June 2014: Besford Crop Circle

On 14 June 2014 a five pointed star and pentagon formation appeared on a hillside at Besford, in the southern midlands county of Worcestershire. Detail is shown in the featured image by Steve Alexander.

It was the second circle in two years to have appeared in fields owned by farmer Edward Robinson, both just across the railway track from a radio telescope that forms part of Jodrell Bank’s MERLIN array.

2015’s Besford crop circle. Photograph by Steve Alexander.

Robinson told the Worcester News the circle was ‘vandalism’ and claimed it had cost him £1,000 in lost crop. He also told the newspaper of the problems some croppies had caused him:

We had a car full of people who had come down from the Netherlands to see it. At first they did pay attention to the signs and stood there outside the field looking forlorn.

Then they made a £50 donation to a local church before sitting in the middle of the circle singing and wailing.

The farmer also reached the stereotypical conclusion the circle had appeared due to its discovery close to the Summer Solstice:

If aliens did land in my field, I would rather they would just come in and say ‘hi’ . . . but it’s people creeping in in the dead of night without asking any permission. It is obviously a very talented artist who has done this, because it is very well aligned and the accuracy is perfect. But it isn’t funny the second time. It may have been timed to be done in time for the summer solstice. I’m sure they would have done it on Friday 13th when it was a full moon but it was raining on that day.

August 2013’s crop circle at Besford. Photograph by the Crop Circle Connector.

It was with a little tredipation I decided to pay a visit to the formation during the following week. Feeling sorry for farmer Robinson I kept out of the field, unlike certain other visitors, including one rather old lady who seemed to have taken on the role of the circle’s unofficial guardian. It’s a shame as the farmer originally seemed to have treated the appearance of the circle was some resigned humour, as illustrated below.

It doesn’t look like the aliens kept to the tramlines. Photograph by The Croppie.

With a window between visitors I was able to snap a few photographs from the roadside. Only that above, and another are worth posting here. The latter perhaps dictates, more than any notions of the Summer Solstice, why a crop circle should have chosen to arrive in this very beautiful part of Worcestershire.