Day one

start of two weeks off, and our couple of days of camping in North Wilts. Tent up mid-afternoon, we drove into Avebury, swift half in the Red Lion and then began our planned walk up to the Neolithic causewayed enclosure of Windmill Hill.

Windmill Hill is one of my favourite places [ ever since I read Joshua Pollards 'Avebury: the biography of a landscape' last year].

Prior to the henge, this was clearly the place to be. A major gathering point for neolithic peoples in the region and beyond – ritual deposition of bones, tools and pottery abound here.
OS Map in hand we set off, assisted at the edge of a long field by a handy signpost pointing ‘this way’ and ‘that way’. As we’d come from ‘that way’, we decided to go ‘this’.

Had the sign mentioned the quantity of young and easily – agitated bulls in the field we might not have had to try and walk through unnoticed, and ultimately have to hot foot it back to the stile. After a few minutes stamping my foot at them they stopped snorting at us and turned away but it was clear we weren’t going to make it across a quarter-mile of them un-trampled.

Taking the road instead we made it eventually.Views from the hill were spectacular, enhanced by gloomy weather to the West. Returned to the Red Lion following a small downpour, and back to the campsite for veggie chilli.