Hike Day 0 – Avebury Stone Circle

Today Keith was due into Heathrow at nine. I got up at seven so I could get to Paddington Station to meet him for the train. I had an email from him that his flight was delayed and when I checked flight tracker it showed that the plane was just starting to taxi. They took off at 2:30 a.m. Philly time. A 5 and a half hour delay. I’ve been here at the B&B since 1:30. He landed at 2:30 and now at 4:45 is probably on the #49 bus due here in the next 30 minutes.

I took my last tube ride for this part of the trip to Paddington. It was the empitiest I ever saw it.

From Paddington I took a Great Western Railway train to Swindon. When I first got off the train, I thought Swindon might be the worst English town I’ve ever seen. Everything was closed and empty. It turns out that is just the station area. It’s really pretty nice including “the Parade” which was just around the corner. The bus to Avebury went through a lot of Swindon. It’s much bigger than I thought it would be.

The next picture was the cause of a real uproar on the bus. A lady got on in a mobility scooter which meant someone had to change seats and other people rearrange luggage. After she backed into her handicapped spot, She got up and walked up the stairs to the upper deck of the bus. Everyone on the bus went wild! “Well I never!” “Can you imagine?” It was the topic of conversation for 15 minutes. Everyone who got off the bus for the next few stops reported her to the driver.

The bus finally reached Avebury and I walked along a busy road to Dorwyn Manor which is the start of our Ridgeway hike.

I took a short rest and then walked into town. Avebury is a small town which is situated completely within large stone circle. From Wikipedia:

Avebury (/ˈeɪvbəri/) is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans.

Constructed over several hundred years in the Third Millennium BC,[1] during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony. The Avebury monument is a part of a larger prehistoric landscape containing several older monuments nearby, including West Kennet Long Barrow, Windmill Hill and Silbury Hill.