech, ash and oak trees on top, and partly, no doubt, from past excavations.

My favourite bit was the chamber (of which Kammer has taken a photo). It’s ever so low and you can see more drystone walling inside. It was spookily thrilling to think of it stuffed with bones. However, it was weird – it was so high up on the mound. I imagined it would be low down like the side chambers at Belas Knap, but no. Weren’t bones shuffled about and periodically added to at long barrows? So it couldn’t have been just a sealed cist accessed from above? Was it just the end of a once longer passage? I dunno. I do know I kneeled squarely on a nettle when bending down for a look though. But in this position spotted that there are several lovely fossilised cockle-type shells on the rock: a deliberate choice or just local geology?

There’s also the two stones at the far end from the gate. I couldn’t tell if this was a ‘false entrance’ like Belas Knap, or another chamber positioned at the back end of the barrow instead (some research required). They were interestingly (naturally) striated and one of them had an excellent pink lichen on its inner face. It was more draughty sat here though, and the noise of the wind in the trees occasionally sounded like voices. As the rain set in it felt like quite a bleak and lonely place. But in sunshine it’s probably an ideal picnic spot really.

The barrow is pretty overgrown at the moment – apart from round the chamber and the end pair of stones, which has short turf. There are nettles, brambles, wild strawberry, and pretty but poisonous woody nightshade. There are lots of lovely stripey snail shells in yellow and in pink to look out for, too.

Scrambling over all this I got to the end of the barrow nearest the gate, where it was quite clear and there were lots of flat stones like the ones in the walls. But – hang on a minute – I couldn’t believe my eyes. Someone had carefully constructed a cross with them, flat on the ground, about 3 or 4 feet across! It was really carefully done, with the occasional straight edges of the stones deliberately chosen to form the edges of the symbol. It made me really angry – firstly that someone should be moving the stones (even if they had fallen out of a wall, or whatever), but secondly because I instantly presumed the symbol was made by someone trying to christianise this patently unchristian monument. Perhaps they weren’t. Perhaps it wasn’t even christian in intent. But that’s what it looked like and I just set about demolishing their handiwork. Some people have some funny ideas. Not least pretty much illegally interfering with ancient monuments. But also, if that’s what it was, trying to confer some kind of christian ‘benefit’ on people who lived at least 4000 years before christianity was even invented. In comparison with this, the roughly made plaited cornstalk ring I saw left at the entrance was a respectful and undamaging addition to the site.

Pfah. Anyway it was raining in big sheets now sweeping across the field and I had to leave. When I arrived I thought it was a strange location – there’s no view at all. But on leaving it occurred to me that maybe that’s the point – the barrow totally dominates the area which it is in, a constant reminder of the ancestors of the local inhabitants.

I walked here along the Cotswold Way from the Bevil Grenville monument: it’s a very pleasant walk, though it was extremely hot at the time. You do feel as though you are treading in the footsteps of people of long ago, as you walk along a secluded sunken green lane with water trickling down it. To add to Moss’s nature notes, in the summer sunshine the route was full of fluttering butterflies of many different species.

The mounds were overgrown with nettles. It felt like a very domestic or specifically personal spot – the views are quite enclosed and limited really, and you could imagine that the people in the barrows were definitely the farmers of the valley below. The windows of the buildings down there stared up at me and I felt I was intruding. I followed a little path in the grass in an effort to find St. E..’s holy well*. I found a circular concrete capped well and assumed that was it (it was nice to think the water was still being used, even if it didn’t look as romantic as I’d hoped). In retrospect I may have been looking in the wrong place – there are a lot of springs round here.

As I made back for the car I realised I could see Morgan’s Hill from the top of Lansdown – practically Avebury and a long way away.

*finally found the name – St Eanswyth. Phil Quinn’s book on the ‘holy wells of Bath and Bristol region’ mentions it being at ST734705. It’s on the parish boundary and is on the Anglo Saxon estate charter of 931 as Eanswythe Wyllas (St Eanswyth’s Well).

Oliver’s Castle is truly fantastic. I’d go so far as to say it beats Adam’s Grave hands down* (so long as you don’t want a longbarrow)..

It need require no uphill walking, which will please some people. If driving here persevere and park at SU 004647 – the track is perfectly flat and navigable though you might initially feel you’re heading off into the back of beyond.

Stroll down the path to the end of the fort.. and you will be gobsmacked by the view. Surely you can see the whole world from up here? Well of course you can’t really, but it’s a manageable size universe, and I think that’s why it has such appeal. It looks like all the everything you could require. It might not be the grand vista from a more dramatic mountain, but it’s more fertile and comfy.

The barrows couldn’t be in a better spot, stuck out right at the end. But the manmade lumps and bumps are utterly overshadowed by their natural counterparts – to the north of the fort are the most amazing undulating intricately folded dry valleys. The light when I visited made them look even nicer. You want to roll down them or something.

The fort is sprinkled with beech trees, with their obligatory bubbled carved writing on the trunks, but they masquerade as scots pines from afar, because they are so wind blown. It is very windy up here. The site is a nature reserve, and is full of lovely plants at the moment – beautiful pink sainfoin, thyme and greater knapweed, and many others. [A few weeks later and it was a botanist’s dream].

*Is this sheer exaggeration? You’ll have to visit and find out.

This is a very pleasant spot to stroll round – there is an air of a park about it, as the hill was planted with all sorts of trees at one time. But you can make out the earthworks, admire the view over to the Breiddin Hills, and visit Kynaston’s cave with its attendant bats and folklore (Humphrey Kynaston was a bit of a local hero, with his Black Bess- style horse, Beelzebub). If you go out to the northwest tip of the fort, known as Oliver’s Point (after Oliver Cromwell? I don’t know – he’s blamed for a lot of things), there are some strange ballaun-style holes in the rock underfoot. Perhaps you know what they are? Cos I don’t.

After the gradient-related excitement of Porlock Hill you feel on top of the world up here. You can see for miles and miles – back up to the Quantocks and out over the (yesterday, gloriously blue) Severn estuary to Wales. Exmoor ponies nibble around you while you lie back on the heathery/bilberried slope.

Typically I had no idea at the time that this site or the Whit Stones were up here.. but they’re in the perfect spot and I can’t say I’m surprised (which is why I feel justified in my fieldnote despite not seeing them..)

I watched the sun go down from here last night (threading its way through the pylon lines. How romantic). It’s amazing how different places are in different seasons. The mound itself has been largely cleared of vegetation and is covered in tiny nibbled clumps of grass surrounded by thousands of tiny sheepy footprints. No sheep about this time though, but their trails led up to the mound as though they like this for a place to hang out.

What I was delighted to see were some largish stones at the edges of the mound (the barrow being too overgrown for me to have seen them before): the largest 2-3ft long on the top of the barrow, right at the middle at the far end from the tree. Whether the farmer moved it here deliberately I don’t know but it is in the perfect spot. I sat on it and realised that the mound is aligned towards the midwinter sunset. My shadow and that of the big oak tree stretched out behind us in the low light.

It’s so noisy here though – the sound of the motorway is so loud and constant. But sat freezing on the barrow I tried to let it wash over me. I tried to think of nothing at all.

I really should do this more often.

I’m sorry to start like this, but I have discovered it is a fact that some people (some people) from Whitchurch are pure scum. I’d driven up a tiny lane from this suburb of Bristol, up onto the plateau where the fort is, in a lazy attempt to avoid a climb. The views are fantastic – ‘panoramic’ doesn’t even begin to cover it – the Clifton suspension bridge, the Severn crossings, the Welsh mountains behind. But some people don’t register this. Some people prefer to sneak up here to dump their rubbish, set fire to bits of cars, and generally behave like complete fwits. What a complete shame – and shame on them. (If they can be bothered to make the effort to dump stuff up here, why don’t they exert the same energy and take it to the tip? It’s beyond understanding really. I’ll probably be writing to the Daily Mail in a minute:). I backed the car up to a large forlorn sarsen blocking the entrance into a field, got out.. and decided that despite it being a quiet midday on a weekday I was too afraid to leave the car alone for fear of the wheels disappearing by the time I got back. So I’m sorry, if you can’t handle a steep hill, you’ll either have to park here or forget it.

Fuming I drove round to the other side of the hill at Norton Malreward and braced my unfit body for the climb. It’s infinitely worth it though. Indeed, what can’t you see from up here? I could easily spy the stones of Stanton Drew, looking like cows grazing in their field. Over to the east was Lansdown and Bathampton; straight ahead, Stantonbury; over the back the edge of Salisbury Plain where Bratton Castle is; the strange shape of Cley Hill; and to the south the Mendips and Beacon Batch.

Recovering, I followed the footpath to the Tump. Visiting this just underlines for me the absolute necessity of spending time at a place, not just assuming from a map. The tump (as RichardZ says in his comments on the attached forum post) – when you reach and climb it, the view opens out into 360 degrees. It’s fantastic. It’s a huge lump of earth and presumably it must have been created for the very purpose of raising you up above everything else to see. The view includes all the places I’ve mentioned so far, and would also include the line of the Cotswold Hills, if it weren’t for some ill-positioned trees. Is it really part of the later Wansdyke, as has been suggested elsewhere here on tma? It feels as though it is older, part of the fort, because you ‘need’ this extra vantage point for visibility and defence, surely?

It was marvellously relaxing eating my lunch on the tump, with Bristol strangely still and quiet below, and listening to the sounds of insects, hay harvesting and dogs barking. Maes Knoll is directly on the flight path to Bristol Airport and the strangest effect happened when planes went over. The sun was bright and cast a clear shadow of the planes which moved quickly over the ground. It looked to me like a huge bird undulating over the landscape. In fact the whole place was ‘birdy’ today – there were crowds of crows sitting on the slope below like a van Gogh painting, and I’d surprised a bird of prey out of the hedge as I’d climbed up. More birds sat in a nearby ash tree like big black fruit, watching me, and flocks of pigeons wheeled over my head. It was hot though and there’s no shelter (that probably explains a lot eh. But maybe, as I thought much later, they were just the legendary Birds of Rhiannon come to see me, as they might).

You can’t walk across the inside of the fort, but you don’t need to – the inside of the fort is not the point. Visit – it’s so worth the climb.

I set off optimistically after these stones, hoping that things so sizeable would be easily spotted. I was wrong. It didn’t help that I didn’t bring the notes below with me.

It would certainly have been a good spot – high on the hill overlooking the river valley below. But now it’s a sprawling housing estate which has lost its shine. It was muggy and uncomfortable, and people do give you funny looks when you’re staring in their gardens in a cul-de-sac. I suppose I could have asked for help but I could just imagine the blank expressions so didn’t have the heart. Perhaps the stones are still here somewhere. If you’re ever in Frome please take a look. I want them to be here. I don’t want to think that people would get rid of their stones – you’d think they’d make a nice landscaping feature. This was disappointing.

This is a true ‘palimpsest’ of a landscape. There are a lot of bumps, and yes, some of them are bronze age barrows. But some of them are actually the remains of a bizarre scheme from WWII: an attempt to recreate the street plan of Bristol on top of a heathy hillside, to lure the bombers away from the city. You can read more on MAGIC’s extract from the EH schedule: magic.gov.uk/rsm/33064.pdf

From up here you can see for miles in practically every direction, and I am sure this is where I could see from the outlying circle at Stanton Drew.

I popped up here with my sister at the weekend and found that by squinting wildly it was possible to discern the plume of smoke from the cement factory at Westbury – and yes, just to its right, the Westbury White Horse at its hillfort – ie the edge of Salisbury Plain just visible between the landscape of the much closer hills.

Looking in the another direction you can convince yourself you can just see the edge of the Pewsey Downs – but really you’d want a map and compass with you to be sure. With some binoculars I spotted the television transmitter on the edge of the Mendips (near Priddy) which is quite a way.. I am getting more caught up in this ‘intervisibility’ thing all the time.

The maze is getting a bit overgrown – so get up there and tread it :)

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Also came up here recently as the sun was going down. It is strange that this place is so quiet and peaceful yet is so close to the city. It does wonders for your state of mind. I wouldn’t want to be accompanied by half of Bath of course but it is well worth discovering how to get up here.

Finally we walked to the third circle. I realised what an elevated position this has compared to the other two. The vistas that are revealed are quite different: suddenly you can see out to ( what I now realise is the Blackdown Hills, where Beacon Batch is, and from where you can see Everywhere), and to my astonishment and delight, there was Kelston Round Hill on Lansdown – a marker which I feel more and more certain was acknowledged by our ancestors (but more on this when I can order my thoughts). Also for the first time I realised where the Cove is from this circle – you can see the wall of the Druids Arms garden. It would be so nice to be able to walk in a logical manner towards it from here, instead of back around the village. The church is so close by – superbly located to keep an eye on all three parts of this megalithic complex.

Although I didn’t notice it, there is apparently a stone visible in the centre of this small circle. My companions and I were quite interested in the types of stone utilised. According to the EH smr they are ‘dolomitic conglomerate’ (which must be the red one with bits in), ‘sandstone’ (we found a clearly sedimentary rock in the main circle) and ‘oolitic limestone’ (holey, as you would see at Bathampton or the Rollrights), all of which it says could have been collected from within six miles of the site. In our examination of the stones we noticed that there seemed to have been a certain amount of digging around several of them in this small circle. We would liked to have put it down to rabbits, who were obviously in residence, but there was something quite un-rabbitlike in the way great clods of turf had been ripped up. If it was an unscrupulous person, let’s hope they get the usual tide of bad luck that attends Messers With Stones, eh.

This circle is secluded (at least in the 21st century) but I felt like we were at the ‘top table’ of the Wedding. The land seems to drop gradually away in every direction; you seem to be on a little knoll especially chosen for the site. It is elegantly proportioned (though it is quite different with its stones much smaller than the similarly sized NE circle) and seems to fit its location very well.

With the cove becoming (almost) visible I was set to thinking about the functions of the different parts of the complex. Would you have gone to them all in a single visit? What routes would you have taken? It is hard to envisage such things with the village obscuring the possible intervisibility of sites and forcing you to walk the long way round.

They say size isn’t everything. Stanton Drew’s Great Circle may have the second largest diameter in the country, but (on this occasion at least) it left me unmoved and I found much more to interest me in the smaller circles and the views of the surrounding landscape.

The large circle and its smaller cousin to the NE are close to the river Chew, at a point where it gets rather sinuous. Ideally I would have liked to start down by the river and walked up to the circles, up along the avenues – this is surely the direction in which the complex was meant to be approached? Not only do the avenues point you this way, but the EH magnetometer survey (linked to by Chris Collyer on the main page) revealed that the original (huge) Neolithic henge had its entrance in this direction.

If you walk as far as the fence will let you by the north east circle, you will realise that the circles are situated on quite a slope. You need to walk uphill (and curiously, not straight uphill, but across the slope to the smaller circle) to process up the avenues to the circles. It would not be easy – in fact, I think it would be impossible in the case of the great circle – to see what was going on in there until you got closer. Maybe this is deliberate. There’s much to be said for conducting your affairs with an element of mystery and hiddenness (think Christian rood-screens etc). Imagine the imposing effect when the timber circles stood there (see below).

The small north east circle is (and I mean this) fantastic. Not only has it managed to retain its complete quota of stones (eight), it seems to be the most perfectly and pleasingly proportioned circle I have ever visited. The stones are huge compared to the space they enclose. They create an extremely agreeable space. My distinguished companion Nigel seemed to nurture similar warm thoughts towards these stones.
The EH magnetometer survey showed that there had been four holes in the centre of this circle – were these ‘ritual pits’ or the sockets for more stones, now disappeared?
{I spotted this particular circle from a plane when flying into land at Bristol airport: something you may also like to try to take your mind off your nausea}

Staring you in the face from this circle is Maes Knoll, a distinctively shaped flat-topped hill and Iron Age fort. On its left end we could see a bump (known as the ‘tump’?). How much of the hill’s shape is natural and how much man-made I don’t know, but it surely drew the eye from Stanton Drew even in the Neolithic. I’d like to think Hautville’s Quoit and the hill are in a direct line with the circle, but I fear having looked at the map this isn’t true. [However, since this I’ve read that the the great and NE circles line up with the Cove, and the Great and SW circles line up with the Quoit]. Folklore says the Quoit was thrown from Maes Knoll, which at least connects the sites in local consciousness.

Although I didn’t exercise my imagination enough to appreciate it, the main ‘arena’ of the Great Circle must have looked outrageous in its heyday. Nine concentric circles of pits (up to 95m in diameter) were found by the magnetometer survey. Each pit was 1-2m in diameter and it is thought that at least some of them contained massive wooden posts, as at Woodhenge. Perhaps they formed part of a building, or maybe the area was open to the sky. Whatever, the pit circles are the largest and most numerous found anywhere so far. Later of course the stones were put up at the perimeter of the circle, and that is all we can see today.

Tootling – nah, whizzing along the cycle path this morning I could see the barrow quite well. Admittedly it looked a bit more like a mound of dirt covered in weeds from this elevated angle. But I still like it. And not only does the fantastic Kelston Round Hill stand out like a beacon on the horizon, but now I could see that in the opposite direction was the distant but distinctive Maes Knoll. It’s very flat here down here on the floodplain, so it seems an unusual place for a barrow. But there’s no point in trying to compete with such monumental landscape features as the Round Hill by putting a barrow on the hillside. And besides, if the people lived down here on the fertile flat bit, then I suppose that’s where their barrow ought to be. And perhaps the confluence of the stream and river has its relevance too.

It’s rather a pocket-sized longbarrow this one, and almost cute with its fluffy (and spiky) summer vegetation. I would have sat down and relaxed – but the plants were so high I wouldn’t have been able to see out, so I didn’t. I expect it looks smaller than it once was – it is right on the field boundary and cut in two by the hedge, the eastern side being ploughed. The huge oak tree growing out of it lends a certain character to it. To get here you have to drive along little lanes through great open fields – it feels most remote, but there in the background is the drone of the motorway, only yards away really.

Its record on Magic mentions “an additional long barrow survives some 160m to the north-west. Such pairs are rare and give an indication as to the density or length of time during which areas were populated during the Neolithic period.” I wasn’t aware of this at the time – the other barrow is on the other side of the road, and is not indicated on the OS map. The county boundary follows the road.

As I parked the car and got out a load of cyclists began pedalling past along the long straight road. Why should I care what they thought? There’s usually only one reason why someone would be popping behind a hedge in the middle of nowhere. It’s probably easier to leave them to their assumptions than explain a strange interest in overgrown mounds in fields.

At the risk of sounding like an american tourist, the horse at Uffington wasn’t as big as I expected. Ok, it is quite big, but I imagined it was going to be much more chunky. Perhaps it has taken on a symbolic magnitude in my brain over the years. Or perhaps I couldn’t help comparing it to the fatter Westbury horse, which I know better, which sits above its own rippley valley in much the same way.

Whatever, this is just a fantastic spot. Sitting next to the horse you get the same kind of fresh-air-in-the-brain feeling you get looking over the sea. The figure is obviously positioned right at the point where the view opens up and you can see in a huge arc (not that the horse would be visible from the east side of it). I sat there with the skylarks trilling, swallows dive-bombing and the wind whistling through the wire fence (currently protecting the grass above the horse). It may be my overactive imagination but the model gliders seem to make a whinneying noise overhead.

It seems obvious to ask where the horse is facing – why is it positioned where it is? Looking directly out there are three wooded lumps in the middle distance of the landscape. I rather thought it was built to address these, but maybe it’s more general than that. I can’t quite work out what these lumps are – perhaps someone more familiar with the area knows.

When you sit by the horse you are naturally drawn to the flat-topped hill below you – Dragon Hill. This is a scheduled monument so I assume that means it was artificially levelled – or was it even artificially made, Silbury-like? I felt absolutely certain that when I reached it the horse would be plainly in view – but it wasn’t clear at all: just the back, hind legs and a snip of the head. It’s perched so high up on the slope. I suppose it’s reasonably clear from afar, but up close it’s not particularly obvious.

When you’re sitting on Dragon Hill you have an excellent view of the Manger, and the siting of the horse seems to make sense in terms of this weird valley – it’s on its back wall (not the flatter, steeper side wall which you’d think would make more sense was the Manger not there).

The Manger is certainly a singular place even without the horse. It has amazing undulating sides, a totally flat bottom and a narrow opening. Such a weird dry valley must surely have drawn speculation from our ancestors as to its origins or ‘purpose’. It’s certainly an ideal stabling spot for a gigantic horse! but as for a manger, even the Uffington horse couldn’t eat that much food.

The rippling sides of the manger are rough chalk grassland, but at its far end it is smoother, and on the other side of the road turns into woodland (containing springs). As I walked back up I noticed it is like a natural amphitheatre – the voices of people behind me were carrying a really long way. I liked it a lot here. I was feeling fed up and it made things seem right again.