Hello friends -
So, it's been a while since I sent anything out on this mailing list (start of April was the last one, apparently), but there could be a bit of a flurry coming up, as I have some actual updates / announcements on things on the way soon.
Prior to that though - I returned earlier this week from the first of my 2026 solo walking holidays, and this was quite an interesting one, visiting Avebury in Wiltshire and the surrounding area, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to bore you about it and share some pictures.
Fear not though, I'm not just going to post hundreds of pics of the famed standing stones, all of which have I’m sure already been photographed ad infinitum by people with proper cameras - just a select few, including the one above, which I think came out quite well.
My journey began a good few miles to the east however, as I caught a bus from Swindon station to the market town of Marlborough, which offers quite a pleasant prospect, what with the church spire dominating one end of the high street and a view of the rolling hills beyond. It also boasts possibly more cafes per capita than anywhere else in England, although they all seem to get busy at lunchtime, so there’s clearly a market for them.
And, that's about it for Marlborough, except to note that I liberated this excellent addition to my collection of psychedelic sci-fi paperback covers from the local Oxfam:
Whoa! Pretty incredible stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. [Cover art uncredited, and I can't find an ID for the artist online.] Philip Jose Farmer is not a writer whose work I much enjoy TBH, but he certainly has inspired a lot of mind-blowing cover artwork over the years; I'll put together a gallery of it all one day.
To be honest, I could probably have spent all day just staring at this book, but the footpaths were calling, so I set off, running straight into a prolonged blast of wind & rain as I traversed a seemingly endless straight track adjoining some kind of mile long stretch of turf used for the training of race horses or something. (I can't be bothered to look up what such places are called.) No shelter anyway, leaving me thoroughly soaked across my left side. Of course I had my waterproofs with me, but still - no fun.
Thankfully, conditions cleared at around the same time that the landscape opened up and the terrain became more interesting leading toward the Fyfield Down nature reserve, allowing me the opportunity to to hop over a fence and encounter the first stone circle of my trip.
Anywhere else in the UK, this would at the very least be a designated tourist spot with a car park and an info board, but located as it is, downwind of Avebury, Silbury Hill and Stone Henge, it's just allowed to sit there quietly in the middle of a field, minding its own business, as generations of farmers no doubt curse their inability to plough over the bloody thing. Well, I love you, little stone circle - the thick copse of trees bhind you lends a unique atmosphere, and what a view! [As usual, extent of view not captured by the zero depth of field offered by my iPhone camera.]
Fyfield Down itself is a strange, slightly fantastical place, a site of absolute fascination for geologists no doubt, in which the last ice age has left us with an uneven valley floor littered with hundreds of sarcen stones of various shapes and sizes, many of which were presumably dragged away to form part of the area's innumerable neolithic monuments.
There is surely a lot of interesting stuff here for the trained eye to observe (and even the untrained eye can take a butchers at the infamous "toad stone".) Unfortunately though, the area was also occupied by a herd of grazing cattle, including a few potentially scary looking bulls, so in order to avoid any Withnail-esque mither in an isolated location, I decided to press on and didn't hang around to take many pictures.
Which brings us onto Avebury itself. If you've ever seen any aerial photography of the place, you'll appreciate that it respresents an extremely distinctive part of the landscape, which you’d think would be easily spotted from afar. But, like so many settlements and ancient sites around the UK, it's also cleverly positioned in such a way as to make it effectively invisible from higher ground in much of the surrounding area.
So, as I trudged along the series of pitted, muddy farm tracks which comprise the Green Street / 'Herepath' route into the village (part of the main Anglo-Saxon route between London and Bath, apparently), I was starting to wonder whether I was even heading in the right direction. But then, suddenly, you turn a corner, the ground underfoot becomes tarmac, and you're looking at some happy tourists looking at some standing stones; you're within the circle!
I'll try not to belabour the point, but as has oft been observed, there is an inherent surreality about Avebury which is difficult to fully express in words. Though I'm allergic to sentences which begin "Only in Britain..", I'm nonetheless going to go for it, and say that only in Britain would people see a landmark like this - collossal earthworks marking out its perimeter like a coin pressed into the earth, topped with circular legions of ominous stone obelisks - and not only start building houses all over it, but run the main road between Swindon and Devizes straight through the middle of it too. Stupid, funny British people.
I suppose it can be said that, wherever you live in the world, you are probably walking upon ground occupied for thousands upon thousands of generations, for entire nameless aeons before the first flickerings of our own civilisation, by human beings (and before that, earlier forms of hominids) whose cultures, beliefs and activities will remain forever unknown to us. But in some places, this unspoken ancestory is more obvious than others.
Spending time in Avebury, seeing people doing the school run, picking up Amazon deliveries, getting their windows repaired and having Archers-style arguments in the disappointingly bland and characterless village pub… all in the shadow of these sombre stones, raised for purposes unguessable over two millenia before the arrival of the Romans in the British isles... it's such a casually profound projection of the normal onto the abnormal; a genuinely uncanny sensation.
Speaking of which, naturally one of the things I most wanted to do whilst visiting was to find the angle used for the title screen of the HTV sci-fi drama series 'Children of the Stones', which was shot in Avebury in 1978. And, after wandering around for a while perplexed at the fact that I could find neither a stone with a sufficient overhang, nor a house on the village's main street which matched the one in the screenshot, I eventually got it.
For the record, this shot is taken from near ground level at the base of one of the stones in the 'back field', behind and across the road from the pub, and the building pictured is in fact the rear of Silbury House, and not the frontage of a house as I had initially assumed.
Some dispiritingly crap graffiti here; I mean, if you're going to deface a prehistoric monument, you could at least find something funny or obscene to say. Bloody hippies.
Record-breaking stuff!
Returning to the aforementioned Red Lion (as I inevitably did on several occasions).... it's not so bad really. Given that it's such a historic building though, sitting at the exact centre of such an extraordinary location, the pub's interior is remarkably generic, almost entirely lacking in atmosphere and local colour. (Perhaps though, in a stange way, this blandness only adds to the uncanniness..?)
I’d certainly have liked to have paid it a visit back in its spit n' sawdust days, or at least prior to its takeover by some chain affiliated with the dreaded Greene King (note to non-UK readers: "the dreaded Greene King" is considerably less fun than it sounds.) But... they still have a couple of decent cask ales on tap, which makes up for a multitude of sins. (Nothing very appealing on the keg side though aside from the inevitable Guinness, as per usual for country pubs, so be forewarned, cold & fizzy beer drinkers.)
As I was finishing up my dinner there later in the evening (it's the only option - acceptable pub grub, which is all I require), I couldn't help but notice a rather confused older gentleman, with the remains of a greying ponytail affixed to his scalp, pottering about the place, openly complaining about how much everything cost, and evidently looking for someone to talk to.
He alighted upon a gay Australian couple sitting opposite me, and it soon became clear that, this being Avebury, he wasn't your average pub bore. He had moved to the area decades ago, he explained, in order to undertake private research pertaining to the stones, and, after years of painstaking work, he had now produced a series of photographs which offered irrefutable scientific proof of their long-disputed astrological alignments. Those stuck up archeologists would need to listen to him now, he even declared, as the Australians humoured him with polite responses, whilst clearly signalling disinterest in continuing the conversation.
I was sorely tempted to jump in and take him off their hands, but also very much aware that if I became a friendly listener for this sort of fellow, I'd be locked into that role for the whole evening, and, he did seem a little unbalanced. As I headed for the door, I noticed that he'd moved on to discussing dowsing techniques, so I think I made the right decision.
I'll spare you a further digression into the reasons why AirB&B has become such a boon for all mankind, and instead move straight on to the next day, during which I planned to undertake a seven mile circular walk, taking in many of the neolithic sites which form a wider complex around Avebury.
Prior to this though, I did a bit of pottering about of my own, nosing around the village church, visiting the small but highly informative National Trust museum, and peering through the railings at Avebury Manor, a remarkable Tudor-era house, and the former residence of (I kid you not) marmalade baron Alexander Keiller, who was at the forefront of renovating and excavating Avebury's neolithic sites during the early 20th century (as well as allegedly conducting rituals in praise of the Great God Pan in the manor's gardens when time allowed.)
Avebury's village church meanwhile can't help but seem like a bit of an anachronism, standing in close proximity to such vast temples of heathen splendour. Indeed, Christianity still feels like something of an interloper here, having merely been introduced to the area via the Romans in around the 3rd or 4th centuries AD. The parishoners though do their best to make their presence felt, regaling the tourists with regular peals from the church’s sonorous, echoing bells, thus adding even further to the village's uncanny atmos.
Chief point of interest here is the Norman carvings added to the even older(!) font, apparently depicting Christ himself in the act of slaying a pair of serpents, an image oft interpreted as representing the triumph of Christianity over the combined forces of Paganism. (Fat chance round here, mate.)
Finally, on to the walk itself, and, after strolling in a brief blast of sunshine through the stones comprising West Kennett Avenue heading south out of the village, the first stop was Silbury Hill.
Again, this is an absolutely staggeringly construction which is very difficult to catch sight of from the surrounding area, as, curiously, it is constructed at the very lowest point of the valley floor.
For this reason alone, it strikes me as potentially being intended less as a viewpoint / beacon or as a "look upon my works ye mighty.." type vanity project, but perhaps destined more for an altogether stranger, more private or localised purpose?
Whatever the case though, crest the top of Waden Hill opposite, and BAM, there it is - the largest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe.
Again, once you get used to the sheer scale of the thing, it's the mundanity of the way it fits in to the modern world, as uncaring traffic roars by along the adjacent A4, which impresses most.
At any given time of the day, in the layby next to the hill, you will likely find a West Country white van driver smoking a fag and checking his phone, all in the baleful shadow of a towering, 30 metre pyramidal edifice constructed by his distant ancestors over a period of around 150 years using only "antler pick and ox bone shovel".
But I mean, what ARE we supposed to do with it? Bow down and offer praise? Figure out its astrological alignment? Go on a walking holiday to look at it? Only so many hours in the day mate, and you've got to get on with life - got a van full of furniture here to drop off in Devizes, no doubt.
I was going to go off on another digression at this point about the impossibility of establishing sight lines between Avebury and Silbury, and the persistent misuse / misunderstanding of the term "ley lines" (no, really, don't run away, there's actually some quite interesting, non-crazy stuff to look into there, re: mapping out ancient routes of travel etc...) - but this thing is long enough already, so I'll skip all that for now.
I'll also skip my ill-informed pub bore spiel about how these sites aren't actually mysterious at all, and how their construction all makes perfect sense if ya just stop and think about it for five minutes, etc. etc. (Ask me about it sometime!)
Anyway, directly opposite Silbury Hill, the sign for West Kennett Long Barrow has attracted some impressive stickering.... although to be honest, I kind of hope I don't run into the Bradford Discharge Scooter Club or Worthing Techno Militia on my travels. Nice to know you're out there guys, but I'll keep my distance. (Particularly unsure about the notion of techno fans having a "militia" - can't end well, surely. And just imagine the kind of BPM they'd need to march at...)
West Kennett Long Barrow itself meanwhile proves another highlight of my visit - a substantial hilltop burial mound with an imposing sarcen stone entrance way, dated to around 3,700BC, which has been partially excavated, allowing visitors to actually venture inside the burial chambers and have a look.
My first thought, after getting my torch out and stepping inside, was what a fantastic hangout this must be for the local teenagers, but this was soon eclipsed by the realisation that I needed to start ducking, because nesting birds were zooming in and out of the chambers like spitfires. Turns out the accessible portions of the barrow are home to untold hundreds of starlings! (I'm pretty sure they're starlings anyway - Pete can confirm or deny if he's reading.)
As I was leaving the Long Barrow, I overheard a passing tour guide as she gestured in the direction of the surrounding hills, pointing out that the ancient sites accessible to the public in this area represent only a small fraction of the total, with the vast majority remaining hidden away on private land, belonging to owners who have no interest in co-operating with archeologists or heritage organisations.
This claim is certainly borne out by looking at the OS map for the district, which is absolutely riddled with 'tumuli' and 'stones' all over the place, leading me to contemplate the battle which must surely have raged for decades between farmers in a perpetual state of "gerrof my land" alertness, and crusties and pagan types trying to exercise their right to access their ‘sacred sites’. Maybe the presence of those bulls near the Fyfield Down stones yesterday was more than merely coincidental..?
Booo! Every walker's least favourite sign.
Somewhere between the Long Barrow and East Kennett village, I must have zigged when I should have zagged, and briefly managed to get a bit lost, leading me to experience that very particular sinking feeling you get upon realising that you're on a farm track somewhere in the middle of Wiltshire, it's just started raining again, and Google maps won't even tell you which direction you're facing.
A brief glimpse of what I correctly surmised to be the church spire at East Kennett saved the day though, and after finangling my way through some overgrown paths, I eventually reached it and got myself back on track, about half an hour behind schedule.
(The only volume of potential interest in the East Kennet Book Exchange telephone box incidentally was a New English Library paperback entitled 'Jackboots over Jersey'; if it had either been fiction or had a good cover, I'd have picked it up, but alas not.)
This unhappy diversion took the wind from my sails somewhat, and I confess the subsequent trudge up Overton Hill, and back along the same unappealing stretch of the 'Herepath' I'd already tackled yesterday leading back into Avebury, became a right slog, leavened only slightly by the presence of a few gangs of happy South Asian youngsters marching in the other direction, singing call and response type songs as they presumably participated in some kind of orienteering / camping activity.
Along the way, I visited the final piece in the puzzle of the Avebury landscape's, ahem, 'sacred geometry' - a place known as 'The Sanctuary', once the site of an intriguing temple-like hilltop structure. Sadly though, nothing at all remains extant here - just an info board, some small bricks marking out the perimeter of the site and (upon the occasion of my visit) a few confused walkers and their dog being lectured on the site's significance by an obvious henge enthusiast.
I eventually arrived back at the Red Lion, more exhausted than I really should have been after a 6-7 mile walk, with just enough time for a pint of bitter and a serving of chips before catching the next bus back to Swindon, sending me on my way back home in time to help give our sick cat TamTam his next round of pills.
Phew. I can only apologise for the fact that this has ended up being so long, but thank you for sticking with it.
My original plan for walking holidays this year was that I would begin walking the Wessex Downs Ridgeway path which leads all the way from Avebury to Ivanhoe Beacon in Oxfordshire, but unfortunately, the remaining Wiltshire sections of the path - which look to be full of wonders - proved to be a bit too remote and reliant on tinpot local bus services to suit my current limited circumstances.
So instead, I'll be moving straight on to the slightly more accessible Berkshire / Oxfordshire end of things -- which, should I repeat this writing / photo sharing exercise, will hopefully result in far shorter posts, as I'm not anticipating a great deal of excitement in such places as Goring, Wendover or Tring. But, who knows what secrets they may hold?
Watch this space to find out, but in the meantime, I'll leave you with one final gratuitous standing stone pic, of some of the mighty sarcens outside the West Kennett Long Barrow.
