One of the things I'm enjoying about my visit here is the complexity of its history. There's British medieval architecture to look at, remains of the civil war, Roman ruins, and prehistoric ruins from before that. Brittany is spotted with stone circles. I'm not much of a believer in the supernatural, but something drove these people to invest tremendous effort into earthworks and moving stones, and that fascinates me.

We took a trip to Avebury, which is supposed to be the most impressive stone circle in England, if you believe all the Stonehenge-dissing textbooks on M23's shelf. The whole area was spotted with White Horses, enormous horses etched into cliffsides dating from as far back as 5000 BC and as recently as the last century. Avebury itself is enormous, both in the size of the stones and the size of the circle, and the village of Avebury has actually grown into it.

Now, I don't believe in ghosts, and I lived in a haunted dorm room once, and nothing is more annoying than paranormal occurences when you don't believe in them. So I wondered why medieval Christians would build houses inside this circle- after all, wouldn't you want to hedge your bets, just in case they were onto something?

But it turns out that Avebury is the site of a millenia-long battle of Christians versus pagans (Satan in their eyes), with stones being buried out of fear and legends aplenty of poltergiests in the town. It's a shame that either superstition or development would disrupt a monument that has endured for at least 4000 years. But enough of it remains to be impressive.

The place was covered in jackdaws. What is it with corvids and powerful places?

The earthworks alone are stunning. A circular ditch inclosed by an even higher mound, dwarfing anything I've seen in the states. And that's after 5000 years of erosion! It was all bright white, too, though now only footpaths have worn away the grass enough to see the white clay. I could imagine what a spooky, sacred place it must have been to visit- if you asked me, I'd say there was no way people could make it without even the help of traction animals like oxen. But they've proven that 750 people, working in the two months following the harvest for 10 hours a day, could have pulled it off in ten years. Amazing. What drove them to do it? Why is it so common all across the land? Perhaps if we knew, the place wouldn't hold so much mystery.

Nearby is Silbury Hill, an emungous mound of dirt. They say the Devil wanted to bury Avebury because of its Christian resistance but he dropped his spadeful of dirt. Just up the hill is the Long Barrow, a spooky burial chamber that this weekend was surrounded by crop circles. What the heck is going on with this place?