Just another Ridgeway hillfort, (though better if you don't get out a lot like me.)
Worth a visit though, if only to be reminded of the sheer effort involved (this is a pretty big one). Needs some imagination to get the full impact though - deeper, steeper ditches, higher ramparts and timber stockade on top - not at all pretty or softened like now but a place of power and warning, something to force you to feel huge respect even if you viewed it from ten miles away. People not to be messed with lightly.
It's not as it was though, Fresh badger diggings adding to the erosion, just like they've been doing constantly since their Nth grandparents were doing it. But there's a long way to go. It'll still be impressive in a thousand years.
Hardly a speck of it is quite how it was, its a different place. Even the amazing view to the North. So its best to keep the imagination in gear. Just one thing's the same maybe. The loud plaintiff hiss of the wind in the stunted hawthorns, at precisely the same pitch as they heard. So if you close your eyes you're back in the authentic Iron Age.
Open them again though, this isn't the place to spend the night with a broken leg.
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To add to the complexity of all this - someone has been doing some searching to the left of the road leading South - about from this car onwards for about 100 yards http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/26829
and has cut back the vegetation to reveal 7 fair sized stones that are currently fully visible (July 04).
There's mention here of a survey finding lots of stones and discounting them as probably "natural" but these look very characterful and several are extremely gnarled - just what you'd choose if you needed some, so I don't know.
Further complication is the mention of a previous barrow with lots of stones - that would have been in the field adjoining these I think.
From this position, of course, Avebury and Silbury ARE visible.
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A Perfect View
Just once,
I saw a view that was truly perfect.
Indescribably so.
And yet,
Amidst that choking beauty, I was sad,
For there are no words for me to tell of it.
And yet,
So what! Just go and look on top of Cherhill Down!
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Interests: Looking, Aimless Rambling and Rambling Aimlessly.
Conclusions: None
Dislikes: Whiskered Lady Foxhunters, who set him off like a firework (UPDATE, 17 Feb 2005, the day of the Ban - Hahahahaha! How d'you like that you witches from Hell!!), and little else.
Likes: Laughing, Red Dwarf, Dylan Thomas, Tiswas (this site, really).
Earliest Recollection: Ascent of Everest by Hilary Benn, 1953.
Latest Recollection: September 1968, a lay-by outside Swindon.
Minders: See Rota.
[email protected]
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