by Hugh Thomson
‘You know what?’ says the man. ‘I think I really can’t be bothered to go anywhere! Why don’t we just stay here instead? It’s a beautiful spot, we’ve got the tent up and I can’t be arsed to take it down.’
‘You mean, not go anywhere else?’ asks his young son, tautologically, in the way of children.
‘Yeah.’
‘Great!’
*
Is there any finer approach in England than along the ‘Avenue’ to Avebury?
The red grass-heads catch the light in the meadows through which it leads, a meandering row of megalithic stones drawing the walker from Overton Hill to the largest stone circle in England.
Certainly the Saxons seemed to think so. They were drawn here and established a settlement among the stones that has created a problem ever since, for the village spills over and around the circle in a way that muddies the picture of what should be a crisp and clean prehistoric triumph.
I’ve been to Avebury before, but never quite like this, after walking so many miles. I had stopped at the Sanctuary, a sad little spot just where the Icknield Way crosses the busy A4: a row of concrete markers is all that remains of what was once its own proud stone circle; at least one can see why they built it here, in one of those curious spots that, while not high, commands a view in many directions.
Opposite on Overton Hill lay three long barrows, echoes of the even larger Kennett East Barrow to the south. I thought of the long-held and poetic myth of the sleeping men inside, not least because stretched out along Overton Hill were the potential revellers for the solstice festival, looking like extras from Mad Max. Many were already reclined in poses of post-alcoholic and pre-match stupor, made all the more impressive by the constant thump of techno through which they were sleeping. The techno was coming from a van that looked like a mobile tattooist’s outfit, guarded by shaved and combat-jacketed heavies who would have been a shoo-in for the Gewisse West Saxon army.
Coming into Avebury, I experienced my usual disorientation. It was as if a theme park had managed to build two sites on top of each other: the ‘perfect English village’ (rose-covered cottages, pub, church and extremely grand manor) dropped over the wild, prehistoric site. It’s always been an uneasy mix: in medieval times, the villagers tried to bury many of the prehistoric stones to rid themselves of these reminders of ‘devil worship’.
One villager got himself buried in the process. When his skeleton was found under a stone in 1938, it was thought that the monument had toppled over him as he tried to remove it: coins, scissors and an iron medical probe found by the body suggested that he was ‘a medieval barber surgeon’ and the story was satisfyingly complete. Except that later examination of that same skeleton has shown that he was already dead before being buried, so that the tale of ‘the stone’s revenge’ is more illuminating for the avidity with which it was grasped than any historical truth.
But it illustrates the complexity of Avebury. Two large stone circles with two smaller stone circles set within them; a figure of eight. What could and should be simpler?
For a start, only twenty-seven or so of the original ninety-six stones survive. Many of those not buried by the medieval villagers were used by later eighteenth-century builders as source materials for all those model cottages. Nor do they have the simple and satisfying astronomical alignments of Stonehenge, although that hasn’t stopped people trying to find them. The great advantage of a circle is that with stones facing in so many directions, some are bound to hit astronomically determined points if you try hard enough.
The museum was named after the benefactor of Avebury, Alexander Keiller, ‘the marmalade king’ who made a fortune from his Dundee factory and poured that fortune into preserving the site in the 1930s. Like many a modern archaeological museum, it proved unsatisfying, trying so hard to be accessible and open that there was nothing to see: several pop-up displays and timeline charts showed what was happening in Egypt at the same time.
Dispirited, I had a cup of tea and wandered around the circle. From the east and the lane leading to Herne Way, which had been blocked off to all traffic by police, a stream of wild-looking travellers were arriving. The last time I had seen so many rasta-locked pilgrims had been at the Kumbh Mela Festival in Haridwar, on the edge of the Himalaya. There weren’t any ash-smeared, naked naga saddhus; but there were many who looked as if they had been on the road a long time and, more to the point, as if they ‘couldn’t give a fuck’ if anybody got in their way. One or two nervous-looking community policeman were giving them a wide berth.
Intrigued, I headed out along the lane from which they were coming – a route I wanted to take anyway, as Herne Way was an ancient track that fed into the Icknield Way back on the Downs. I passed a tall and imposing figure, his face beaten dark by the sun despite his leather hat, and wearing a cloak and multicoloured trousers.
‘Uh, where have you come from?’ I asked, hesitantly.
‘Rainbow.’
I wasn’t quite sure how to take this, but presumed it was both metaphorical and unanswerable, so pressed on, past another trio of rasta-locked travellers who were clutching their bottles of Special Brew.
They were greeted effusively by a man in a purple suit who was heading up the hill behind me. ‘Brothers, it’s good to see you again.’
When he caught up with me, I asked his name.
‘Neptune.’
Neptune was easier to talk to than the earlier dark stranger. It’s hard to be intimidated by someone who is wearing a purple suit and looks a bit like Fat Boy Slim. I asked him where he was heading.
‘To the Rainbow Circle. It’s somewhere up beyond the hill. In the trees. I’ve only just arrived. I’m late.’
I couldn’t help thinking of the White Rabbit. Neptune had a shaved head and sandy, rather worried features. He was walking fast, despite a large pack and some Sainsbury’s carrier bags; I struggled to keep up with him.
As it happened, I had heard of the Rainbow Circle many years before, but didn’t know that it still existed: I knew that its very occasional gatherings were supposed to be secret and spontaneous events.
Neptune explained that if we followed little scraps of coloured cloth tied as discreet markers along the way, we would find the gathering. To help us further, young couples lying beside the path hailed Neptune with a ‘welcome home’, hugged us both and pointed in the right direction.
I had already walked many miles that day and thought of Avebury as my final destination, but there was something about this unexpected deviation that drew me on, and Neptune was walking so fast that I didn’t have much chance to think.
Neptune told me a little bit about his life: he had spent some time in an ashram and lived in Spain. He was now carrying all his possessions on his back and in the carrier bags. Tentatively, I asked him how he had got involved with the Rainbow.
‘Involved!’ he exclaimed. ‘Involved! I’ve never really thought of it as being involved. You don’t really get involved with the Rainbow Circle. It either draws you in or it doesn’t.’ Neptune stopped to stare at me, with the questioning look of someone who has been asked to explain jazz, then started fast up the hill again.
Careful not to commit another social solecism, I thought the least I could do was help Neptune and carry his purple jacket and carrier bags, given that I had left all my own stuff in Avebury.
The gesture seemed appreciated. ‘You can come and join us if you want,’ said Neptune, a little diffidently. ‘There’ll probably be a cup of tea.’
*
I’m not sure quite what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. I had imagined a raggle-taggle of tents and vans rather like the ones I had seen earlier at Overton Hill. But that was not what awaited us.
Neptune and I arrived at a beautiful small grove of beech trees beside a sunny meadow in which a white horse stood. The sound of voices called us inside the grove. A child was swinging from a branch on a home-made wooden sling. In the centre of the grove was a clearing, with one enormou
s beech tree reaching up and forming almost a cathedral spire; around it was a great circle of other beeches.
In the clearing that they made were the members of the Rainbow Circle, who one by one greeted and embraced us: ‘Welcome home.’ There must have been some fifty of them, of all ages. Beyond the beeches there were ramshackle tents stretching away into the rest of the small wood.
I felt a moment of great release. We all have some prelapsarian image of how life should be if the shackles were loosened and we were not in perpetual debt to the company store. Mine has always been of a woodland community – of the sort of carefree childhood that swinging from the trees in the sun represented.
As always when you arrive in any gathering it took a moment to sort the wood from the trees and the individuals from the group. A quiet concentration seemed to have brought people here – a concern for individual and spiritual harmony, but also for living in a temporary community of like-minded souls. A cooking tent had been set up to one side, as had a ‘shamanic teepee’ and a ‘chai tent’ just out of the woods in the sun.
The child finished on the swing and I took his place. A great cry went up from the clearing: ‘Food Circle!’ Nothing happened. Neptune came by, anxiously searching for a place to put up his tent. ‘I want to walk right round the wood before I decide,’ he told me. I asked him what Food Circle was. He explained that it was the communal meal, but that they would probably have to call Food Circle for at least three times before anyone actually came. I was welcome to join them ‘if I put something into the hat’: a quaint expression, I thought.
As I was swinging, I overheard a conversation between an older, red-haired woman called Lyn and a young novitiate girl who, like me, had just arrived:
‘The highest point of creativity is at 12.30 tomorrow, on the solstice itself,’ Lyn pronounced, without additional explanation.
‘Is that astrologically?’
Lyn paused and gave the younger girl a look that was of almost professorial severity: ‘No, astronomically. So yes, it’s at exactly 12.30 tomorrow. If we get ready thirty seconds before that and all focus, I mean really focus, then we will be celebrating at the actual highest moment of creativity.’
‘The one thing I’m worried about is where we’re going to do it. Being in the middle of the wood isn’t a very good place for a solar ceremony.’
The ‘food circle’ was called for a third and final time. From out of the woods and trees a surprising amount of people congregated, many barefoot, in hippie skirts, shirts, beads and anything from the Indian subcontinent.
As the large group held hands in the clearing, I realised I was the only one wearing a watch. A guitarist was playing. The group started to sway in time to the music. The songs were simple ones, in praise of living in the present, of experiencing the elements, of treating each other with warmth. Various waves and impulses were set up: kissing the hand or cheek of the person next to you, and ‘passing it on’ to the next person. By (happy) chance I was between two attractive women – an impulse I tried to suppress – but there was an appealing innocence in the way men, women and children were holding hands in a large circle.
Lyn called for volunteers to walk around the circle with the food, a large vat of brown-rice mix that tasted better than it looked. I didn’t have a bowl or spoon with me, so ate scooping the rice up with my fingers, as I’ve done when staying in Moroccan villages. The girl who had just arrived, like me, and had asked Lyn about the solstice, looked a bit puzzled – ‘Oh, is that how we’re supposed to do it?’ she asked.
Elia was a slight girl in a fringed moccasin jacket and had startlingly blue eyes. She told me that she had been to only one Rainbow Circle before – in Israel. She beamed beatifically. In her early twenties, she had been born when the sixties were just a distant memory, as had most of the people around the circle.
When the meal ended, a floppy felt hat was brought round for the donations that I realise Neptune had been referring to. Everyone put into the hat what they could afford.
*
The sun has gone down and I’m starting to get cold. I head back into Avebury fast, falling in with a couple who’ve parked on the hill above – but only after a series of run-ins with the police who’ve tried to stop Brian from driving up there: ‘The policeman told me to fuck off. That’s what he actually said: “Fuck off.” I was shocked. But I know there’s a legal right of way so there was nothing he could do to stop me. In fact that’s probably exactly why he told me to fuck off.’
Brian is a delivery driver for Sainsbury Online, which is why he knows the local routes (although I can’t quite believe he makes deliveries up the ancient trackway of Overton Hill; that the Rainbow Circle in their beech wood ‘order in’). It’s true that the police have an odd attitude to the solstice festivities: unable to stop them, they have adopted a tone of grudging and surly acquiescence, much in the way they did at the Notting Hill Carnival in the early days.
There is a large sign up by the pub in Avebury declaring that dogs will be used to search suspects. And there are plenty of likely suspects sprawled around the stones to the south, many of whom have settled in for hours. As I arrive, a samba band starts up among the stones, and the accompanying dancers twirl blazing flame-throwers around their heads. ‘Now that’s some tricky shit,’ says a teenage girl next to me in a strong Wiltshire accent.
The atmosphere is like a raucous bonfire night, with added Druids: a man with a bearskin mask passes among the crowds; the accessory of choice for many is a tall wooden staff on which to lean while watching samba dancers or patrolling police. The revellers keep clear of the wild-looking travellers’ dogs that are eying up all the exposed human flesh. After a day’s sunning, it must look as plump and tempting to them as barbecued sausage.
I retrieve my bags and manage to get some sleep before 4.30 and the early dawn. Rather than join those who’ve been partying all night around the stones to the south, I wander to a much quieter area in the north-east. A few people have gathered by the big stones that were once, when upright, set as a triptych and may have been orientated towards the rising sun. Loud snores are coming from a sleeping-bagged bundle at the bottom of the largest stone, where it looks as if someone is going to sleep through this year’s dawn solstice.
I talk to a tall man in a grey cloak with a staff, who lives in Malmesbury. He has the languid, tired manners of an Anglican vicar.
‘Are you a Pagan?’ he asks, as if it were the most natural question in the world.
I mumble the sort of non-committal generalities I usually do if someone asks if I’m a Christian. My hesitancy is reinforced when he then asks if I’m a Christian and I have to give a similar response.
‘Paganism,’ he explains patiently, ‘is tied to a sense of place, of being rooted in a landscape. If you’re drawn to a place like Avebury, then you’re probably a Pagan.’
I nod politely.
‘Not that it’s easy being a Pagan,’ he sighs, and leans on his staff to peer moodily at the ground. ‘The problem about Paganism is that because it’s all local, and about local places, we don’t organise ourselves on a national basis very well.’ For a moment he sounds like a Liberal Democrat. ‘What matters to a Pagan in Malmesbury is completely different to what matters to a Pagan in’ – and he casts around for an exotic example – ‘to a Pagan in, say, Devizes.’ He pauses. ‘Or for that matter in Aylesbury. There are a surprising amount of Pagans in Aylesbury.
‘Trying to organise Pagans is like trying to herd cats,’ he says, with bitterness. ‘It’s solstice day, the most sacred day of the year, and most of them have gone to the wrong part of the circle to celebrate!’
It is true that it is surprisingly empty. I gravitate to the most comfortable stone in the triptych group and lean against the rock to eat the fruit I have in my pack, some strawberries and blueberries that have chilled during the night and taste delicious.
From my vantage point, the clear, early dawn light of the sun picks out the stones with a far great
er clarity than they normally have for me. I ask myself a basic question: why is Avebury in a circle (or for that matter, why are most prehistoric monuments in Britain)? Which is, after all, more difficult to construct than a square.
A circle is what children form when they hold hands. It is what adults would like to do and like to have – a community of equals: a round table. But it rarely happens. It is aspirational. It’s what for a moment I did with the Rainbow Circle in the trees. It is making yourself whole with others. It is the shape of the sun.
I lean back against the rock of the megalith and close my eyes. Far off I can hear the sound of the samba players in the other meadow, beating up a storm.
*
I am naturally drawn back to the beech wood. It’s later in the morning and even the bacon butty from the temporary stall set up outside Avebury’s pub hasn’t helped dispel that sense of sleeping in your clothes and having been up most of the night. I’ve remembered Lyn’s words about a 12.30 focus of energy, and I’m curious.
I find the Rainbow Circle thinking about having a late breakfast. Mark is hunched over the fire, looking cold. He tells me they’ve been playing drums to the full moon all the previous night, which is why everyone is so tired. Mark had intrigued me the evening before when we’d circled around the fire, an older man with a face that suggested he had lived through some difficult times; a gypsy look, with an old hat worn over a silk scarf draped across his shoulders. He speaks with a Liverpudlian Irish brogue. He has plenty of half-finished and home-made tattoos, and tells me he learned tai chi as part of a drug rehabilitation programme; he shows me a few simple exercises.
As we peer at the embers of the fire, he tells me a story that has become a fable among the group: that the wood had been found by a Lithuanian traveller who had for several years lived there on and off, sleeping near by in an old shepherd’s shed and clearing the grove of wild ground cover. The Lithuanian had told a man, who had told a woman, who had told a man about it – in good Irish style – and that man had been a member of Rainbow Circle and had led them all there. It has the satisfying ring of myth, and Mark tells the story well, peering at the fire as he does so.