OS Explorer map 157, Marlborough & Savernake Forest: Avebury & Devizes – I do not own this map, and had not been to it before starting this blog. Visited for this post 2nd December 2023.
Google Maps location links: Avebury
In my previous post, I told you about the work retreat I attended for a few days at the start of December, in a house just southeast of Swindon. The main days of that event were Wednesday to Friday, when we had our various work sessions as well as various casual social things, I went on a few walks out from the house, and so on. The retreat ended on Saturday morning, at which point several people went directly home, but there was also one final thing: I’d volunteered to take anyone interested on a little touristing trip for a few hours. In the end, six of us piled into a rented people carrier, and I drove us off to Avebury!
Avebury is very cool. It’s a village, but it’s also an amazing prehistoric site consisting of a henge and a series of stone circles, including the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world. That is, the village, the giant earth bank and stone circle, and several partial smaller stone circles are kind of all in the same place, with village partly inside the circle and partly of spilling out of one side – it’s really something.
We arrived in the car and, after some parking trouble, went for a nose around Avebury. It’s just really impressive in scale, would definitely recommend visiting.
Our morning visit was made extra-special by the weather. It was a crisp, cold, sunny day, but also also quite foggy, which made everything look very atmospheric and otherwordly.
That weather meant that for the first time in my life I got to see a really clear fogbow – a white rainbow that’s created by fog rather than rain – and, coolest of all, a glory.
Glories are wild. It’s an optical phenomenon that appears, to the observer, exactly opposite the sun, which of course means it’s around your own shadow. There were several of us standing in a row, so I could see all the shadows next to each other, but around my shadow, and mine alone, was this clear halo around myself, my own little personal rainbow. But of course each other person was seeing it around their shadow, not mine.
Avebury is in an area of the North Wessex Downs that is full of prehistoric sites, so we wanted to see another one or two before we left. Since we didn’t have that much time before the train people wanted to get home to Swindon, I went back to the car and drove over to near Silbury Hill and the West Kennet Long Barrow, while the others walked there – that way we’d save the time that would have been spent walking back to the car, if we’d all done the walk.
Again, both were very fun. Silbury Hill is a giant prehistoric man-made mound in the shape of a sort of conical hill, about 40 metres high and of unclear purpose. And West Kennet is, as it sounds, a chambered long barrow, again just a particularly large and impressive member of its genre. The end is open and one can go in and have a poke around.
After my colleagues caught up to me and we had a look around, we got back into the car, and I dropped them all off at Swindon station to head back to London. I drove back to my Gloucestershire home and returned the hire car. A good trip!
Visiting all the maps! 
