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Road to little dribbling5/10/2023 ![]() ![]() The immediate environs also include two other fragmentary stone circles, a giant bank and ditch, processional avenues, and barrows by the, well, barrowload. ![]() The outer circle of stones covers 28 acres, and that is only part of a much greater pageant of antiquity. The scale of Avebury, rather than the beauty of it, is what takes your breath away. The stones at Avebury are not smooth and picturesquely grouped as at Stonehenge but rough-edged and of varying sizes, which gives them a more primitive and sinister air. The largest of them weigh up to a hundred tonnes. Some are quite massive and clearly took huge effort to manoeuvre into place. It’s an entirely conventional village except that scattered through and around it are great, angular standing stones. Avebury village is an attractive place with a post office, shop, some pleasant cottages, a manor house, a thatch-roofed pub. I mention this because my next port of call was the ancient Trust-owned village and megalithic site of Avebury, which manages to be both fabulous and exasperating in about equal measure. ![]() So here is my question: why does it have to be so very annoying? The world is unquestionably a better place for having the National Trust in it. It safeguards 160 historic houses, 40,000 archaeological sites, 775 miles of coastline and 250,000 hectares of countryside. The National Trust is a wonderful organization. Excerpt from The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson ![]()
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