Avebury

After that incredible experience at Stonehenge the night before, we checked out of our hotel in Salisbury to head over to Avebury before getting on to the overnight ferry that would take us across the English Channel to the port city of Saint-Malo, France.   

The Avebury site consists of a large circular henge, which is a ditch and bank affair, an outer stone circle of monoliths just within the perimeter of the henge, and 2 other stone circles in the center.  The outer stone circle is one of the largest in Europe and the largest in Britain.  It is hard to see all of this from ground level, in addition to many of the monoliths having been taken away and used for local building material.  In fact, a quaint village has been built inside of the outer stone circle and henge.  You can read about Avebury here.

Another magical coincidence occurred upon arriving at the Avebury town to meet up with our local guide Mike.  The night before I had had dinner with him and 2 other group travelers, and I asked him if he knew of Maria Wheatley, since they both live near Avebury.  He said that he didn’t.  Well, we arrived at the car park and were walking to where we were to meet him for our tour.  He was standing with a woman, and he called me over to meet her.  Imagine my surprise to find out that it was Maria herself!  She was waiting in the same spot to meet another group of tourists for her tour.  Apparently they had struck up a conversation while waiting.  How lucky for me.  I was thrilled, since I had such a nice interaction with her regarding ordering her book.  After our group moved on, I ran back to get a photo.  Here she is.

We then walked onto a path was that ran along one of the inner stone circles.  A ways down there was a stone laying flat that Mike said was a healing stone.  I came over to test with my pendulum, and sure enough, the pendulum ran clockwise in a very strong motion.  You could tell that people had been sitting on it as the ground next to it was devoid of grass.

Here is the largest megalith weighing about 65 tons.

Here are male and female megaliths positioned across from each other.  You get to guess which is which.  Ha!

More photos of the circles. 

Sheep hanging around, some grazing in the humongous ditch which is part of the henge.  Sheep poop everywhere.

As I had been there before, I did not miss time we could have had wandering among the megaliths.  Each one was different, and you could touch them as much as you wanted!