Winter Solstice 2007

The "congregation" from the North perimeter bankment , Avebury.

Silbury Hill from West Kennet long barrow. 11am, 22nd December.


To Avebury for the Solstice sunrise again, another year passed, troubles and joys mixed, willing the best to happen for 2008.
The weather was fairer this year, the short ceremony friendly and informal with a mixture of attendees from as afar afield as Norwich and West Wales. It's not religion, but it is a marker of interdependence on each other and dependence upon the sun and the earth.

A road runs through Avebury. As I turned away from the 6000 year-old stones, a petrol tanker rumbled by, a stinking gross representative of the transient and modern that I am sure will not be here in just 100 years.

After the sunrise we walked from the circle past Silbury Hill to the West Kennet Long Barrow, where candles had been lit in the Bronze Age tomb chambers and then we returned to Avebury for noon. The landscape of Wiltshire is bare at this time of year, grey glassy fields and just a few trees to break the gentle contours surrounding us. It's damp, with the winterbournes flowing full and taking the slow route towards the Thames from this point high upon the watershed of Southern England.


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