Each summer, the Wiltshire countryside close to Divine Café  is host to a strange phenomenon. Swirls of flattened corn, or 'crop circles', litter the landscape like fingerprints from above.

The county of Wiltshire is one of the most active areas for crop circles in the world, particularly around the historical stones of Avebury and Silbury Hill. In this ancient landscape, the grassy whorls take over the fields of rape, barley and wheat like massive installation art.

Crop circles are geometric circles impressed in crops and other types of vegetation and sometimes in sand, gravel, earth, ice and snow. In Wiltshire, widely recognized as the centre of crop activity in the world, they are usually found in fields of standing corn. Of the 175 recorded in England in 2000, 70 were found within a 15 mile radius of Avebury. In 2001, there were 184 crop formations recorded worldwide, of which 102 were in the UK.

The circles range from small to large, to gigantic. The smallest circle recorded as part of a formation was six inches in diameter and the longest formation nearly a mile long. The biggest so far, consisting of 409 circles of various sizes and measuring 787ft in diameter, was found at Milk Hill in Wiltshire in the summer of 2001.

Why is Wiltshire so prone to this mysterious phenomenon? Some have suggested it is because of the county's history of human occupation. Wiltshire is littered with monuments, ancient pathways, burial grounds and stone circles.

Others suggest that crop circles are merely performance art on a massive scale, while tourists continue to come from faraway in a bid to catch sight of one being made, perhaps by visitors from another planet.

Whatever the reason, these phenomenon are sure to keep the curious enthralled for many crop circle seasons to come.