Avebury and Associated Monuments and Royal Botanic Gardens

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Avebury and Associated Monuments

   Avebury is the place where a village grew up inside a stone circle. The henge, a huge circular bank and ditch enclosing the largest stone circle in Britain, was built around four and a half thousand years ago, and the village, with its church, its manor house and its pub, sits partly within it, with a road running right through the middle. You can walk among the stones, touch them, sit beside them, and watch the sheep grazing around them, which is a very different experience from the controlled visits at Stonehenge, its more famous partner on the World Heritage list.

   Read the complete Avebury and Associated Monuments write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Avebury and Associated Monuments is where the day begins. Next is Blenheim Palace.

2. 2. Blenheim Palace

   Blenheim is what happens when a nation decides to say thank you with stone. After John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, beat the French and Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, Queen Anne granted him the royal manor of Woodstock, and Parliament voted funds for a palace to go on it. Sir John Vanbrugh designed it, with Nicholas Hawksmoor at his side, and the result is so theatrical, so heavy with towers, trophies and courtyards, that it still divides opinion three centuries later. Funding rows, a famous falling out between Vanbrugh and the Duchess Sarah, and decades of building followed.

   Read the complete Blenheim Palace write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Blenheim Palace comes up about 75 km into the recorded legs. Next is Royal Botanic Gardens.

3. 3. Royal Botanic Gardens

   Kew is the place where London pauses to look at plants. The Royal Botanic Gardens, on the south bank of the Thames between Richmond and Brentford, were founded in the mid eighteenth century and grew into the largest living plant collection in the world, and UNESCO gave them World Heritage status in 2003. Inside the gates, a mixture of glasshouses, avenues and lawns holds plants collected from every continent: the Palm House, a huge curved iron and glass whale of a building from the 1840s, the Temperate House, which is the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse anywhere, and the ten-storey Chinese Pagoda built in 1762 for Princess Augusta.

   Read the complete Royal Botanic Gardens write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 172 km into the recorded legs you reach Royal Botanic Gardens. Next is back through Blenheim Palace.

4. 4. back through Blenheim Palace

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Blenheim Palace write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Blenheim Palace, late in the day. Next is Avebury and Associated Monuments.

5. 5. Avebury and Associated Monuments

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Avebury and Associated Monuments write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Avebury and Associated Monuments. That is the ride.