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It's a cold and windy winter solstice, and I'm in one of the best places in the world to celebrate it

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Avebury henge, in Wiltshire.

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It's basically Stonehenge's lesser known cousin. And I reckon it's better.

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If you believe the new agers, then Avebury, this whole site-

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It's enourmous by the way, it's many times the size of Stonehenge. Enourmous earthworks, three stone circles.

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This is the center of a swirl of energy highways, Ley Lines as they're known.

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In the 1920's a man called Alfred Watkins brought out a book called "The Old Straight Track".

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The idea that there were dead straight tracks running across Britain that ancient peoples would follow.

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In the 1970's that got mixed up with a whole load of "New Age" beliefs.

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By someone called John Michell.

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He came up with the idea of Ley Lines. Mystical energy highways that spread across Britain, and presumably the world.

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Thing is, if you look at the data, if you look at where the Ley Lines actually are, you can see the patterns.

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You can see points in a line, and the Ley Lines following them.

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Well... you can.

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But also if you just put a hundred random dots down on a map, mathematically you can also draw lines between them.

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You can also find Ley Lines between Woolworths stores, as mathematician Matt Parker did.

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Or between old red telephone boxes. Since Britain has thousands and thousands of scheduled ancient monuments.

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But, well this is still a site of great spiritual significance.

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As I've wandered around there've been a lot of new age pagans around.

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Some drumming, some just smoking pot, and a couple just kinda putting their heads to the stones.

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This is why this place is better than Stonehenge. Stonehenge, you can't get close to the stones, except on special days.

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You certainly can never touch them.

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But here, well

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These stones have been torn down and put back up a couple of times by various branches of Christianity and paganism that've come through.

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Someone has build a villiage in the middle of the standing stones and run a road through it.

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There are some that've just been replaced with small markers to show where evidence says a stone once was.

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No one really complains that the Sistine Chapel is restored every now and then.

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I don't think we should complain that these stones have been restored either.

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This is a very real way of having some kind of connection to the ancient humans who were here

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four and a half, maybe five thousand years ago, and

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who put these stones up for...

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Well. We'll never know what reason

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and if that means we get a little bit of
new age beliefs...

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Well, I can't really begrudge that.

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Happy winter solstice.

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