June 16th 2010 I took a general flight around the usual hotspots to catch up with some aerial photography. On the way back to the airfield I spotted this heart shaped plantation so I took the opportunity to take take some shots. The full story of the origin and purpose of this plantation is further down this page.
At the time I have to be honest, I cannot fully remember if I sent this image with other crop circle images to crop circle connector. ( I probably did !). So this image would have been visible to many visitors to connectors web site.
At the time I though nothing of it but when a crop circle appeared directly below the heart plantation on the 21st June then for a time I really did think that something miraculous happened.
On the 20th of June we set of in two groups to watch the coming Solstice night and its rising sun. Myself and another colleague positioned ourselves at the side of Milk Hill - Sue and Mike went to a small wooded area to the right of East Field. Sue and Mike from this position had a good view of East Field and the field in Oare.
We kept in touch via mobile phone texts which generally consisted of ' nothing as yet all is still quiet '  , but the just after midnight Sue called me to say that the feeling there was described as very uncomfortable as black shadows kept moving around their vehicle. They reported a feeling of being told to move . Sue and Mike generally were not bothered by such feelings but on this occasion the feeling was strong so without hesitation they left the area and joined us at the side of Milk Hill.
Just before Sue and Mike joined us myself and another Mike heard a group of people around the White Horse. So we observed and listened. They came down the hill and entered the field - they were quite noisy and one of them was distinctively a female. It was a very quiet night so voices could be clearly heard.
At the time we were still strict believers that crop circles were made by aliens so we felt that this crowd in the field below would hamper a crop circle forming, not taking fully into account that the crowd below had all intentions of making a circle. If they were quiet enough we probably would not have spotted them and we would have woken to a circle in the field in the morning.
Mike decided to grab a huge torch and started to scan the field with its powerful beam, the chatter of voices stopped almost immediately.  The persistent shining of our torches sent the crowd out of the field and they headed back up towards the White Horse and then disappeared over the brow of the hill.
When everything went silent again we returned to our vehicles and within half an hour or so all four of us closed our eyes and felt sleepy.
I could never sleep well in cars so my attempt to catch a snooze came to nothing so I decided to open my eyes and take a stroll. Just as I stepped out of the vehicle a strong gust of wind came out of nowhere, it lasted no more than a few seconds. Then from the direction of Stanton St Bernard a bright white light appeared in the night sky, I watched it for a minute or so and then realised it was directly coming towards us. I quickly woke everyone just in time to observe it fully passing directly over where we stood. It was big and bright but we could not determine the shape due to the brightness of a possible UFO. We watched it heading over east Field and towards Oare,  then this bright light started rather oddly to sway side to side and appeared to be getting lower and brighter, but then in a flash it disappeared.
When dawn finally came there was no crop circle below the White Horse so we decided to have a quick scout of surrounding fields but still nothing, so we decided to go to Silbury Hill to capture the Solstice Sun rising.

After our photo session with the Solstice sun we headed off down to the airfield to catch an early morning flight just to see if any new crop circles could be spotted from the air. Olivier Morel had his morning flight booked already so he took the first flight . We waited patiently for news. Approximately half an hour later we spotted Olivier Morels plane circling around one area in the distance - this meant one thing - he found a new crop circle !.
When Olivier landed he did indeed confirm that a new circle was found in Oare.
We took our flight - took some ariel shots and headed down to Oare.

When I first realised the location of this new crop circle I was truly impressed. Only a few days earlier I took an image of this exact field before this crop circles arrival. At the time I did not take into consideration that my field with heart  image was on the internet so Im now sure that my photograph gave someone a good idea to make a circle in this location.

Before and After !

Steve Alexander captured flying low in his chartered helicopter by Olivier Morel .

In the run up to Valentine's Day… it seems that Wiltshire really does have a heart. And it's a big heart.
Dominating Huish Hill, overlooking the tiny village of Oare, it's not only a third the size of a football pitch but so big it can only be really appreciated from space.
So what is this massive heart doing deep in the Wiltshire countryside? And is it, as Google Earth has claimed, a heart shaped crop-circle?
Wiltshire, as a county, boasts more then its fair share of landscape art. There's a whole stable of white chalk horses galloping across the hills, giant kiwi, massive World War I badges and of course crop circles.
But in the small village of Oare, north of Pewsey, it's not a chalk or crop creation that dominates the landscape but a heart shaped wood that's not strictly speaking man-made.
Created by Lady Keswick, the owner of Oare House, the wood was planted over 10 years ago as a memorial to the death of her two brothers:
"We planted it in 1999," says Lady Keswick, "with two varieties of hawthorn - one with dark pink and one with pale pink flowers. "But it takes a long time to be fully grown and even after 10 years it is not yet fully in bloom."

1,000 Hawthorn trees make up the heart wood. When the wood matures, and flowers, the heart will appear red.

Heart turns red

With the help of the Oxford based landscape consultants, Lear Associates, 1,000 hawthorn trees were planted out on the hill overlooking the A345 to create the acre-sized heart wood.

But, it seems, getting your hawthorns to grow in a heart-shape can be the least of your worries:

"It needs more looking after than you might think," says Lady Keswick. "The local 'Bambis' come down from the hills and jump the fence quite easily and try and eat the new shoots. This can be devastating for the trees.

"And the winds are strong through the Vale of Pewsey. The young trees did not like this so we had to put up plastic sheets to stop wind damage."

The young trees also needed constant watering, throughout the summer months, and weeding.
But with the promise of 1,000 hawthorns flowering, well not quite in time for Valentine's Day, it will all be worth it when Wiltshire's heart turns red.
"It will take a few years more to grow and to bush out to its full height and full bloom," admits Lady Kewsick, "but then it will be spectacular when in bloom!"
But even flowerless, the heart wood at Oare is still pretty spectacular. Not only is it already showing up on various different satellite maps but has even made an appearance on a valentine's card.
But, according to Lady Keswick, you don't have to take to the air to appreciate it:
"You can see it best from the top of the hill," says Lady Kewsick, "but also from the road and from our house (just).
"But it is a great project and it is fun to do something different in and with the countryside... hopefully to beautify it!"