Avebury World Heritage

Note: Do click on photos for clearer, bigger images.

The visit to Avebury was one memorable visit. Avebury is a place situated between two small towns, Marlborough and Beckhampton (not David Beckham alright?). Both towns are equally beautiful in their own senses, although the sights of long fir trees, hilly sides and wandering stallions in Marlborough looked more appealing to me.




As we were driving along Roman Road, I immediately noticed a huge mound. A sort that makes you hint in seconds that it is not mother nature that has helped shaped it but had been man-made. Funnily it looks like a huge ant hill, only the difference being, it has grass all around and rather flat on the top. There were a few sheeps grazing on its grass and made it look like tiny 'white' ants when viewed comparatively to the mound.

"Mummy, look . That is BBBIIIGGG!!"

Even LO saw the extraordinary qualities of the huge ancient mound, dated back to 4500 years ago. I couldn't help imagining how it felt to be an ant, climbing up the steep slant and reach the peak. The return of a huge crowd of European school kids (from the language, we hinted they are Slovakians), snapped me out of my imagination.



A location across the road from the Silbury Hill, is the West Kennet Long Barrow. An ancient burial mound, stretching over 400m long and dated back to 5500 years ago. There were 5 chambers, and had been the place burial over 46 people over the period of 1000 years. Afterwhich, the entrance had been permanently closed until in year 1859, the tomb was discovered and few chambers were excavated. Further excavation into the completion of the discovery of the whole chambers was carried out in 1955. (p/s; lilian, there you go!)




Naturally, LO was scared of the tomb (it looked sombre and dark), after much persuasion, she entered the tomb only when mummy promised her a trip to the McD's. THe smell, I tell you, perrghhh! I couldn't describe you the smell, but surely enough it made me choke several times. The smell just went straight to my throat and made me choke (although I 'm not too sure how that was actually possible..) I had to take several minutes 'out' to breath fresh air before I could enter and inspect again. Nevertheless, it was rather impressive. Imagine, the neolithics, the ritual that had taken place and etc. Bizarre.

The walk back to our car was pretty tiring for we had to walk about a mile across the farm, which is said to be an example of the ancient meadow that once existed. Nearby is an ancient spring where sacred, pre-historic votive offerings might have taken place around the same circa of years. As I had been tired from walking the distance (and from the piggy back ride by LO), DH encouraged LO to chase him all the way back to our car, so as not to let her tire me any further.

"Come on, chase babah! Wheee!!"

"Hehehehehehe...I chase you"

"No you can't get me, wheeeee..." " Gulp!!!!" *holding his neck with his two hands and literally was stunned, and started to khark..ptui *

The khark..ptui, ptui went on endlessly followed by him spitting into the poor river.

I had to ask " Apasal?"

"Masa I tengah bukak mulut tadi, one black flying bug masuk straight to my throat"

"Huh?"

"Really! Now I can feel it trying to crawl up my anak tekak" *help!*

Ayoooo...what a luck!

"Camne? Stop spitting, you're ruining nature's beauty...nah minum air" *handed him an Evian bottle*

It may solve the problem but the thought of the black bug flushed helplessly down his throat made me wanna think no more of it and so ushered LO and DH, quickly to the car.

Next, we drove a little bit to the north and found the exact Avebury village. It is one serene village with beautiful cottages around. This time we anticipated the Avebury Circle and much like that of Stonehenge, it is a circle formation that consists of huge rocks that are equally distanced (I think). As usual, our arrival was not straight to the site, but to the souvenir shop. You see, I love collecting pencils of all sorts, including those worthy of souvenirs from places like this. (Other people I have known collect tea towels, keychains and plates but I find pencils are the most affordable and need less space for storage).




Half an hour later, we ended up purchasing 2 celtic silver rings, and of course a souvenir pencil. (oh boy, rabak poket). Not that expensive, affordable though. Soon enough, we entered the site and it was indeed remarkable. The circle was very huge, if seen from aerial view, you would notice that the circle is in fact divided by several roads belonged to the village. The most funny part was, LO and I were more fascinated by the existence of sheeps and lambs that were happily grazing. So much so, so jakun had we become until terpijak tahi biri pun tak perasan.

Hahaha..padan muka.

Our trip was completed with a short visit to Stonehenge in Amesbury (boy, to my recollection, it must have been my 6th or 7th visit, because every time a friend or a member of family comes to UK, they demanded a tour to Stonehenge). We headed home at around 8pm, it was still bright, filled our tummy with fries on a motorway service and I slept the way back home.

Total bliss!