My dad Peter and sister Zoe arrived from New Zealand on a chilly weekday, not quite what they were hoping for from their four-week “summer” holiday! Consoled by the fact that temperatures in their main destination of Sicily were in the mid-30s, we first headed across country to visit family in Wales.
As it wasn’t a long drive, we decided to detour past the tiny village of Avebury, which we had last visited on our family holiday 13 years before. It’s home to the largest stone circle in Europe, and is remarkable not least for the fact that the village is located partly within the three circles, which date from around 2600 BCE.
The outer circle at Avebury
Avebury is a henge, so it has a large circular bank and then a ditch, with the stone circles inside. This means there are great views of the stones!
I loved all the thatched roofs that are prevalent in this part of the countryside – they seem so quintessentially English, like this pub, the Red Lion.
The beautiful church is of course much more recent than the circles, but still dates from the 11th century.
Avebury is brilliant because, unlike Stonehenge, you can get right up to and even touch the stones – pretty special!
We continued on our way to Wales with several stops for another local attraction – the White Horses. These are figures of horses cut into the hillsides, so that the chalk below is displayed – and they are huge! Some date from thousands of years ago, while others have been made more recently, such as this one in Devizes which was made to celebrate the millennium and based on a previous chalk horse in the area that had been lost.
This horse, in Westbury, was restored in 1778, but some believe it originally dates to 878… Pretty impressive!
Next stop – Abergavenny, Wales!
