Stone Circle
Slept well last night. It’s a little odd being in these people’s house and being the only travelers here. Breakfast was pretty good. We drove down to the town of Avebury, which is pretty, very small. The stone circle is interesting. Many of the stones were moved or used for buildings in the town so they have cement markers where the stones used to be. The whole site is huge and included many mounds, burials and a huge hill.
This week is Heritage week so entrance into the museum and gallery at Avebury was free, which was nice. They were both pretty cheesy, but I learned a few things. It’s funny, it seems like they start things here, almost get it right….
Anywho, we were off again to the next town. Driving is easier now, but the directions are still difficult. Our map isn’t details enough so we don’t have all the roads and there are many small towns we come across that aren’t on the map. Also getting through bigger cities is a bit tricky because of the map not being detailed enough. Their sign placement is a bit bad as well. It’s some times perfect, bit others either the sign is behind a tree or bush or no sign at all. It just adds to the adventure I suppose.
For lunch we stopped at this little restaurant right on the Thames River called the riverside pub.
After lunch we made it into our final destination for the Cotswolds, stow-on-the-wold. It was packed, we made it to the Tourist Information Center to find a B&B. Things are pretty much booked, being it the weekend and apparently there is a festival going on as well. She ended up finding us a place with ensuite, wifi internet, close to town & in our price range. We had to go one town over to Bourton-on-the-water but that’s okay since it’s a super cute town too. We’re staying at Bella Dorma, which is this very cute, contemporarily decorated house.
We walked down to the town center and it was swarming with people, tons of people. We ended up eating at this pub, The Kings Bridge Pub. The food was great, I had caramelized onion chutney, goat cheese on bread. Wine was good with that too. The town is very cute, little bridges over the stream really make it very picturesque.
This was one of my favorite stone circles that we visited in England. The town of Avebury is surrounded by several large stone circles. It is one of the largest Neolithic monuments in Europe dating to around 5,000 years ago. Many of the large stones were used to build some of the town buildings so they have cement markers to represent the missing stones. Apparently back in the day there was fear of pagan rituals which were associated with the site so the town’s people buried the stones. Then later the guy, Alexander Keiller came and dug up most of the stones and re-erected them in the 1930s.
We visited the stones in the early morning around 8:30am and we were lucky enough to have a hazy fog. This made the entire place feel really eerie and the photos came out great!
