For someone quartered safely in Wiltshire, it is almost a shameful thing to say, but I find most burial mounds \u2013 barrows (long, round or otherwise) \u2013 pretty unimpressive when you see them up close. \u00a0I could almost live without them, save that they contribute something essential to the majesterial landscape that is Salisbury Plain. \u00a0And Normanton Down, which lies immediately south of Stonehenge, across the \u00fcber-arterial A303, has more than its fair share, including the eponymous Bush Barrow which you can recognise immediately because there's a helpful bush growing nearby. \u00a0Go to Devizes museum to see the treasure found under the Bush.<\/p>\n
Thus Normanton Down is a special place and we walked it at the weekend. There were still lots of flowers, most spectacularly sainfoin and common toadflax, as well as soaring red kite and skittering pheasants. \u00a0We walked south along the ancient Harroway, a 300 mile track from the channel ports to Devon. \u00a0Just before Salisbury Cathedral spire came into view (no wonder Russian tourists go out of their way to see it), we saw the Great Bustards \u2013 eight of them quietly feeding in an empty wheat field. \u00a0Eight. \u00a0And I'd given up hope of ever seeing even one following their re-introduction<\/a> in 2004. \u00a0They looked to be doing fine.<\/p>\n I know it\u2019s essentially like train spotting, but it was a glorious (as well as a list crossing-off) moment. \u00a0And the apples we took from a lone tree a mile or so on were far better than anything supermarkets are now selling. What a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For someone quartered safely in Wiltshire, it is almost a shameful thing to say, but I find most burial mounds \u2013 barrows (long, round or otherwise) \u2013 pretty unimpressive when you see them up close. \u00a0I could almost live without...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}