Circles

Well, it’s not a real adventure until you pick up a car and drive on the other side of the road. We grabbed a little green Jeep and headed to Stonehenge this morning. By the end of the day, I had only missed a single turn and hit one curb. Not bad for the first day.

We arrived early at Stonehenge and managed to beat the crowds. The wind was exceptionally cold, but we didn’t let it deter us. After touring the exhibit in the visitors’ center, we hopped on the shuttle bus and headed to the stones. The construction on the site started around 3,000 BC, with a huge round ditch and bank. The development continued for about 1,500 years, with multiple rings and different sized stones. Some of the stones have been traced to a quarry about 150 miles away in Wales. What? We had a good time suggesting possible methods of transport, but I’m sticking with the aliens-helped-out theory. Seriously. These are enormous pieces of rock.

One of my favorite reasons to travel is to see the world’s most iconic places in person. Stonehenge doesn’t disappoint. It is weird and beautiful and impossible all at the same time. Human ingenuity apparently knows no bounds. But Stonehenge pales in comparison to an older stone circle in Avebury. I love the one in Avebury! There are way less visitors, you can touch the stones, and it happens to be the largest stone circle known on the planet. Last time I was here, it was dreary and cold, so we only walked around a quarter of the circle. This time, the abundant sunshine, despite the wind, encouraged us to walk the whole perimeter. The circle is about 1,400 feet wide, which is 16 times larger than Stonehenge. It, too, has a large ditch and bank that rings multiple stone circles. Although the bottom of the ditch to the top of the bank is about 60 feet now, it was probably steeper when built. The outer circle originally had stones place every 30 feet in a 1/2 mile circle with about 200 stones used to make two smaller circles within it. Archeologists seem to know a bit more about Stonehenge, while most of Avebury remains a mystery.

As we got settled in the car for the ride home, I noticed that Cherhill was along the route back to Bath. I had come across the Cherwill White Horse while browsing Atlas Obscura. It is the figure of a horse etched into the side of a hill, measuring about 165 feet in width and 220 feet in height. The hills are chalk, covered by a shallow layer of top soil. The creator simply had to remove the top soil to reveal the white chalk. There is a Bronze Age white horse in Britain; however, this one was created in 1780. Regardless, it was worth the stop to see it covering the hill above the farm land below.Read more