A New Trend in Family Outings

It's easy to start doing the same thing with the kids time and again.  For example, a Castle outing followed by stop at pub for lunch then a drive home taking a completly different route than the last time.  It's good to switch it up, right?  Well, BEHOLD!!  We have declared a new trend in family outings - The Burial Mound.

That's right!  It is a UK phenomena.  There are 300 listed ancient burial mounds, also called Long Barrows in England.  That is alot of entertainment - and they are FREE! Even better! 

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in September when my husband declared that he had a fun-filled afternoon planned that the kids and the dog were bound to love.  We were going to (insert scary primitive drumroll here) Belas Knap, a long barrow that English Heritage describes as "A particularly fine example of a Neolithic long barrow of c.3800 BC".  That is CRAZY old!   Coming from Canada, I always got excited to see things from the 1800's....

A long barrow is a fascinating thing - built to house the dead, they can include burial chambers inside where multiple corpses were stored together.  When they discovered these burial mounds, sometimes human remains were intact skeletons and other times that were mixed up bones perhaps eluding to the possibility that corpses were left to decay elsewhere and then the remains put into the burial mounds.  Who knows! 

On the ride to Belas Knap the conversation went like this:

Husband "OK kids! We are going somewhere really cool today!"
Children " Hurray!!" (shrieks of glee here)
Boy Child "Are we going to Majjicland?"
Husband "Nope, it is better than Majicland! We are going to a place called Belas Knap".
Boy Child falls silent and begins to sulk.
Girl Child " What is that Daddy?"
Husband "It is an ancient Long Barrow, a big mound of earth".
Girl Child frowns.  "What's that?"
Husband "A Long Barrow is...a burial mound".
Girl Child "What is buried there?"
Husband "Well, nothing anymore.  But there used to be people burried there."
Girl Child "Cool!"

Once we arrived at Belas Knap the children were quickly running all around, exploring and crawling into various chambers.  I know.  It sounds weird.  But they had fun really!  To prove it, we made a video.  Check it out!  The only individual who did not enjoy herself was the dog who was visibly agitated from the second we approached the mound. That was creepy.  We have since been to another Long Barrow (West Kennett - the largest in England), near Avebury and the children were quite excited to see it.  Under the video below, I've included a couple of shots of the Long Barrow near Avebury.