I took an early morning ride to see some of Wiltshire's Neolithic Monuments. I left at 5:30 and was home, 120 miles later, at 8:30am. The roads were empty and that was my intent. I wanted to get the bike stopped on a couple of narrow main roads in order to get better photographs and I didn't want any cars around. Unfortunately, it was a bit foggy for some of the pictures.
My first stop was Avebury, with the following photo taken just before 6am. Avebury is believed by many of those archaeology wierdos (yes, you Hev) to be more important than Stonehenge. From my point of view it's nearer home and you can actually wander around and touch the stones, so it's far more user friendly. This particular stone is one of the biggest ones and overhangs the fence to the main road. I could actually take the picture from the middle of the road, so that was good.
Just round the corner from Avebury is Silbury Hill. After some recent earth scanning work was done at the site, this is thought to be a burial chamber now. It is not the hill Peter Gabriel sang about though, that one was Solsbury Hill in Somerset.
From there, the ride down to Stonehenge. Since I last went there, they have shut a few of the roads and moved the visitor centre further away from the stones. As it was closed at stupid o'clock on a Sunday Morning, I really couldn't get that close. This photo was taken from the A303 at around 7am. It was empty enough to get a clean shot eventually and this is as close as you can get without paying.
Just up the road from Stonehenge is the lesser known Woodhenge. Lesser known because it isn't there any more as wood tends to rot somewhat before the stone equivalent. So I got a picture of the bike on the road beside the site. Each of the tall wood towers is now represented by a short stone marker. The second photo is what it would have looked like.
I stopped at Barbury Castle on the way home too. You cannot get the bike in the same shot as that, so no photo to show. I rode past a few White Horses and a number of the Long Barrow sites (Burial Chambers). There is loads of this kind of thing in Wiltshire.
So, home by 8:30am and straight in for breakfast.
