Hello welcome to Avebury. A little village in Wiltshire and our stop for
the day. It's actually famous for its henge.
What's a henge? yeah, what's a henge? It's a Neolithic sort of circular ditch
embankment complex sometimes with stone circles the most famous obviously
Stonehenge which is not far away from here but this is one of the largest it
actually circles the village. So we're going to go on a little tour.
We may bump into some New Age people because they tend to hang around in
places like this. Anyway let's go and have a look.
An artists impression of what Avebury could have looked like four and a half
thousand years ago when it was originally started. We never knew whether
it was quite completed it's a largest stone circle in Europe it's around about
a mile in circumference three hundred and fifty yards across has four
entrances which is unusual most of them have two and there are stone circles right
throughout England they tend to be rectangles in Europe but they were very
popular for roundabout three and a half
thousand years ago. Then the reason or purpose for them disappeared and it was
overtaken by something else so they disappeared from the record
shall we say three and a half thousand years ago and didn't come back into
being until around about a thousand years ago and the first mention we have
of Avebury is in fact in the Doomsday Book.
Back in 2003 they established at that this stone was about five thousand years old
and it's been in that position for five thousand years give or take a
couple of years on either side for for accuracy.
When we have a stone which has been used by Neolithic people to sharpen and
polish their axes and their Flint's we call them polissoir stones so this
is a polissoir stone. This is an example up in the five fields which I
told you about this this stone is still there today these
grooves here are were they shape their axes and stone axes so this polissoir was
still 5000 years ago in regular use by a Neolithic man. Well that was Avebury
on a chilly January day. That's pretty good wasn't it Mel yep it was. That was a
yes from Mel, the tour was three pounds it was really reasonable and it lasts
just over an hour so it's definitely worth doing the tour to get some
explanation and put some of these stones in context and Patrick the National
Trust volunteer was very informative. Yes Patrick the volunteer was very
informative. Are you getting any energies from the stone, I'm not. There were a few new
agers I saw hugging them. Wouldn't it be funny if when they're hugging it just fell
over. Yeah anyway that was Avebury, definitely worth
a visit. Mels complaining that her back is hurting. The cameras is not that heavy, Avebury in
Wiltshire, thumbs up for us. We've been told there's a big white horse around
here somewhere, I've been looking for ages.
It's behind you.
There's actually somebody on it at the moment
walking across his eye. So anyway that's it
Whitehorse done let's move on.
So that's where we stayed last night that's the Bath Arms Hotel and it's
really close to Longleat Safari Park so I'm keeping one eye open for any
escaped lions or anything like that. Anyway it was good, good food. So that's
the end of a little Wiltshire Plains jaunt tracing in the footsteps of our
ancient ancestors but unlike those I haven't got a massive blue stone to
carry on rollers we came by car. Well this place is quite good location as
well as being close to Longleat Safari Park
it's really close to Bath and not that far from Salisbury either so a good
base. So it's now time for us to head home to Wales
about two hours from Cardiff so goodbye.