Maddy goes exploring - rocks and hills and churches and things

A regular cornucopia of images!

And so here we are, the rescheduled Monday post as promised. In this edition there are pictures from Saturday's Aveburyshire ride, Sunday's short hike to Warmley and the cause of the delay, yesterdays ride down to the Somerset not Levels plus of course chapter 6 of Gaby book 2.

As I mentioned on Sunday, the Aveburyshire ride was on a glorious day, ripe for spotting/visiting archaeology in the north west of the North Wessex Downs. You can't see much at Marden Henge as its been heavily ploughed in the past but Alton Barnes chalk horse stands out nicely. Then we have the unreconstructed Sanctuary and one of the Tumuli at Overton Hill and a distant shot of West Kennet Long Barrow. From there I passed The Avenue which leads up to Avebury itself from where there is a great view down to Silbury Hill in the upper Kennet valley. A slight diversion allowed a visit to Adam & Eve, the last remains of a second stone avenue and finally the imposing Beckhampton Long Barrow not much more than 150m away.

On Sunday I decided to go for a run in the morning, don't really know why but then I took a shorter walk/hike in the afternoon, @ 20km on foot for the day. A gentle meander down to Warmley before taking in some more of the Dramway on the way back.

Finally, well almost, Monday had me heading mostly south to Bridgewater where I picked up the River Parrett which I followed to Burrow Mump, actually a 24m high Motte overlooking a strategic river confluence of the Parrett, Tone and Old Cary rivers the 'ruin' on the top is a never completed 18th century church which overlies an earlier 15th century building. Anyhow, enough history, after admiring the view north towards Glastonbury I set off for that more famous hill and on to a second rest stop at Wells before tackling the Mendip massif to finish the ride, the 140+km pushing my years total to over 8000km (that's just shy of 5000 miles for the Luddites out there).

Spotted these flowers on Monday, anyone know what they are?

And so to Countdown, the next instalment of Drew's ascent into womanhood!

There will be a Wednesday post and weather permitting i'll be off out for another hike too so until then,
Guten abend
Madeline Anafrid