Uffington Castle and White Horse

On Saturday we visited the Uffington Castle and the White Horse which are about a 15 minute drive from our house, on a hillside in Oxfordshire. It was cold and windy but at least the sun was shining! We had to walk across a field filled with sheep to get to the hillside - Emmy was in heaven. She loves sheep and she got pretty close to them - I think they are used to people walking through their field.
This is a picture that I stole off of the internet - couldn't get up into the air! It'll give you a better understanding of what the White Horse is than my pictures from the ground! It is the oldest chalk figure in England - dates back at least 3,000 years to the Bronze Age. It has been continually kept up by the locals and now is maintained by the government. It is 374 feet long and is made from the chalk that is exposed when the topsoil is removed. The hillside that it is on was sculpted by a glacier and is really incredible! No one is sure why the horse was created or if it is even a horse! Mysterious - but very cool and visible for miles!


The signpost at the beginning of the hike:
Sheep:
Halfway there - you can see the White Horse all the way to the left of the picture just where the top of the hill meets the sky:
The view from the top - our neighborhood is all the red houses in front of the windmills and Brendan's school is the long white building on the left:
Glacial carvings called the Giants' Stair - leads down to the flat bottom portion called the manger - where the horse grazes at night!
The Uffington Castle - at the top of the hill above the horse - it's a very large ring of earth that is the remains of a Bronze Age/Iron Age hill fort.
Aidan and Emmy on a GPS marker at the top of the hill:
Looking down at the head of the White Horse:
The eye of the horse:It was really fun to finally get there - it was really cold but would be a really nice place for a picnic when it gets warm!!