On our penultimate day in Little Coxwell, we took a trip to Avebury, the site of an ancient stone circle and surrounding henge/ditch, the largest in Britain. The site is one large circle with two smaller circles inside. It was created for unknown purposes about 5,000 years ago. The current village of Avebury now intrudes into the ancient site.
Avebury is close to the end of the Ridgeway track that we hiked on a few days ago, where we saw the Effington Chalk Horse. We walked from the village of Avebury to the Ridgeway, marveling again at the rapeseed fields around us, and then hiked up to an ancient burial ground, the West Kennet Long Barrow, built about 5,500 years ago. The area has other prehistoric structures along our trail. Nearby is the 30-metre high Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric mound in Europe. It’s big! Built in stages, using chalk dug from a surrounding ditch, it had reached its final form by about 2300 BC. More details here: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/avebury/avebury-world-heritage-site/
On our last walk on the Ridgeway, we saw another ancient burial mound called Waylands Smithy, but this one is much larger, more open and you can enter the burial tunnel. The view from the top is lovely.
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