Back to the Three Trees cafe where I left off on Day 8, but this time with my dear friends Marc and Nigel, as fascinated by the ancient history of this area as I am. We liaised from different directions at Swindon station, then almost missed the X5 bus as the grim bus station has just been abandoned in favour of much snazzier stops nearby. A local girl almost convinced us we were in the right place despite the look of dereliction, and perhaps she is still there waiting. Rain had been forecast but managed to hold off until late in the day.
We took ‘the old Ridgeway’, after picking up something for a picnic lunch at the cafe. This route west from Chiseldon has been known since way before the national trail was established. In fact it is marked in the gothic lettering that OS maps use for ancient features. The road gradually dwindles past a few farmhouses until it is eventually just a track, then shows signs of being the old drovers’ road we have seen before. It continues south of the hilltop route that the national trail follows via Ogbourne St George. I suspect that the high route is likely to have been the ancient route and this is a drovers road established in medieval or even post enclosure times. But it is very attractive, through rolling countryside.
A lot of noise off left made us us aware of a shooting school, then we started to rise on the flank of a prominent hill, the site of Barbury Castle, another iron age fort, with clear signs of a field system below it. With the weather starting to close in we carried on rather than investigating the fort, but got a good view as we climbed the rise beyond: a very fine example, probably from around 500BC, well preserved with two clear defensive lines.
Soon there are several small beechwood copses, one of which is accessible and makes a good stop for lunch. It’s the last one before another white horse figure in the chalk at Hackpen Hill. There are apparently eight white horses in the area. This one was cut in 1838 to mark Victoria’s coronation. When we drop down to the top of the figure, we are surprised to find two friendly and very real horses only too happy to nuzzle up to us, and also to contemplate their giant image, almost as though they have been conjured up for that purpose.
Just beyond we decided to explore the area marked Grey Wethers or Sarsen Stones many times on the OS map: we split off from the Ridgeway route and followed the White Horse trail through a small wood, with many moss covered, half buried sarsen stones, emerging into a field with thousands of them. The sarsens are a sandstone, originally formed as a hard crust soil layer subject to acidic leaching; broken up and embedded in the glaciers that came this far south; then dumped as they melted. It was an astonishing site and further on, a combe with a huge deposit looked like the point where the ice had come to a stop. We lingered despite the first wave of rain coming in from a glowering sky.
We followed the Herepath or Green Street, once the main road from London to Bath, now just a track deeply rutted into the chalk, and arrived at Avebury, passing through the ditch and bank and encountering the sarsens dragged here and erected as part of the great circle, built nearly 5000 years ago. The scale is amazing, built with just antler picks and wooden tools, the ditch 7m or more deep. After checking in to our B+B – run by a pleasant couple and very comfortable, but some way out of the village along a busy road – we explored the rest of the site.
We debated the purpose: the siting is not typical for henges but there are long hill ranges all around for siting angles. Was the circuit defensive or to create a sanctuary to exclude those not of the religious caste? The banks would have provided a vantage point for people to view rituals within. There are the remains of two smaller circles inside, and the site is overlain by a manor house and its outbuildings, old half timbered and thatched houses and modern roads.
The Red Lion, once a 16th C farmhouse, provided a comfortable dinner and a good pint or two of local bitter. Overnight it rained incessantly and with rain and lightning forecast for the next day, we decided in the morning to postpone the next leg to Pewsey over the exposed Savernake ridge and caught buses to pick up the trains home.
A great day despite the weather, and it really feels like we are getting into the neolithic landscape proper.
