Autumn Equinox

Rollright Stone Circle, Oxfordshire

Took a wander around Tanworth in Arden in the morning and caught the Birmingham Bikeathon supporting Leukemia and Lymphona. I guess I saw cyclists on the 52 mile route. Crikes those guys doing the 100 mile route heading out first towards Broadway could not possibly have got to Tanworth by midday.

Out in the fields descending past the churchyard and then into a field of goats, I crossed Butts Lane. Say 20 yards down the lane a path with an easterly heading began, past scrubland, bringing me into a field with a broad boundary and thistles. It was here I caught sight of tall golden poplars, seemingly adjacent to the railway line. I headed up the field intending to get nearer but there was no way through. So with the golden poplars to my back, I wandered down the other side of the field and over a footbridge spanning a juvenile River Alne, which rises about a mile to the north at Wood End. Through another field with a few Highland cattle, I crossed the railway line via a Victorian tunnel and into more grassed fields.

Turns out the golden poplars line the driveway to Umberslade Park, a place I will have to return to very shortly.

In the afternoon, Cath joined me for a drive out to deepest southern Warwickshire. With no more than 15 minutes from our destination, Cath suggested a tea shop first. So I carried on over the county boundary into Oxfordshire and a sip and a wander around Chipping Norton. That out of the way, I made for the Rollright Stones on the Warks/Oxon boundary. The Rollright Stones consist of three elements, [1] a stone circle called 'The King's Men', [2] about 50 yards away, The Whispering Knights dolmen, a 5000 year old burial chamber, and [3] a monolith called The King's Stone, pitched across the road from the circle, proudly standing further above seal level than all the rest, and naturally enough in Warwickshire.

The modest pull in for vehicles was awash. I'd never known it so busy. The times I'd been here before I had had the place to myself. It so happens that today is the Autumn Equinox. The visitors were The Cotswold Order of Druids.

Update:
Evidently the equinox is on Tuesday, 23 September. I guess the Sunday nearest still holds most value.