england #18 – the uffington white horse

Wednesday morning we were off bright and early, hitting the Roadside Service Starbucks for our caffeine and breakfast, and onwards to see the Uffington White Horse. Baker B has done all sorts of research on mysterious mysteries like crop circles and prehistoric stone arrangements and the White Horses, so he knew exactly the places we needed to go while in and around Wiltshire. Which is Crop Circle And Weird Stuff Central. That was when I was especially sorry he wasn’t with us. He wouldn’t be as taken by London as I was, not being a big city fan (although he’d like it in small doses– but can you really have a small dose of London? Probably not.) and he would not like the claustrophobicness and potential for highly expensive destruction of the canal boat, but he’d love Wiltshire. And Clevedon. And that whole area. He’d told me we HAD to see the Uffington Horse, since it’s the oldest of all the White Horses and was very conveniently located to our Swindon stop. It was even in the GPS as an attraction, so no problem finding it. It was only around six miles away from our Day’s Inn. However, travel time in England being so inexplicably different than travel time anywhere else I’ve ever been, it took us an amazingly long time to actually get to the Uffington Horse. Of course the drive was gorgeous, through the hilly countryside, so it didn’t matter.

There are a bunch of white horses scattered around, mostly in Wiltshire. A lot of them are not really all that old, and have a known history. The Uffington horse, though, is something like three thousand years old.

The Uffington Horse is a National Heritage Site, and there’s a car park and everything for it. It’s about a half mile walk from the car park (I love saying “car park”. I found myself referring to parking lots as car parks without even thinking about it.) The Uffington Horse is also a teeny bit outside Wiltshire – in Oxfordshire. I never did understand how all these boundaries worked. It’s right at Wiltshire.

There are always sheep everywhere.

You can see the horse as you’re approaching, up there at the very top of the hill. This is one that is best seen from above, though. Still, seeing it from its level was totally, completely amazing.

I just love this picture of Kim taking pictures–

I bet all those fields have crop circles during Crop Circle Season.

A little part of the horse there on the right — and that hill that’s down below in the center looks like it would have a fantastic view of the entire horse. We saw someone walking up it while we were there, and the road goes right by it. We’d mentioned driving down there and walking up the hill, but somehow managed to forget that’s what we were going to do. Next time!

Here’s a better view of the hill-

The eyes are very interesting. Baker B has found that a number of the White Horse eyes line up. If you draw a line through the Uffington horse’s eye and the Cherhill horse’s eye and the Marlborough horse’s eye, they meet at the Hackpen Hill horse’s eye. Also, Hackpen Hill and Westbury horses’ eyes  line up with Marlborough. Weeeeeird!!!! He has a blog entry and Google Earth photos here-

There’s also remains of a castle right above the White Horse.

“Remains” as in you can see the ditches and banks where it was.

And this really cool thing we thought was part of the castle…..

But was actually part of the Ordinance Survey mapping.

Bridleways and walking paths!

While we were wandering around the White Horse, Kim (aka Ms. Psychic In Touch With All That Is Odddddd) said, “WE HAVE TO STAY TONIGHT TOO!!!!” Which was fantastic, as we could already tell that, HELLLLLO, we STILL were going to have problems fitting in Avebury and Stonehenge and some more white horses and The Barge and still getting back to the canal boat before dark. As in, we wouldn’t be able to do that at ALL. Whereas if we spent ANOTHER night down here, we could see Stonehenge and Avebury and maybe even Salisbury, and also work in the Glastonbury Tor, which we hated to miss and which Baker B informed us WE HAD TO SEE. Baker B told us to spend EVERY night down there. Don’t even go back to the canal boat!!! he said. Of course we HAD to go back to the canal boat at some point – half our stuff was still on the canal boat. And we weremeeting MargUK in Nottingham on Saturday! But still, it was great to decide we’d just spend one more night in Crop Circle Country. Poor Kim was really worried and stressed out about finances – since we’d finally set a date for our trip, she’d built a house, moved, and gotten a new job, so she’d had a lot of unexpected expenses. But she was so thrilled at the Uffington Horse, the Tip of the Weird Stuff Iceburg, that the importance of seeing even more overrode her concern about  finances. And we actually did a great job in not spending all that much money. We had one substantial meal a day, we stayed in very reasonable hotels, we didn’t spend much at all on sightseeing, we had a teeny little diesel car that got something like FIFTY miles to the gallon. We really did very well.

SO. Happily resolved to spend yet another day, we set off to see some more white horses, and Avebury. But first we stopped again at the same handy Roadside Service Area that we’d just spent t he night in, so we could go by Starbucks and get free internet and reserve another room for that night…. in Clevedon!! The SAME ROOM in the SAME AMAZING HOTEL!!! Yayyyy!!!!

And much in the same way time was weird in England and everything took much longer than I expected, this entry also took much longer than I expected and I will not be getting to two more White Horses, Avebury, Marlborough, and The Barge in this entry. I keep thinking I’m nearly done. Hahahahaha! I wanted to finish up before this weekend since I’m taking my dad to Delaware to see his sister… and we are FLYING which should be quite the experience… but looks like this will be dragging out even longer. I should have made more than one entry today– thanks to yet ANOTHER in the apparently endless parade of blizzards, campus closed down and we didn’t have to go to work, and it will be closed until at least 10 in the morning. Maybe later. So it was one more day in the also endless parade of Snowed In Days. We’ve got way over a foot at this point and reports are we’ll get four or five more inches tonight. I can’t even process it. I think writing about England is all that’s keeping me sane. So I’m draaaaaaaging it out.