Welcome to the second part of Oldbury Tours’ year in photographs, a pictorial journey through the months of a second COVID struck year.
With the Winter of 2020 -21 over we now move into Spring. There was some optimism as the colour returned to Wiltshire. My walks got longer and, as restrictions slowly eased, a few more people showed interest in touring our wonderful county and its plethora of fascinating archaeological and natural sites.
Over these few months I met people at Avebury for walks around the Neolithic landscape and picked others up from hotels in Salisbury, Bath and Marlborough to explore places further afield. I also carried on my research visiting sites I hadn’t been to before and we start in April with one of those and the blackthorn bushes full of blossom.
A beautiful day to visit an early Neolithic tomb, built c.5,800 BC just outside Wiltshire, in the county of Somerset
The ancient tomb occupies a hilltop position
The swirling shape of a fossilised ammonite guards the entrance to the tomb. Millions of years old, what did our ancestors imagine it to be?
And always I am drawn back towards Cherhill and Oldbury hillfort, far in the distance here
On Good Friday a Christian cross is added to the monuments on Cherhill
Appropriately enough it is placed on a Neolithic Long Barrow – an ancient ‘place of the skulls’
A tiny wren sings it’s hopeful, trilling note
Avebury Manor, St James’ church and lush pasture create an unmistakably English idyll
It’s time to pay a visit to one of the region’s most important archaeological sites on the windmill-less Windmill Hill
In the valley below, the Winterbourne stream runs swiftly south towards Silbury Hill…
…and the great stones of Avebury look awesome on a blustery April afternoon
Equally magnificent, a red kite strikes a proud pose
Waiting for clients at the Gainsborough Spa Hotel in a sunny and unusually quiet city of Bath
Still April but it’s warm enough for shorts at Avebury’s Devil’s Chair…
…and inside another Neolithic Burial site, the famous West Kennet Long Barrow
You know summer is approaching when the Chiffchaffs arrive
From high up on Waden Hill, Bronze Age Silbury Hill stands out against a bright yellow field of May-flowering Rapeseed
Perhaps the best way to enjoy the Sanctuary’s stone circles is to lie back and soak up the view
Sheep use the giant stones of the Avebury cove for shade from the June sun
Amazingly, the enormous bank at ditch at Avebury have a circumference of a little under a mile
Which way shall we go? It’s right to Silbury Hill
Lunch al fresco at the Barge Inn, Honeystreet on the Kennet and Avon canal
A serene and very nearly empty Stonehenge – but look closely!
Sometimes the Bronze Age carvings at Stonehenge, towards the bottom of stone 53, stand out clearly even from a distance
Having zoomed in you can clerly see the vertical shafts of axes (semi-circular blades pointing up) and to the left a dagger it’s blade pointing down
