Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

I'd really like to answer this one though in doing so I will contradict something I say later. Way back in those mist-covered days of living in London I was invited on a Pagan Day Out coach trip, organised by people associated with SKOOB Books (back then SKOOB was located near the British Museum and was a meeting place for all sorts of esoteric goings on - most of which were outside of my understanding at the time).

Our first stop was Waylands Smithy, then of course Avebury and West Kennet Long Barrow - with a quick stop at Stonehenge on the way back. I saw a bus heading for my home town Swindon - a place I thought I had left far behind as my parents had moved to Lincolnshire. I had no inkling at that time that life's changes would take me back there. At the turn of the new century take me back they did - and for the past decade Avebury has played a pivotal part in my life.

I went back there the other day (borrowed a friend's NT card as wanted to mooch around the excellent museum and information centre). Lots of school kids learning that Avebury was more than likely a place of prehistoric religious observance. I went back to the henge thinking to go for a walk, the sun was shining - but I looked around me and thought about all the petty squabbling and egocentric behaviour which I now associate with the place and thought it really is time to move on, not just metaphorically but physically too. I said goodbye to Avebury.

Well, it's all a bit complicated. The first time I ever got in the car and actively sought an ancient place it was Stonehenge, it was my twenty first birthday present to my self, I was with my best mate and my girlfriend of the time, I remember the stones were very big (and they are).
But with much hindsight I now know that Beeston Crag was my first ancient place, I must have been something like ten maybe twelve it was a school trip to the local castle, there was no little visitor center, for another twenty years I thought it was just a castle, now its some kind of Neolithic enclosure, a bronze age settlement and a hill fort.
Maiden castle,( not that one, mine) was seen (but not recognised) on a scout hike across the sandstone trail, age ten maybe.
My first planned trip to a burial chamber was West Kennet long barrow, Avebury was my second circle
But my real first burial chamber was Plas Newedd on Anglesey, I was fourteen, another school trip. I didn't know it was a 5000 yr old burial chamber, I thought maybe it was a folly of some kind (yet didn't know what a folly was) Only a big orange book inspired trip revealed i'd been there before.
So even without my knowing it I've been doing this all my life, they just pulled me in, and now there's no way out other than to see it through.

I used to get taken to Stonehenge every year without fail, en route to the family holiday in Bounemouth. Also visited Nine Ladies in Derbyshire (again on a family day out) when I was young, and have vague memories of it having some horrendous wall surrounding it.

Visits to sites really kicked off though after getting hold of a copy The Modern Antiquarian during a holiday in Glastonbury in 1999. We made a trip out to Avebury the next day, and visiting old stones has been an obsession ever since!

As a child we used to play at Totternhoe Knoll, as well as around the Five Knolls and various other places that I had no idea were of any provenance.

As an adult, though, and more aware of the existence of such places, I suppose it was St Catherine's Hill, in Winchester. Spent a Summer Solstice up there. But prior to that, a bus journey to work used to take me through Avebury, which I never got the chance to stop off at until I'd passed my driving test. It was the first site I visited when I had passed. Or was it Maiden Castle. Oh god this is a minefield. ;)

I could check but that would mean sorting through boxes of old photos, and frankly, my dear, I cannit be arsed! :D

G x