A chalk landscape

How not to photograph a crop circle which was by Silbury Hill.  All I remember of this photo was that we passed several dozen butterflies feasting on wild flowers.

Just drunk my morning coffee, the pink kettle flirting gently with my midnight blue coffee pot on the Aga.  Toast was made on the slow hot plate in a griddle affair.  I wonder how many people are still using an Aga?

I footled through other people's blogs and found a good link on Aril's, 'Future learn', a place where you can go and learn for free, though there is a rising pay scheme.

I chose the Archaeology of Pewsey Vale, somewhere I know and have memories of the landscape.  It has an ancient history starting from Mesolithic times and settlement flows through right down to this day in the villages. 

On top of Knap Hill Enclosure with Moss and his ball. A game he played up here was to let it roll down the hill and then chase after it.  Can you see the lynchets behind him...

Paul and I would drive through occasionally to see the graves of his parents at Pewsey church and also to stop off at the Barge Inn. In fact there would be two pubs we would visit, the other one was the haunt of the crop circle people, this being 'crop circle land', though let us be honest the clever manipulation of the patterns on the wheat fields had more to do with a local group playing around at night.  The farmers weren't too happy either!

The painted crop circle ceiling

The funny thing about crop circles is that on the ground you are not really aware of the patterning, it is only when a drone is flown that you begin to see the rather clever patterns from the air.  It is strange to think that in a hundred years time, the people will look back at this antiquated art form and marvel that there were some who believed in aliens from other planets coming down at night.  Just as we take today the story of the 'moonrakers in a Wiltshire pond' as nonsense.

Adam's Grave in lonely contemplation of the downs round Avebury

From the great long barrow on top of a hill, the Neolithic Adam's Grave or Woden's if you prefer, for the Saxons settled in this valley as well, or to the two churches below set near to each other, the solid weight of history resounds round you.

The old Yew in the Vale of Pewsey, 

One of the church's foundation has prehistoric stones to stand on, you can lift the wooden lids in the church and peer down.  Now whether it stands on a stone circle we will never know, but just look at that lovely old yew tree in the graveyard and guess its age.

Martinsell Hill

I can remember this one hillfort on Martinsell Hill, that day the sun shone and as I walked along the old Saxon road/trackway I looked up and saw this hill.  Only later was I to find a book written by the Hubbard brothers in 1905 that said this hillfort was guarded by wolves.  So remember not everything you read is true ;)

But the chalk landscape of Wiltshire was the settling place of many early pioneers as they wandered the land of Britain.  It is the convenient way to travel along the way from Avebury to Stonehenge, two of the most important sites in Wiltshire, joining the Wiltshire chalk downs with Salisbury Plain. 

Chalks and Flints of Wiltshire by Lothar Respondex