It was very windy and salt from the sea was blowing up and onto my camera lens and my wife’s glasses but we took a bit of a walk along the bay then followed a coastal path along one of the bay’s edges.

We weren’t the only people there, although we were the only ones walking along the path. Below, on the rocks along the bay’s edge was a group of people in protective gear. I don’t know what they were up to but they were probably buffeted less by the wind where they were, although possibly wetter from the waves.

It had only been a chance stop which made the discovery of an obvious burial mound that much more exciting for us.

We would later discover that this burial mound in Porth Trecastell was called Barclodiad y Gawres and was a neolithic burial mound sharing some of its design features with similar locations in Ireland.

One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world, and is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans. Constructed over several hundred years in the Third Millennium BC during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony.

The car park is located to the south of the stone circles and is free to National Trust members which was nice as we are some. Following the path towards the main village takes you close to the very nice visitors’ centre and while we did spend a few minutes and a few quid there the main purpose of our visit was to wander around the site of historic interest.

This wasn’t our first visit to Avebury’s stone circle – we used to come fairly regularly to pick sloes for gin – and as such we suspected from experience that we might run into certain people who are drawn to the stones and their alleged mystical properties. One of our encounters was with a man with an obvious mental illness who couldn’t look at us directly and instead held a mirror up to his face to stare at us and others in order to shout incomprehensible gibberish. A sad affair but he seemed in otherwise reasonable health. Our second encounter was with a young woman in her twenties who moved from stone to stone, standing with her back to each one and stretching out her hands to touch the surface with her eyes closed. Well, each to their own.

If metres-high standing stones erected around four and half thousand years ago isn’t your thing but sheep are then you’ll be pleased to know that Avebury has you covered there as the land is used extensively by the creatures. This does mean that you need to be a little careful where you walk as you make a circuit of the neolithic monument if you’re worried about getting ovine excrement in your car.

We had to smile as we bought our tickets. Firstly, the woman at the booth stopped me and told me that she loved my t-shirt; then, as we took the tickets and stepped away from the line, another English Heritage employee did a double take and told me loudly that he loved my t-shirt too. For the record, the t-shirt I was wearing was this one: Cthulhu’s Church.

The ticket allows entrance to the visitor’s centre which contains several large displays and accounts of the history of the area and digs as well as a wraparound screen simulating the rise and fall of the sun around the stone circle during the year. We were quite pleased that there was hardly anyone around while we were there as it felt quite peaceful standing and watching the stars and shadows move around us. Beside the centre is a recreation of a settlement of the time.

It’s possible to walk to Stonehenge’s stone circle from the centre but a bus that leaves every few minutes is also available and was ready to go while we were there so we took advantage of it. A short walk from where the bus stops then leads to a path that encircles the neolithic monument allowing you to get fairly close to the stones at points. A fairly low sun because of the time of year and a lot of hazy cloud acting as a great soft box in the background produced some challenging light conditions for photographs but as you can see I took a few regardless.

Wildlife, in the form of birds, played some part in the enjoyment of the visit to Stonehenge. Some of the staff were hand feeding crows and at one point we spotted a kestrel amongst the stones. While it sat it was left alone but as it flew across the circle it was challenged by the resident crows who clearly see the area as theirs.