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I managed to get to this one on Saturday morning, so I assume I was one of the first people in. I hadn’t seen an aerial photograph of the formation, if I had I would have looked at one or two features more closely.

I noticed the formation from the lay-by on the A4 as I approached the Yatesbury turning. I turned around and parked on the Devizes road near the field I thought it would be in. The formation can’t be seen from the road and it took me quite a while to find the right tramlines to lead up to the formation. In fact I ended up walking quite a way around the outside of the field in order to access via tram lines.

On entering the formation, I had little idea of what it depicted. The general lay was in a clockwise direction, although in parts in went the opposite way. I have seen much neater this season and there was quite a lot of standing crop in certain parts. As I walked around the outside I saw some swirled circles with standing crop in the middle. At ground level it appeared to be quite scruffy in parts and the nature of the lay was inconsistent. Having looked at the aerial shots I am amazed at what it looks like. How the ‘circlemakers’ (I use this term to include all possibilities) know the effect that certain features will create is very clever indeed, to say the least!

After spending some time in there I was beginning to get a sense of what it was and how vast it was. I bumped into ‘Luke’ who I often meet in various formations and he thought it resembled a ‘stingray’. The ‘tail’ is certainly impressive. I didn’t notice any nodal anomalies etc but did see the white ‘chip’ marks. Does anyone know what causes these? Is it a natural feature of growth? (see photographs of this formation and in my previous reports).

At ground level, I walked away slightly disappointed. I thought it lacked the fluidity and artistic nature of other formations. It appeared messy and scruffy. Also, I had developed a head ache in the formation. However, as I have stated, on seeing the aerial shots I feel absolutely amazed and somewhat humbled!

© Mike Callahan www.wiltshiretours.com