Woodberry at Oxford 2014: Day 3, Tuesday, July 8 - Visiting sites around Oxfordshire

We met our bus driver Paul at 9 AM and he drove us to White Horse Hill and the Neolithic age hill fort at Uffington. Thousands of years ago the English tribes carved a “white horse” into this chalk hill. A symbol to the gods, the white horse is a massive figure scoured into the ground. While we could only walk around it to see, the best way to view the white horse is by helicopter. Next we ventured to Avebury to see the famous stone circles. A massive ditch surrounds this ancient religious site. Ninety-eight stones are set inside the ditch, laid out in two circles. Many of the stones today are missing though, and have been replaced with markers to indicate where the stones once laid. After touring and having a picnic lunch at Avebury, we headed to the West Kennett Long Barrow burial site. We pulled over on the side of the highway to what at first seemed to be a natural hill surrounded by wheat fields. The barrow, 100 meters long, was man-made and is actually a burial site where forty-six people were entombed over four thousand years ago. We walked through part of the chamber that is open today to tourists. After the burial sites, we loaded into the bus to go to the barn at Great Coxwell. It was built around 1300 and still has many of its original beams supporting the slate roof. The barn was built by monks to store the grain, their tithe, for their church and the building does resembles a church. After a long day of travel we returned to Brayenose to relax for the late afternoon. Seated dinner was at 7:30 in the dining hall and after our evening class session we watched the Germany/Brazil semi-final game. While we anticipated a close match, it was already 5-0 by half time, so we left and headed back to our staircase.

Badham Dixon