Sunday 15th November

Decisions arrived at, the Stonehenge tunnel that goes South-West  is to be built to take all that traffic on the A303 and relieve the pressure on the stones.  Good or bad news I cannot say, it will create more chaos over the years as it is  constructed.  Watching the arguments, for and against, still I do not know my thoughts on it.  Apart from one, if it takes years, will we not have a modern update on how traffic will be moving in the future.  Archaeologists and Druids fume against it, along with various bodies such as Stonehenge Alliance.

Some would argue that the big honey jar is Stonehenge and as far as English Heritage is concerned  is that they have won the argument but surely the resultant road works will be enough to put many tourists off anyway.

And why does Arthur Uther Pendragon and his small huddle of pagans have a say in the matter.  Claiming Stonehenge as their temple is patently untrue, the stones lie in prehistory, Druids maybe part of the later Iron Age and now represented by the latter modern day pagans.  I am not going to be derogatory about the New druids, people have a right to worship who they may but I find appropriating other remnants of old religions a bit difficult to come to terms with.

I quite like these words from Jacquetta Hawkes, in her time there were but a few cars on the road, it shows how history and time moves on, when now we have all these cars streaming past the stones to get to the South-West and Cornwall.

"The traveller who wishes to approach Stonehenge most fittingly should keep along this road, crossing the little river Till at Winterbourne Stoke. As he reaches the quiet crossroads on the summit, he will be on the edge of one of the greatest, and certainly the richest, congregation of burial mounds in all Britain. Here was a kind of vast scattered cemetery on ground hallowed by its proximity to the renowned sanctuary. Barrows cluster round Stonehenge on all sides - three hundred of them - but here to the west is the greatest concentration and the area most sequestered from the blighting military activities of Amesbury. Close within the north-eastern angle of the crossroads is a well preserved longbarrow and its spine acts as a pointer to a line of round barrows starting just beyond the small wood. These in their range of forms make a typologist's heaven. First there are two striking bell barrows and on their left two disks - one of normal type, the other with twin tumps. Just beyond them is perhaps the best known example of that rare variety - the pond barrow - which consists of a circular depression with a low bank on the lip. Back on the line of bells are four bowl barrows, and there are many more of this type beside the left-hand road as it leads very happily northwards to nowhere.

Jaquetta Hawkes on Stonehenge

And talking of Cornwall, have you seen Simon Reeves on Cornwall, you can pick it up on BBC Iplayer, channel 2.  It may be alright for the tourists, this strangely beautiful part of England but for locals it is a misery, especially during the lockdown.  Expensive second homes deprive the local young of homes, Simon Reeves highlighted a food bank, whose usage has shot sky high.  The broken down towns as businesses were forced to shut.  He emphasised the very simple fact of the terrible divide that befalls our country between rich and poor.

The photo shown above today is King's Arthur Hall, set out on Bodmin Moor this 'squared' pond of prehistoric stones is a mystery, why is it there, are the stones reused at a later time, perhaps in Medieval times for there is a boundary between two estates that crosses at this point.