Arcadia Discussion Zone

You're no fox - you're a singer and sold 23 millions of records but I don't remember you. I just remember France Gall and Francoise Hardy (who's born on a 17th January!)

Sheila: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_%28singer%29


BTW.
ARTE is rebroadcasting this british 60's mystery block buster "The Prisoner" now (in french and german) :
http://www.arte.tv/de/3274948.html

What's goin on in Wiltshire and WHAT FOR all these labours?

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/whitehorse/whitehorse2010a.html

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http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/roundwayhill/roundwayhill2010a.html

Indeed. Seems to be a real spate of them this year.

I plan on being at Alton Barnes later this week, so will check this out, assuming it's still intact by then, and might even swing by the other one at Devizies on the way back.

Milk Hill (Alton Barnes) and Roundway Hill (Devizies) are the sites of two of Wiltshire's eight surviving White Horses. Maybe the start of pattern by whoever / whatever is making these. Of the other six, the Marlborough one doesn't have crop fields near it, and I'm not sure about Broad Town - but Westbury, Pewsey, Cherhill and Hackpen Hill all do. If someone had the time and the resources it might be worth staking these out for the next few weeks.

Btw, they started combining the fields round here at the weekend, so the window of opportunity for these odd formations will soon be ending for another year.

Well maybe the "what for" is the £2 charge the farmer is asking from people to see the circle in the second link. I like Richards idea of a stake out, I'm surprised no-one has done this before at this time of year. Lets see if they can fit any more in before the combining?
Regards
Nic

John Vidal, The Guardian:

"One group, now calling themselves the Circlemakers, includes situationist artists Rod Dickinson and John Lundberg, the sculptor Gavin Turk, Rob Irving and others. They say on their website that they latched on to the circle believers, created images from reading the same books that the believers read, and that they now team up with other teams of circle-makers to create ambitious formations. Together they say they have made crop circles an essential part of our popular culture, part of the myth of the English countryside.

"We weren't pushing paint around on a canvas that sat in a sterile gallery environment; we were quite literally forming and shaping the culture that surrounded us," Lundberg said in 2004. "We are the heretics, calling their belief system into question by the mere fact that we exist and talk about our circle-making activities. Sometimes this spills over into threatening behaviour on the part of the believer. We've had potatoes stuck up our exhausts, wing mirrors ripped off of our cars, and threats of physical violence, in person, over the phone, via email and through our letterboxes."

For a long time the Circlemakers kept their identities secret but they now openly claim to have made many hundreds of circles. However, they play the game that there is some inexplicable force out there by not claiming to have made them all, and never revealing which particular ones they created."

From an interview with John Lundberg from The Circlemakers on the BBC website:

"My group, Circlemakers, now describe what we do as art practice but at first it was just curiosity.

Signs has renewed interest in crop circles
When in 1991 Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted that they had been making circles for the past 13 years, interest plummeted.

We wanted to crank it up again by making formations so huge and so complex that people would once again start asking the question: 'Is it possible that these things are manmade?'

As we're all based in London, we spend a lot of money on petrol and a lot of money driving up and down the M4 to Wiltshire.

The season runs from April, when the first crop is oil seed rape. In June it's barley and by mid-July it's wheat. That's the best crop to work in, that's when the most spectacular circles appear. Because each stem is upright, you can get pin sharp clarity.

Tools are a surveyor's tape and a plank
We used to design the circles on paper, but because the formations have got so big, it's easier to use a computer.

It's all very low-tech once we get into the field. We use surveyor's tape measure and a stalk stomper, which is basically a plank of wood. To make a circle, one person stands in the middle as a pivot and another holds the end of the tape and walks around them.

Crop circles are treated as legitimate tourist attractions in Wiltshire. One made in 1996 got more visitors than Stonehenge and the farmer grossed about £30,000 in four weeks by charging a pound a person.

Assuming a formation isn't heavily visited, the farmer will be able to lower the blades on his combine and harvest the flattened crop away."

VAM

Assuming that it really is the farmer who's charging two quid to look at the circle, and not some enterprising member of the public, who's stationed himself by the gate to the field with a bucket.

Now, there's an idea for my day off .........

But seriously, having had his crop damaged, I don't blame him at all for seeking to turn the situation to his advantage; if people are going to go into his field, then he might as well charge them a modest fee, rather than go to all the effort of trying to keep them out. Good luck to him.

Given this quote from one of the articles that VAM posted, it could be quite a nice little earner.



Thanks to VAM for the two articles about John Lundberg and the Circlemakers. Very interesting, and somewhat persuasive as well, I have to say.

But I still think the Julia Set formation at Stonehenge in 1996, or rather the circumstances of its appearance, defy rational explanation. Thus far .....

Anyway, I shall still look forward to seeing the new Alton Barnes formation from the top of Milk Hill later this week, if only as a piece of amusing landscape art.

You are priveleged and you don't even know it. I mean, there's a new design every second day. And these guys are great designers. You know, Euklid's second theorem and these things.
Everey year THE LAST FORMATION always has been a wonderful one. It closes with a tush. And also - as I've noticed - the formations on or around the 12th of August are something special.
So far England has only 31 formations. Not much business nowadays? There were seasons when England had 140 formations.

Thanks eginolf for the links

I'm with Richard
I'm sure there are some crop circles who have been done by man
but the larger formations are simply AWESOME!

New formation from 7/25/10 near White Horse.

Another new formation from 7/25/10 on Round Hill, Wiltshire.

"I think I saw a Fortean Fox". For anyone interested in phantom panthers,

on Google: "Paranormal Panthers".

I was at Alton Barnes earlier today, and there are now two new formations underneath Tan Hill there, in addition to the one beneath Milk Hill from a few days ago. They're now on the Crop Circle Connector website (see below), along with some others that have appeared in the past few days, in what seems to be a determined effort to beat the combines - they were harvesting all over the place today, and even burning stubble in the next valley over.

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010 ... y2010.html

From what I've read since I got back, there seems to be quite a lot of scepticism about the third one in particular (East Field 1), and there are accounts of people falsely charging for access into the fields, cars getting broken into, and so on, and it did look like a bit of a bun fight when I went past, with lots of people spread across the landscape, traversing tramlines into the different formations, and several pissed off looking combine, tractor and grain lorry drivers negotiating their way round all the cars and camper vans parked along the road. Not a great scene, to be honest, and I didn't enter any of the circles myself, didn't want to be part of it all.

I didn't even know about the other two formations when I drove over there this morning. I could vaguely see what I now realise was one end of one of them, but they're very hard to pick out when you're level with them, and I just thought it was a bit of broken down corn, and didn't give it a second look; it was only coming down later in the afternoon after all the croppies had turned up that I realised something was there.

I was walking to the other side of the Milk Hill escarpment (hence I was oblivious to the croppie hordes descending on the place till I got back), but knew I'd be passing by the one from earlier in the week, which is more or less in line with the White Horse hill figure, and had hoped to get some good pictures, but sadly not - you really do need to be directly above to see them properly, and even from the top of that hill, the angle was just wrong. This is good as I could manage, on a digital zoom, so it's a bit blurry.



Shortly after this, as I continued along the escarpment, I saw a load of people, about eighteen of them, walk into the field from the far end, off the road, and I sat down by the white horse and watched them through binoculars, and that was quite an arresting sight, seeing these little ant-like figures make their way into the centre of the circle, and then fan out.

And then it was only several hours later when I was driving back down into the village of Alton Barnes, that I saw all this other activity going on. The village, btw, is only a few miles away from the Barge Inn, which is a big croppie gathering place and watering hole. Factor that in with everything else, and I really would have my suspicions about the origins of these particular formations.

Here you can just make out some people in one of the newer formations, sorry it's so blurry again.



Here's another odd thing. There was another group of people in a different field, that didn't have anything in it, but they were walking up and down the tramlines, staring intently at the corn. It was really quite a weird scene, the whole thing.

The White Horse that stands above one of the fields containing a formation, as seen from beside St Mary's church in Alton Barnes. If only he could talk .......



Anyway, not much of a field report, I'm afraid, but I may be going back at the weekend to walk the other escarpment, so if I do, I might be able to get some better overhead-ish shots, as the newer ones were closer to the foot of the hill. But that said, the rate they were combining today, and with rain forecast here for tomorrow, they may well be cutting those fields under lights as we speak.

Hmmm, maybe be a little day time surveying for a future night time stomp?

Great on-site photos! So those are near the White Horse.

Breaking News!

There are now four crop formations in the vicinity of Alton Barnes, following the three I referred to a couple of days ago. This one must be very recent; it's not even on the Crop Circle Connector website yet. I took this picture a bit after two o'clock this afternoon, from Huish Hill, just north of the village of Oare. I'll add some more later on this, and the others strung out along the foot of that escarpment, but I thought I'd put this up here now, and give Arcadia the scoop over the CCC.

Well spotted Richard...a scoop indeed.

Er, Richard, what is that blade of wheat doing in your hair?

Opportunity - check
Motive - to get nice photos - check
Intent -not declared but check anyway.

Further to the above, I was at Alton Barnes again today, walking the Knap Hill-Tan Hill-Huish Hill escarpment on the east side of the village, and above the two crop formations I first noticed from down in the valley on Thursday (there is another one, from earlier in the week on the west side, below the white horse), which meant I got some quite good views of them from above, though not very good photos - just too far away. The CCC has called them East Field Nos. 1 and 2.

There was a lot of activity down there when I drove over this morning, with even a coach parked up by the side of the road. As I walked the downland above I could periodically see people walking in and out of them.

In terms of artistic merit, this is probably the best of the five I've seen this year, due to the way it occupies high, undulating ground. This doesn't really do it justice.



This is the other one, not very clear from this distance and angle, but you can see some croppies wandering about inside it.



And then, later on, as I posted above, I'd just reached the end of the escarpment, and was literally in the process of turning round to start walking back, when I caught sight of this out of the corner of my eye, just over a bump in the hillside, and when I walked down a bit, I saw this.



Here's a closer view.



It was quite small, tucked into the corner of a field, and looked less complicated than some of the formations. Btw, apropos of nothing, the late David Niven used to live just the other side of that field, albeit briefly, and many moons ago.

Anyway, I was going there in any case, so it was just serendipitous that it coincided with those formations, but it was interesting to see them from afar. Looking out across the Vale of Pewsey I should think there are now as many harvested fields as unharvested ones, so I doubt I'll be seeing any more this year. But five, plus those natural ones from the other day, isn't bad going.

I know, they do seem to be following me around a bit, but pure coincidence, honest .......

But I think the sheep are the most photogenic thing in the pictures, and they seemed happily oblivious to all the activity below. Seen it all before, I expect.

Brilliant pictures Richard, love the foreground wildlife.

That first one reminds me of the local Tucson tribal Tohono O`Odham logo -

"The Man in the Maze" used in basketry, pottery, and silver work. They all wear it.

Spectacular photography! The livestock really looks great in those pictures.

It's the season:
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/Eastfield/eastfield2010a.html

It's a flower:
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/windmillhill/windmillhill2010a.html

It's a magnetic field:
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/windmillhill/windmillhill2010a.html
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http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/chalkpit/groundshots.html

It's a code on two shields:
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/wickhamgreen2010S/wickhamgreen2010a.html
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http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/wickhamgreen2010N/wickhamgreen2010b.html

Same code in diagrams:
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/wickhamgreen2010S/diagrams.html
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http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/wickhamgreen2010N/diagrams.html

This one still hasn't made its way onto the Crop Circle Connector website, so I guess I'll fill in the "Report a Crop Circle" section on there. I'm tempted not to, and then it's just mine (as in, the person who saw it, not the person who made it) and the Forum's, but if it doesn't get reported it won't have "official status", so if nobody's put it up there by this evening, I'll fill in the e-form and send them a photo.

I don't know if there's a convention whereby the discoverer of the formation gets to name it - like with a comet, for example - but if there is, I'm going to call it the Huish Hill Wheel of Arcadia. Trust that's okay with everyone?

sounds like a great idea.

That`s the most important one, it`s like the T.O. Man in the Maze. Is that what they are intended to be?

That`s certainly how they are used, people walk around in them as they would in a contemplative maze.