Visit to the
Grass Circle, Garsington on 29th May 2005 approximately 1600 hours.
A brief report
Grid reference
SP579016
Sorry to have
to report another photographic bloody disaster. Just like my flight the other
day my zoom camera played up. I took loads of photos got back home and
there's nothing on the sodding thing. Fortunately I took my old camera too,
and for some reason which I'm so glad of now, took a few shots with this too.
(Geoff Ambler's camera refused to work at all.) So, no long distance or
full-formation photographs I'm afraid.
One odd thing
that happened was that I saw the formation from the road as I drove towards
the carpark and was struck by how good it looked, really well defined and
impressive. But when we went down to the road to photograph the formation it
couldn't be seen from where I had seen it previously. When we did locate a
spot to photograph it from it could not be made out very well at all.
When I arrived
at the formation it looked beautiful - lovely sweeping, graceful lines. To me
it looked as perfect as grass circles are gonna get. There was some wind
damage - after all it is on the side of a fairly steep hill and there have
been some strong winds recently. There were one or two trails leading to
and/or from the formation to the nearby hedge. Were these visitors or
plankers? I don't know, but the formation felt lovely, gentle and very
feminine.
This second
Garsington formation of 2005 is on the same alignment as last year's
Dragon 1
(Garsington) and this year's
Gotham Galaxy
(The Baldons) ie An alignment that stretches between St Mary's Church,
Garsington and Sinodun Hill, Long Wittenham. There is a similarity in design
to the Dragon formation too. Interestingly Garsington means Grassy Hill.
The formation
comprises of two circles each approximately 8 metres in dimension; which meet
each other with a precise single strand line of grass stalks. The higher
circle has a clockwise swirled lay whilst the lower circle's is
anti-clockwise. From the meeting point of the two circles a long sweeping
curved arm stretches around each side of the top circle in a wide arc to meet
about 24 feet above its head. The beautiful sweep of the crop flows from
bottom to top in both cases each arm widening through around 12inches for
much of the flow to 6 foot at the top. Where the arms meet there is a
well-defined 6-foot single line of grass stems separating each from the
other.
Ellis
p.s. This is
interesting...I watched the beginning of a movie tonight. The film starred
Tom Hanks and was called Cast Away. It's a Spielberg's Dreamwoks production -
sorry that's the Chinese Spielberg - I mean Dreamworks. Anyway during the
opening frames a truck drives up to a farmstead which has a sign over the
gate saying 'Dick Bettina'. What really caught my attention was that also on
the sign was a large design almost exactly like the
'Bee' formation
of last year. All grist for the mill
Report by Ellis Taylor Copyright 2005
