I’ve visited Avebury on a couple of occasions. I’ve never had chance to walk round the famous stone circle though! Ah well…

Held every year in May, the Sarcen Trail and Neolithic Marathon take participants the 26.2 miles from Avebury to Stonehenge and raises money for Wiltshire Wildlife, though they don’t insist you raise sponsorship beyond the entry fee. Base for the marathon is a hall on the High Street (which doesn’t look like most high streets! This is a village…). Base for the Sarcen Trail walkers is through the Churchyard and round the back of the Church. The loos are at the walker’s start, so if you are a marathoner like me then allow time for walking back and forth! It gets you warmed up anyway.

It’s a bit of a strange one in some ways. The event as a whole is massive, but the marathon forms a fairly small part of it. They have walkers completing all or part of the 26 mile route, the half marathon (which starts at the halfway point, not at the marathon start), plus cani-cross, which is people running with their dogs, over both half and marathon distances. When the marathon runners got together it was probably the smallest group I’ve been in at a start. Yet you have the benefit of a much larger number of entrants, with full scale toilet, water station and medical coverage. They also do chip timing, even though they describe it as a run rather than a race.

The first section of the course includes a variety of running. Back lanes and paths, a road crossing (with the police holding up the heavy traffic), a heavily rutted farm track and a long, steady pull up to the first row of Downs.

Search for ‘neomara’ in the United Kingdom for more reviews along the course.