This is a rant about the way Avebury and its ancient stones set within the landscape of the downs is slipping into a sad shadow of its former self. There is a point when enough is enough, and the ‘disneyfication’ of a World Heritage Site stopped.
Let me first introduce you to the mysterious manifestations that appear overnight in the great wheat fields on the downs. Unknown creatures descend at night, wander round in the dark and produce ‘miraculous’ circular patterns called crop circles to the fury of the local farmers. There is unfortunately a certain gullible element in the human race, that would like to believe it is the hand of aliens that has been at work here, so this phenomena is of world wide interest.
Take half-an hour of a Sunday afternoon, and let’s see what happens. Here comes a bus load of ‘foreign’ people, who wander across the Avenue, find the wire fencing is difficult to get over, so spend ten minutes divesting themselves of their coats which are then laid on fencing and everyone hauls themselves over to go and look at the mysterious circle, – back to the bus and on to the next. Imagine this being repeated at all the circles (there are quite a few) on the downs.
Wow – up roars four landrovers, one safari painted (we’re in deepest, darkest, wild Wessex here) and our occupants hell bent on crop circle viewing trog up Waden Hill to once again climb over fences to view this particular circle. Their landrovers on closer inspection are covered in mud, it drips slowly onto the road, and as the only track round here is the Ridgeway we can assume that they have been ‘off roading’ along this ancient trackway reducing it to a muddy rutted mire – bless em.
Planes buzz overhead, the magnetic pull of Avebury’s magical hold spreads far into the landscape, children chase the poor sheep round the stones, young men scale the heights of the stones and lousy coffee is served up in the National Trust cafe.
Heaven preserve us the world is going mad at Avebury, but at least the Pagans bring one thing that everyone else has forgotten about and that is respect – perhaps there is a lesson to be learnt here!
Moss:
The Heritage Journal 
2 comments
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02/09/2009 at 10:40
Willow
Hi Moss
At last! someone else who is not taken in by the screamingly flipping obvious. Crop circles are not the result of the military flying their helicopters upside down, they are not the result of the frenzied activity of randy hedgehogs, flocks of disorientated birds, little green men, or freak weather conditions.
Of all the theories put forward, I tend to favour robots, programmable robots to be precise, (interesting what you overhear in my local pub) just like the type of robots used in manufacturing today to accurately cut metals etc to exacting specifications. Robotic rollers, programmed to execute an exact design in the crop is not science fiction. Come on, we can put a man on the moon, send messages and images around the world in a blink of an eye, no one can tell me we are not capable of making patterns in the corn. Many people have said over the years, how can it be possible to create such elaborate designs at night and in the pitch dark without lights, and never any reports of seeing anything unusual. Easy me thinks, punch your pattern spec into your trusty robot before you go out, then nip down to your local field under the cover of darkness. Find a convenient tram line as your starting point (all circles seem to start from tram lines, funny that), press the on button on your roller, then sit back and wait.
Books on crop circles have now been moved in my local library from the paranormal section to the art section, where it has to be said, they should belong.
As you say Moss there will always be the gullible but surely by now even the most brain dead can see these spectacular circles for what the are…jolly good art.
Must pick you up on your point about squeaky clean pagans, sorry, but some of them are as bad as the rest for leaving a snow drift of rubbish in their wake.
02/09/2009 at 11:57
Moss
Well I suppose there’s an awful lot of people who are sceptical about crop circles, it has just become a fun day out hunting crop circles, and poor old Avebury attracts far too many. Don’t think I mentioned any rubbish, a sin that can be laid at the feet of most humans 😉
Moss