Field Report – Avebury, Trusloe

Such a beautiful day to visit a spectacular formation! It’s always a lovely feeling to be in the Windmill Hill area and just try to imagine the ancient settlement that used to exist a thousand or more years before Avebury stone circle or Silbury Hill were built. Such a sacred place!

On approaching the formation we noticed a donations container. Our thanks and gratitude to the farmer and we hope that you recoup at least the cost of your loss and hopefully more. From the aerial shots this promised to be impressive but there has been so much rain I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

On entering the formation, it was very messy. There has been a lot of rain and even if relatively few visitors have walked around, it was still muddy in places and well trampled. I think if it hadn’t of rained the lay and the features would have been even more impressive. Having said that, there was enough in there to keep me happy. The lay was generally neat, some areas it was flat, mainly in the circles and in other areas there were lots of tufts sticking up. The direction of the lay in the circles was clockwise.

There was a lot of broken crop. I didn’t find any bent or expanded nodes, except a few near the tram lines which are quite ‘normal’. Having said that, I didn’t spend a lot of time examining nodes etc because I just wanted to enjoy the formation. There was plenty to enjoy. In many of the ‘circles’ the lay was very flat and it swirled in a clockwise direction and had a flowing ‘feel’ to it.

What really impressed me about this formation was some of the intricate weaving that is present. In one of the large ‘circles’ there were four bunches of standing crop intricately woven into each other. It looked amazing and this was after all the rain. In the same ‘circle’ there was the same kind of weaving effect that we saw at Eastfield. In other circles, there were woven stems/bunches in the centre of them. As I moved to different parts of the formation I came across many intricate features of weaving and different lays.

It was so good to be back in a formation and feel such a wonderful energy. There were quite a few people visiting when I eventually left and everyone seemed to be forgetting about ‘everyday life’ and just enjoying the formation. Thank you 'Circlemakers'!

© Mike Callahan  www.wiltshiretours.com