Meet your guide and begin your circular walk with a steady ascent to the hilltop. Stop at multiple points along the way, including the base of the hill, ramparts and ditches, entrance areas, summit plateau, and a closing viewpoint.

Listen as your guide weaves together archaeology, early history, and Arthurian legend, helping you understand not just what people believe about this site — but why those beliefs took hold here.

Explore the visible earthworks of the hillfort, learn how archaeologists interpret banks, ditches, and entrances, and trace Cadbury’s long life from early activity long before “castles,” through the Iron Age, into Roman-period conflict, and on into the centuries often called the “Dark Ages.”

A central focus of the walk is Cadbury’s post-Roman reoccupation in the 5th–6th centuries, when archaeology shows this hill was fortified and used as a high-status power base — at a time when written sources in Britain are scarce. This evidence helps explain why later generations imagined Cadbury as a fitting setting for Arthurian stories.

Learn about the origins of the Camelot tradition, first recorded in writing in the Tudor period, and introduce the key early Arthur sources — Gildas, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Thomas Malory — explaining how each layer of writing reshaped the legend over time.

This experience is not about proving or disproving King Arthur. Instead, it offers a responsible, engaging exploration of legend, landscape, and evidence, allowing you to enjoy the stories while understanding what archaeology and history can genuinely tell us.