Avebury, A Town Within A Henge

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Geo: 51.4268, -1.85322

From Stonehenge we drove to Avebury about 40 minutes north. Along the way I advised the group to keep watch as there are many sites in the area. Beth's keen eye caught a horse in the side of a hill. I later saw a map in Avebury showing a bunch of different horses. Most of these horses are not thousands of years old but they are still quite cool. See this site for more information: http://wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk I have no idea which horse we saw.

I recommend a visit to Avebury if you just saw Stonehenge. This place is crazy. The henge is something like 16 times larger than Stonehenge. The ditch and mound are enormous. That's a lot of 'shoveling' with antlers and bones. And remember... it's chalk. The town was built through the henge and many of the stones were either knocked over and buried by the people or busted up to use for building other things. Check out this website: http://www.avebury-web.co.uk/index.html It's got loads of information not only on the henge but also some of the surrounding sites as well.

Since it was bloody cold and windy we needed to warm up before making our trek home. So we stopped in the Red Lion. As is turns out this place is haunted. We sat in the room with the old town well. It seems that Florrie was thrown down the well by her husband after he caught her cheating. The bar tender told us stories of unusual things happening in the bar.... Florrie! I found this BBC article about it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2004/10/28/p si_report_redlion_feature.shtml
Beth decided to get a cider which prompted the bar tender to inform her that in some pubs it is illegal to serve a lager after. Apparently this is called a snake bite and she could get quite crazy from the mixture. I of course encouraged her to do it... I had the camera ready. Well, it didn't make her crazy. She fell asleep.

Crazy day. Time to head home. I need some rest!!

Again check out the satellite image. It's not as prominent as Stonehenge but it gives you an idea of how big the henge is.

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