Avebury, United Kingdom

I had been to Avebury once before, some eighteen years ago now on a day trip with my family. It’s a fascinating place; the  stone circles are thought to be even older than Stonehenge, at over 5000 years old. Many of the stones were dug up in the Middle Ages to make way for farmland - presumably they were a bugger to hoe around and had a tendency to blunt scythes or something - so the circles are relatively incomplete, but stone beacons mark the places it is thought the missing stones once stood to give an idea of what it might have been like.

There was hardly a soul to be seen, apart from the occasional woman belonging to the demographic most likely to have a signed picture of Tony Robinson, and so it was great to be able to wander amongst the stones unhindered.

Eventually I wandered south out of the village along The Avenue, a route over farmland patchily lined with stones that led past the impressive ancient man-made  Silbury Hill (which they seemed to be excavating) down towards West Kennet, home to a communal burial site or  longbarrow. The area was absolutely brimming with ancient sites to take in.

I marched on to my goal of the little town of Pewsey (pronounced Pew-zee, fact fans). The Landlady had said it was a nice walk, and she wasn’t wrong, especially as the good weather was with me again.

Consulting the map, the road seemed to go an awfully long way around, whereas if I cut across the fields I could shave off a good few miles of road walking and drop down into a village called Huish to grab some food for my stomach which had just started complaining. So I set off along a public footpath, via some raised earthworks that were - er, well about as interesting as raised earthworks without context can be, really - and sent sheep scattering as I made a beeline for the village.

The British have a knack of putting roads anywhere they can, and I soon found out why there wasn’t one in this case: there were some  gurt big hills in the way, which I happened to have emerged on top of, the village being far down below. The hills looked lovely but were a bugger to navigate, although skirting round the top I eventually found a way down that wouldn’t result in a broken neck and entered the village past its  lovely church. Unfortunately, the village contained no shops, pubs or even people that I could see, so I pushed on grumpily for Pewsey.

The wildlife beside major A-roads such as the A4 I had traversed yesterday is generally of the flat and red variety, but here on the minor roads it was much more, well, alive. Today I saw a pair of birds of prey - buzzards, I think - soaring above some panicked wood pigeons and making piercing eagle-like noises, as well as a few grouse flying off as I approached with wings beating like machine guns, not to mention a fair few pheasants. If there ever was a bird destined to be encased in pastry and baked, it is the pheasant. Anything dull enough to be all but stood on by my clumping great size 12’s before taking off in a flap thoroughly deserves such a fate in my book.

I hobbled into Pewsey and grabbed lodgings at the Royal Oak pub, another wonky, wood-timbered establishment. I had been struck by a craving for curry on the final stretch of walking, and was delighted to find that Pewsey was big enough to have a curry house, and a rather plush one at that. Knowing that this might be the last chance for a decent curry this side of, er, England, I went for the vindaloo, fully expecting the outlook for that evening to be windy.

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