Our last day on the Ridgeway Trail. We passed a sheep shearing pen with the wooly evidence of shearing.

We visited the Barbury Castle, and this one is the first one that we got a full view of it after continuing further along the Ridgeway. You can see the full shape of the remaining earthworks. Quite a remarkable structure to have dug by hand with shovels made of shoulder blades….

A view of the Fyfield Down National Nature Reserve…. It was so quiet and beautiful there. Troy and I sat, and I turned on the recorder to capture the insects and birds that kept us company. Is it just me, or does that cricket have a British accent?

The trail underfoot. Have I mentioned that I feel as if I’ve been walking on ancient bones? There is an obvious reason for it. The chalk and zinc look like bones. But there also has been a great sense of connection to these stones beneath my feet. The history of this ridge passage is so long (5500 years of continuous use as a thoroughfare) that it is quite possible that I'm walking in an ancestor's footsteps. The sense of that has more mystery, more magnitude for me than all of the antiquities combined.

I’m really glad that I’ve done this walk.

We ended in Avebury at dusk, as it started to rain. With no place there we could stay, we were waiting to catch a bus to Swindon. Some folks came along with a Staffordshire Terrier. We began talking, and they offered us a ride to town, and then a place to stay with them in Swindon. John and Angie are another amazing example of how good people can be. (Thank you, you sweet folk!)