The ‘Silent Circle’ café at Cherhill, Wiltshire has become an important meeting point and information source for visitors to the UK crop formations. After a few years of change, power-struggles, refurbishments, attempted coup d’etats and lots of tea and cake, the café is back in the hands of its founder, revamped and ready to go for a new crop circle season, as ALISON FINDLAY reports…
Living on the western outskirts of London and having full family responsibilities, I’m rather limited in my opportunities to make excursions into Wiltshire to experience the crop circles first-hand. Sometimes though, the fates conspire to allow visits between school drop-offs and collection time. Hence most of my circle watching is done through the efforts of others. I have been dependent on publications such as ‘The Spiral’ and ‘Circular Review’ magazines and numerous other publications and media sources for my circle fascination fixes
It was through the Circular Review that I discovered an advert for the Silent Circle Café, which sits on the A4 between Calne and Beckhampton, just a few miles from the Avebury stone circle, a favourite location of mine.
On the first really warm day of 2006, on May 4th, I made my escape from London. Feeling thirsty as I passed the Avebury world heritage site, I decided to check out The Silent Circle for myself. Fortunately it was easy to find. It stood out immediately as I rounded the slight bend in the road at Cherhill. Stark white and blue, with huge glyphs painted across the frontage of the café greeted me - what a surreal looking place this is, like something out of a desert road movie, and every bit in keeping with the enigma that it serves. Large crop circle shapes even have been laid as chalk designs in the surrounding grass.
A sizable group of people stood about outside the café engrossed in conversations and drinking coffee, eating chunks of cake and generally filling the scene with earnest anticipation, in a subdued excitement of sorts.
As I entered the main café building it was obvious that this was no run-of-the-mill watering hole. Far from it. The walls are plastered with imagery and books, DVDs, posters, maps and all sorts of things related to the crop circles, and indeed a myriad of related phenomena, ranging from UFOs to hidden history and onto areas of a healing and spiritual nature. The sign on the outside of the building, “Meta-Physical Resources”, sure was living up to its pronouncement - just how much of this stuff could one get in one little café?
I was welcomed by a cheery hello and grins by the staff who were shuffling about in the kitchen area.
Information boards, adorned with maps and research papers, upcoming events and general tourist and researcher information fill the back of the café. And then there is the all-important internet access point, which is free to use! The crop circle reference map was peppered with little pins, indicating the positions of last season’s circles. Great clusters around ancient sites sparked a deep consideration within me; what are the implications of this distribution? Why here? Why now? So many questions, so many potentials... I needed soup, at least as a starting point, and probably a slab of that huge cake behind the counter glass as a secondary manoeuvre!
After treating myself beyond one’s physical capacity, I engaged with the Silent Circle hosts. Juliet must be one of the finest cake and soup artists that southern England has yet produced. She went to great lengths to make me, and indeed many other visitors that sunny afternoon, very welcome indeed, and I would certainly recommend the ‘meta-physical space cake’. Charles Mallett, the owner and founder of the Silent Circle, and long time circle researcher, provided me with much in the way of his circle and personal research experience, and how it relates to his healing work, and how in turn it seems to relate to just about everything in one way or another. Our conversation became mutually stimulating, and that seemed to be typical of this strange and happy place.
The Silent Circle café has become an important focal meeting point for crop circle enthusiasts and is currently in good hands, and should be supported. Details about The Silent Circle can be found at its website:
www.silentcircle.co.uk