Over Avalon:

Glastonbury's Sacred Landscape

World Copyright: Hank Harrison and Arkives Press

While traveling in this part of England, be sure to drive in a bus-van, Jeep or Land Rover. Horses are also good, but that's another whole nightmare. For practical reasons anything that will allow you to peer over the hedgerows will do you fine. Motorcycles and road ready peddle bikes are also OK, but be alert. Just remember, every stranger who travels this part of England is. like it or not, on an expedition and the locals often have fun misleading lost tourists.
This tour is off the tourist track...way off. If you are a simple tourist stick with the tours. Once you enter into the sacred circle you are in a different world. You will see farms and dairy cows, sheep and cattle, narrow roads and industrial factories, schools and houses, but you will feel something else. You will sense forces urging you along, you will feel magnetic lines pulling on you. Wear sturdy boots and jeans, very little worth seeing is right on the road. Pay special attention to water ways and roads that can be traveled easily on horseback.

The following photos,
taken from private planes and public domain satellites,
have been compiled over the past thirty- years and are now released for the first time...

Start at Worthy Farm, Shepton-Mallet: The Glastonbury Festival Pyramid...

First stop: Maybe we should find a hotel or B&B before we visit Cadbury Hill at Queen Camel, King Arthur's Celtic fortress, or at least his mythological home...but keep your eyes peeled at all times, because between the modern homes, farms and factorys you will see amazing things. The ancient past is hidden in plain view in this land. In fact, you are about to enter a place that was once a kind of Garden of Eden, even before the Celtic tribes lived here.

If the landscape looks odd to you don't disappair, it is odd, very odd. The lower land still floods several times every year, even in summer, and hunter-gatherers have been taking advantage of this fact since the Ice Age.
Burroughbridge Mump, pictured above, is a man made Neolithic mound about 13 miles east of Glastonbury.
We will get there eventually. The church, dedicated to Saint Michael,
was built in 1145 under the auspices of Abbot Blois. The tower forms a sundial and is almost identical to the tower on top of Glastonbury Tor.

Remember, everything you are about to see is real.

None of the Photographs have been modified except for
size.

One of many mysterious chapels located on even more mysterious mounds can be found in Castle Cary...the path leads from a luxury hotel to the chapel...and the mound allows the visitor an amazing view. From here you can see a number of peculiar land formations...all of them part of the Neolithic garden, known to the Celts as the Cauldron of Aanwyn.

Once you pass into this magical land you will discover things hidden just benath the surface...things from every layer of history and pre-history. This area has been inhabited since the Ice Ages and each tribe made its mark. It is well established, though both legend and archaeology, that people have been coming here to die and be reborn for as long as we can record. The Druids thought of it as a gateway to the otherworld....

Our first stop will be at Castle Cary a main railroad terminus for the London Commute Train, we can get a first class hotel here or check out the many B&Bs. Later we will ride down to King Arthur's fortress, so called. But, first you need to look at the overall map that accompanies this page. We will be traveling all around this circle ending on top of Glastpnbury Tor.
You are entering the Cauldron of Aanwyn, the sacred Vale of Avalon.

Most tourists go directly to Glastonbury, but it has become very touristy. It's best to enter this dream world from the secret side....