Showing 1-20 of 83 fieldnotes. Most recent first | Next 20 
Taking advantage of the decidedly spring-like weather I have just made my first visit to Scratchbury. There's room to park just off the roundabout at ST914437 and then you can walk up the slope of Cotley Hill and across the down to the hillfort. I am not built for slopes and it nearly killed me (it's not that bad really and is quite a decent path. There's a stile right at the bottom and a kissing gate further on). The advantage of physical exertion and lack of oxygen to the brain means that when I do finally get to the top of these places, I'm feeling slightly peculiar. And this adds to their sense of being above the mundane. You can see and hear the traffic below but you're well out of it in another world. I do like that.
Cotley and Scratchbury are an SSSI and there will be very interesting things to see there soon
http://www.english-nature.org.uk/citation/citation_photo/1001995.pdf
Today I was accompanied for some way by my first butterfly of the year, a brimstone. The plateau is full of peculiar mounds and dips, some of them clearly barrows, some of them more mysterious. Lumps of flint and chalk are everywhere. As usual I had my eyes peeled for that elusive arrowhead, in vain.
When you get to Scratchbury from this direction you are met by a huge bank. In fact the whole place is much bigger than I was expecting. I see now from this photo at Last Refuge that there is also a distinct inner enclosure. I was quite happy sitting on the very prominent barrow overlooking the view and unusually didn't feel the urge to pace round the whole perimeter. I felt quite at peace. Thus I can't really comment on the parking / climbing opportunities from the other direction. But I enjoyed the walk to and from the fort. I saw half a dozen people while I was up here, a positive Picadilly Circus compared to many similar spots.
It was rather restorative. I think I'll be back.
|
The track up here is atrocious: you really fear for your car's suspension. But there was a notice when I visited yesterday and it seems this month they are closing the track for repairs. So if you visit very soon, you'll probably have to walk up. but it's not far, just a bit steep.
I suppose it's unnecessary to repeat what everyone else has said about the inner ditch but I can't resist. This place does not feel like a fort. For one thing, where's the extra reinforcing outer bank round the entrance(s)? Where are the extra banks you'd expect on the flatter side? Why is it so awfully symmetrical feeling? And as for the inner ditch... well it's just not Normal is it, especially so far into the middle of the area, it's not like it's right next to the outer bank. Nah, this place is a bit weird. The banks felt like they were keeping out Prying Eyes, but you could still see the panoramic view from the central area. Or maybe the banks were for sitting on to view whatever was going on in the middle, who knows. I wouldn't buy anything about cattle enclosures either because the young ones here quite liked the challenge of the ditch.
There was a steady stream of visitors. I guess it's free and near Salisbury, I don't blame them but I was expecting to get the place to myself. Also you'll find a lot of sloes in the hedges around the car park, so if you visit you'll soon be able to gather some for your sloe gin. The rings themselves are an SSSI and there are lots of nice chalkland plants to check out.
|
It's a long time since I was last here and it wasn't quite how I remembered it. There are some huge stones here. One good thing about the masses of vegetation at this time of year, is that you can spot strangely flat areas that probably hide more stones. But mostly the nettles and the grasses hinder movement and stop you seeing the stones. But it's a great spot, and clearly visited by others as you can tell by the trampling of the plants. It was soothingly peaceful and shaded from the hot sunshine. I sat near a superbly large stone on its edge right in the middle of the barrow. Below it there was an intriguing dark hole veiled by another smaller stone and a spider web.
But I found it kind of concerning that there were loads of large flat stones kind of stacked up at the far end. They looked strangely unmossy/licheny as though they'd been uncovered or moved quite recently. Surely no-one would bother moving stones from the barrow? I felt confused. I've posted a photo, if anyone's familiar with the site and can comment.
|
|
This long barrow is so cute, because it's very small. It's clearly a haven for sheep, but today there were no sheep in the enormous flat field, and it was very tranquil indeed. I was impressed by the view - you can see out to Wales through a gap in the hills, and back to Wiltshire in the other direction. It did feel like the barrow had been unfortunately nibbled at over the centuries, as though it was much smaller than it should be, but it still has some height. It was deliciously shadey in contrast to the dried out field. There were a lot of small stones around but it was hard to decide if there'd ever been part of a wall - maybe the barrow looks like that through and through. It just had a very nice atmosphere here. And it's extremely easy to find (and park near).
|
I wasn't really expecting the barrows to be so low in the landscape. They're kind of in a dip with very little view - so I guess the view is all focused on them (although trees have been planted one side of the road, so I don't know what the view that way would be). They seem to follow the lie of the valley.
I read Wysefool's suggestion that maybe a now-lost spring here was the reason for their location. (although what about the significance of his beloved nearby long barrow?) But in support I can tell you that I didn't dare drive my car up the track to the small car park, because there was a huge patch of deep mud I was scared to get it stuck in - surely the only mud in the whole county on this baking Sunday, so maybe there's still something springish here.
There's a kissing gate into the field, which is a nature reserve, and currently full of rough vegetation that you have to kind of wade through. I spent a lot of time looking at all the weird plants (dropwort, quaking grass, knotted clover, I won't go on) but my best moment was when I suddenly realised I was looking at a disc barrow, its shape suddenly leapt out at me. It was extremely serene here and I lounged under a beech tree on one of the barrows. The only noise was the occasional passing car and the sound of hundreds of crickets like tiny machine guns constantly firing away.
|
|
I liked it here although there wasn't much to really see. You wouldn't really know there was anything here at all if you hadn't been forewarned. The barrow is where there's a rough patch of ground (awash with lovely pyramidal orchids at the moment) and across some confusing lumps in the edge of the wood. So it's hard to understand what's what. I was totally taken though with the huge flattish stone lurking under one of the trees, I was very pleased to spot that, I had to give it a pat. Perhaps others would be easier to find at another time of year when there's fewer leaves about. Also it didn't help that the sun was extremely hot and I was starting to feel a bit odd. Fortunately it's only a short flat jaunt back to the road (there's masses of space where you can park your car).
|
I caught sight of this in the corner of my eye as I hurtled past down the hill. After a rapid bit of uphill reversing to the space opposite the top cottage, I trotted cheerfully across. It's so nice that such curious things have managed to survive, and its neighbours are clearly proud of it, judging by the boldness of their house signs for 'blowing stone cottages'.
I ought to admit that the first thing that popped into my head was that cheesy film from my childhood, Flash Gordon. You know, that stupid bit where the bloke off Blue Peter plunged his arm into the tree stump full of holes and got fatally mauled. Surely you remember. My point is that there are just so many holes in the Blowing Stone. How would you know which one to try blowing into? You could be there all day without instruction. Quite a few of them contained snails. I balked and chickened out. Partly because of the snails and partly because I could hear the occupants of the nearest cottage in their garden. I thought I'd save them from having to listen to me spitting and coughing.
There's a little box containing postcards and leaflets - the leaflet by good old Mr Grinsell.
There's a round flat stone right in front of the Stone - I'm intrigued to see it's probably the same one raised up in Wysefool's vintage photo?
|
This place is totally mad. It's impossible for me to take photos that describe it. That's because for one thing, there are these mad 'earthworks' - they're not really earthworks, they're dry chalk valleys. But from some angles you'd think you were looking at a hill fort with snakey defence ditches. Secondly, once you've climbed up to the top, the slope drops off in an insanely steep way, very suddenly. And thirdly, you are confronted with the most enormous view. From the vantage point of the round barrow on the crest, you have a 360 degree view - one way out to the north and west out over the steep slope and away to goodness knows where (I felt like I should be able to see the glitter of the sea, but that's a bit too much) - but with a quite different feel to the south and east, which has that vast minimalist curveyness like the Salisbury Plain.
The long barrow is barely perceptible, but you just think: what on earth is it doing where it is? You had that view and you stick it there? Clearly the builders' priorities were different from mine. Surely it is knowingly near the Edge but yet deliberately not near enough to see the view. A liminal spot but not on the distracting boundary. I don't know. I'd love to know what others would think.
Having footled about for a bit I sat for a while looking out in the late afternoon sun. There's Heddington church at the bottom of the hill but a place like this has surely always to have been better for thinking about stuff.
(I left the car backed up to a tree near a barn at SU010656. This is the old Bath-London coach road - you can rather imagine it when you know? Then I walked back and through a squeaky gate near the sign 'dogs to be kept on lead' (not the track through the open gate to the sign's right). This side of the fence is open access land with a little on the other side of the sunken lane. Then it's not too badly uphill a walk for long, just rough grassland underfoot, though don't go too near the water trough or the reservoir, as the ground's craftily boggy :) Aim for the corner and the world opens up in front of you).
|
East Kennett and West Kennett couldn't be much more different really, not in our century at least. I wondered whether to write these fieldnotes, it's like drawing unnecessary attention to something that's quite happy nice and quiet and unknown, despite its proximity to the show sites of Avebury. Not to mention the fact it's off the footpaths and I shouldn't really have been there at all. But your tma-ish type values EK for what it is. And most normal people don't want to trudge to an overgrown hillock somewhere up a muddy track. Besides, there's nowhere obvious to leave a tealight. So maybe EK's ok.
Even as you walk up here, you can see that the place is massively, surprisingly, tall. I thought it was an optical illusion until I got very close up and then I had to believe it. As you're walking up the track, the barrow glowers ominously above you. But on arriving, the near end seems like the less important back, it shuns the view of West Kennett's fancy frontage and Silbury hill. With the wintery lack of undergrowth I could walk along the barrow's crest, to the far end which is higher and more sheltered. That has a much more enclosed feeling. There's a kind of amphitheatre effect, with the skyline at a single level all around. But curiously the skyline isn't consistently close, some of it's made up of much further away bits of landscape, but it all overlaps to give this constant line. It's totally different to the open feel of the other end, with its distant views to all sorts of places that make you go ooh! when you recognise them.
It was very quiet indeed at the far end. It's riddled with burrows. Flakes of chalk and pointy flint nodules are everywhere (as are spent shotgun cartridges). A rabbit sprang out of one of the holes just in front of me and I don't know who was more startled. Partridges muttered in the field below but otherwise it was just that distant treetop noise like the sea. My crisps ruined the atmosphere really. I liked the distorted writing on some of the beeches and all the tiny snail shells with their strange little umbilical holes.
On the way back (after another guilt-ridden dash silhouetted against the sky) there were loads of yellowhammers to be seen and heard along the White Horse track. If you keep going straight down, the path comes out where the road crosses the Kennet. It's amazing to watch, a beautifully crystal clear chalk stream with its vegetation waving about in the current. It was a nicer way to walk back to where I'd parked near the church.
|
If you're coming from the direction of Tinkinswood, this place is well signposted, and there's just enough room to park at the side of the road. It's a short uphillish climb to the stones (through a kissing gate at the edge of the rough field) and then you can't help wondering why this place gets all the height and view compared to its neighbour just down the road. The sign at the road said 'burial chambers' so I thought I was supposed to look for something else, so like SwastikaGirl, I got confused by the (ex) ring of trees. It might be nothing old but it's a peculiar sort of thing in any case.
The tomb couldn't be more different from Tinkinswood and yet it's equally impressive. It really is like a giant greyhound's kennel, any giant greyhound would be happy to live here out of the rain chewing on a bone. I had the urge to draw it from all four directions, it's just so sculptural and solid. The drawings didn't come out very well but it was enjoyable at least, I felt like I'd seen it properly. Unlike Kammer it didn't occur to me to leap up onto the capstone - I'm sure you'd feel on top of the world up there - it would have been an undignified failure in any case.
Any sensible person might travel a long way to see either of these places. But here you have two top quality megalithic destinations just down the road from each other. What more do you people want.
|
Ooh I did enjoy this place very much. It's such a pleasant walk across the field, and then there it appears, with its tidy and inauthentic herringboned stones at the front, looking like a little thatched cottage sunken into the ground or something. But when you see how big the capstone is - I couldn't help smiling. It's amazing. No one else has mentioned this, so it must just be me being weird, but there was only one obvious course of action to me. I had to leap up on the top and lie down immediately. The stone is like a gigantic golden mattress, it really is, albeit a bit on the hard side. But lying there you'll realise it is at the perfect angle for gazing at the sky, it's gently sloping and very comfortable. I watched the clouds float past. It was a bit like being anchored at the centre with everything moving round. ?Or is that just my overactive imagination. And of course you'd get all the benefits of the Ancestral Wisdom seeping up through the stone. Imagine what it would be like to look at the stars from here, just marvellous. It was a bit cold this afternoon to be honest, but when the soon-to-be-setting sun peaked out from the clouds - and it happened to be directly at the right angle for the capstone - the stone turned such a beautifully warm colour.
It's slightly galling that you can see the disguised top of the brickwork pillar in the top of the capstone. It's not so bad as from the side. But where did the missing side of the burial chamber go? And I was interested to see the curved stone chosen to define the front entrance 'portal' too.
I didn't stay half as long as I'd have liked. But even so my imagination had been further carried away by the time I got back to the first of the kissing gates. It had a rather interesting multi-note squeak which I couldn't help thinking reminded me of the Authentic Prehistoric Music :)playing in the gallery at the museum in Cardiff, where I'd been earlier. If tma had an mp3 facility for gate noises, I'd have been tempted to record it.
The site is well signposted from the main road in St Nicholas, it has a proper hard parking spot, and the path (although undulating) is very smooth. No mud today, Postman. There are two kissing gates though, which I don't think can be avoided. The sign says it's open from 10-4 but I didn't feel too naughty being a bit later. Perhaps it's to discourage stargazers and those wanting to do a bit of dreaming like in the folklore. I tidied up the usual tea light cases as you can imagine.
|
Some of the barrows here are easy to see as they line up in a field, but the wood hides many more. Fat chance of seeing the latter today though, as it was all I could do to remain upright. The snow amusingly obscures all the dips containing freezing water and slippery leaves -hilarious.
The geology's a bit weird here. I visited on the pretext of sampling some acidic soil, which isn't that easy to find in this part of the world. And it turns out there is igneous rock here, andesite, which is quarried a bit further along the ridge. It's not really what I expected in Somerset. I wonder if the prehistoric types that frequented the ridge were able to use it.
Anyway all the be-wooded barrows and earthworks will just have to wait until spring. But there's a great view from up here, especially in today's snow. Glastonbury Tor looked cool.
|
I came up here at the weekend for the first time. It was quite a steep climb for a weed with the sun bearing down, but I certainly felt refreshed at the top because the wind coming over the crest was relentless. And that's what struck me most about this place, that its various sides are quite different. I kept feeling quite disorientated.
There's the side you see from the road, with the horse and the obelisk, and more interestingly, the swoopy undulating dry valleys (one has a very closed entrance making a better manger than at Uffington). But once you're at the top, this side doesn't seem so important. Also the obelisk, which is so overbearing from the road, doesn't even seem in the 'right' place. It points aggressively up to the sky, but your mind isn't on the sky at all now, you're looking out over this enormous view. If no-one's got any objections I suggest we blow it up. It's only commemorating some toff's ancestor and it's falling apart anyway.
Looking to the southwest there are some more intriguing valleys at Calstone Down. I particularly liked that direction. It was fantastically blowy though and I had to sit behind one of the many, many banks and hillocks. It looks so clear on the map, but seems so complex when you're here. I wondered if some of the rounder dips were dewponds. It was lovely though amongst the woolly thistles and the anthills and the harebells. There are lots of windswept hawthorns that add to the atmosphere too. It was warm and I could have fallen asleep.
Walking round to the flat area ouside the banks to the east, I was delighted to spot Silbury Hill, as large as life. If you're on the road you have to wait some distance for a glimpse, but up here (as often happens at such places) everything was starting to fit into place. There was absolutely no-one around now, which was surprising considering the numbers of people over by the obelisk. And now somehow out of the wind, that gave the place a strange air too. I walked along the high banks back to near the horse and sat down for a bit.
I felt like my mind was working very clearly (for once). Maybe being up here in the fresh air, elevated above mundane things, encourages a clarity of mind. I wondered if the prehistoric people that lived up here felt the same. Or perhaps they were indifferent once they were fed up of the draught through their roundhouses. I skittered down the chalk path and back to the road.
|
|
You'll probably have to take your life in your hands crossing the A303, but walking along the track to the Normanton Down barrows is very pleasant. It does feel ancient (I imagine it is). Chalk and flint are everywhere. I liked the way there were apples (albeit a bit sour) and other fruit plants along the way. Once up on the ridge you get a great view of the Bush barrow and a disc barrow, with other barrows beyond. A board informs you that the barrows are all on private land. I was a little disappointed but hardly surprised. The sheep were happy running about on them at least. On one side you can see down to Stonehenge and over to the King Barrows on the horizon; on the other side there are the Lake Barrows, most of which are hidden in and behind the trees.
|
Well Cursuswalker, the machine dispensing leaflets seems to have been dispensed with full stop. Oh well. It'll save people having to enter the circus that is the Stonehenge car park on a summer afternoon. They want £3 off you if you're not paying to see the stones. I, like many other people, chose to park for nothing on the side of the byway that runs up to the Cursus. And after queuing for a lockless and fairly mangy toilet I headed up the track. It's not long before you get away from the mayhem. It's amazing how few people bother - and yet, you get a completely different view and understanding of the stones.
It's heresy, but I kind of feel that Stonehenge is, has to be, a sacrificial site - I mean, sacrificed to tourists. EH can make huge profits out of it, and they can sink those profits into other heritage sites. This is surely good. All this aspirational stuff about a new visitor centre far away, and 'walking to the stones'... people on the whistle stop Stonehenge tour don't want to walk. If they did, and they had time, they would already be walking over the landscape, and they're not. I was virtually alone.
Just keep walking and before you know it (wafted along by painted lady butterflies) you are there slap bang in the middle of the cursus. It's immense, disappearing off as far as you can see in both directions. Cows roam on one side, sheep on the other, and you can walk the length of it if you please. A board shows you the brawny prehistoric builders digging the ditches and building up the chalk sides - thus it was originally even more dazzly and impressive.
So I urge you to make the (relatively minimal) effort and walk up here. Maybe it's for the slightly geeky - but that's you anyway isn't it.
|
I've never been to Woodhenge before, and I'm not sure what I was expecting - it looks so accessible near the road, and it's so near Stonehenge, but surely there's not much to really see? But I enjoyed my trip today. There's a perfectly good carpark, but I felt like commandeering the bus stop below and walking up. It felt like more of an entrance - and it made me realise that Woodhenge is indeed raised up from its surroundings. It gave me that 'top table' feel, like it was quite deliberately sited here for its superiority of position. But for various trees, you'd have a super 360 view. The River Avon is extremely close by - again, hidden by those dastardly trees?
At the top of the path I stopped to look at an 'interpretation board' - and suddenly I realised I was staring out at Durrington Walls, which was quite a revelation. It's huge and you can quite clearly see the banks. Durrington had post circles within it too. Such an enormous site must have been buzzing with activity once. The Riverside Project
http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/research/stonehenge/intro.html
suggests that there were once hundreds of dwellings inside.
Through the push-gate into the henge, and there are the rings of concrete posts in a nicely mown circle, surrounded by pleasantly unmown grassland full of wildlife (yellow rattle, scabious, butterflies, the peculiar sound of crickets). I sat down at the edge for some lunch. It was only by sitting down that I could really start to imagine how all the concentric circles of posts must have interacted - how your line of sight to the middle would have changed according to where you were. Some of the posts were just huge - one circle in particular has concrete markers a couple of feet? in diameter. That's quite a size.. and then you start wondering about how tall these posts would have been, and if or how they might have been decorated. Would it have felt claustrophobic amongst them? Was that the intention??
I walked to the fence - one thing you really can't see from here is Stonehenge, and I think that's more a matter of slope than trees. If only I'd been more prepared I would have known that the Cuckoo Stone was somewhere in front of me.
Another thing that set me wondering was the presence of 'additional' posts - posts that (to the untrained eye) look pretty randomly placed and aren't in line with any of the concentric circles. What were they all about? The mind boggles. Also to confuse there are two posts straddling the apparent N entrance - but then two more at a Strange angle off to the NE.
So don't just write this place off because it doesn't have its own stones! From an empty little field with concrete posts, you can conjure something up that is huge and imposing and mysterious, and that starts to fit into its surrounding landscape.
|
The A4 is a race track here and there is nowhere safe to park - I left the car up the road at Fyfield (a bus between Calne and Marlborough would stop here too). There is a footpath all the way back, though it's a bit terrifying with the lorries flying past, and then you still have to make a mad dash across the road. But then it's a quick hop over the stile, you're in, and it's an oasis of calm.
Fittingly there were lots of sheep mixed in with the stoney 'greywethers'. But they weren't impressed with my intrusion and quickly set off, bleating madly.
I had had some daft idea to walk from here to the stones at Fyfield Down, but soon realised that there was more than enough to occupy me here (and also it was way too far for me today). If you can't get to Fyfield Down, but want to see the sarsens in somewhere that feels a little bit more remote than Lockeridge Dene, then Piggle Dene would be the place.
Some of the stones are little, and some are really huge. Lots of them have extraordinary shapes - sticky up bits, curvy bits, dippy bits. Most of them are smothered in lichens of all colours, many of which are rare (contributing to the SSSI status of the site).
Some of the stones have been split - I found a few where I could see where someone had attacked them, but others to the untrained eye looked unchiselled. I wish I knew more about the subject.
I stayed here for a couple of hours and didn't see a single person - though I was the star attraction for many many pairs of sheepy eyes.
I couldn't help feeling that the stones were like a river in their dry valley - a valley that feeds down into the Kennet. I also had this strange feeling that they were bursting out of the ground - that the ground was producing them (more of this madness in a blog, perhaps). More practically, this means that because they're in the bottom of the valley, you can examine just about all of them without doing any climbing up and down slopes. You just have to watch out for the nettles and the sheep poo.
|
A Spring visit this time and it's currently the haunt of partridges. This barrow must have been really something once - it's still reasonably high and I felt irritated that the other end of the barrow is totally flattened. It made me ponder how many other barrows must have existed but been wiped clean away. I couldn't see any of the big stones I'd seen in winter as plants cover everything - but there are a great deal of little flat stones round about, and I did wonder whether they could be from some Cotswold Severn style walling?
I was pleased to spot the barrow's twin* for the first time, through the hedge on the other side of the road. It seems directly opposite - it made me wonder how old the road is. The crops are only just sprouting so the barrow was clearly visible by its contrasting tufty grass. The multimap aerial photo shows it was ploughed, but it's quite clear on the Google map now. The farmer obviously looks after it now, which is excellent - surely the poor thing's been hammered enough over the millennia. It's on top of a small rise, but in the middle of the field so you can't really get to it. You can get an easier but not quite so clear view from the field entrance (which is blocked by some huge slabs of stone, which I did wonder about too).
*[gah - now looking at Magic it appears someone's changed their mind and this is now down as some round barrows - though there's no additional information. They are pretty much parallel to the long barrow though. I liked it when I thought there were two long barrows. Oh well. At least they make their own appearance on the SMR.]
|
Sometimes I look at some of the photos people post of hill forts on this website and think, uncharitably, yeah yeah another photo of a ditch. But, walking round Battlesbury, I realised why people feel compelled to do this. If you're lucky, the banks and ditches at hill forts are impressive. They can be pretty monumental. They're utterly sculptural. The light catches their shape. I felt an overwhelming urge to capture that at Battlesbury – but not being a photographer, I soon ended up with a series of weedy snaps. It was frustrating. I'm sure many people make a much better job of it, but I can't. And it's not just the forms – it's how to capture the space outwards, and the strange combination of silence and noise - the wind howls so hard your ears hurt, but yet it's tranquil and still up here.
I was thinking of the name 'Battlesbury' and how probably inappropriate it is. Well it seems appropriate as you walk round and see the firing range and the shells of tanks – directly next to the fort is the off-limits military part of Salisbury Plain. But truly, how much battle did this fort see in its day? It reminded me of something fitzcoraldo had said about ceramics – that the revolution in everyday life that this new technology must have brought seems barely discussed. Ok sherds are used for dating sites, but who needs pottery when you've got sharp pointy weapons to talk about. Maybe wars and skirmishes did go on, but there have been plenty in historic times too, yet most of the time people are getting on with ordinary life.
It struck me walking round that 'those banks and ditches didn't dig themselves' – they were a great deal of work to undertake. But it would have had its symbolic value, to bind the local people together, as well as to act as a clear visual symbol of their determination and strength, besides being a good physical defence. It's actually in a super spot here, as there are steep hills around on all sides. You'd be bloody knackered before you got anywhere near poking someone with a spear.
Exhausted after dashing up here in my usual half-panic I sat down with the view directly out to Cley Hill. This would definitely have been my favourite spot if I'd been living here in the Iron Age. I can tell you, Iron Age people definitely wore hoods, or if not, ear muffs. You wouldn't last ten minutes up here without them at this time of year, it'd be far too painful. I wondered about the other people whose favourite spot this had been too, looking out at Cley Hill all those years ago. I wondered if they knew the people who lived out there, maybe there were friends and relations and people they fancied. It's funny how these forts are so empty today and it's just you and the sheep, yet at the same time my thoughts are always centred on the experience of the people that lived here. I know it's just imagination to consider what went on, but you always know that the view and the weather were there the same.
[on a more useful, gradient related note: I think you can drive pretty much up to the level of the fort. I left the car opposite the footpath at ST 896462 but the path is steep and goes up some steps before levelling out - there's a kissing gate to get in. I think really you could park higher up the road (don't be put off by the enormous tank) and use the track at ST 898464, getting a pretty level walk to the fort (presumably there's then a gate). Once at the fort there's some element of clamber to get on the banks and walk round.]
|
I unexpectedly found myself near Windmill Tump today, so popped in for a visit. It's quite different at this time of year, without leaves on the trees, and without the tangles of vegetation beneath, and all the lumps and bumps are exposed, making it much easier to understand what you're looking at. Crunching through the beechmast I expected to see more stones around the side chambers, but everything was mossy or covered by a carpet of short grass and other plants.
I did some sketches, but the length of the barrow kept squashing itself up on the page. I tried to draw the stones with some pastels, but the colours eluded me. Never mind, the process of drawing gave me that curious 'attentive / relaxed' meditative state, and I felt peaceful.. apart from the racket that was coming from somewhere nearby, out of sight.. something agricultural maybe. It would have been a blissful picnic spot there today but for that noise.
A word on access - there's a steep bit up from the road (a few feet) and you can either step through a little squeezy bit at the side, or I did notice the big farm gate is unlocked, so you could open that. The 200m(?) to the barrow is a nice flat wide path (with loads of daisies), and then it's a short flat nip across the oil-seed rape (look out for all the bright blue speedwell in between) to the barrow (the wide gate here was propped open). So I'd say it was pretty accessible now (compared to when Kammer visited), assuming you can make the distance from the road.
I did notice on the barrow that there were patches of violets, strawberry, dogs mercury, arum, and something decidedly oniony looking which I assume will be in flower soon, along with the patches of bluebells. So, I heartily recommend it for a spring visit soon.
|
Showing 1-20 of 83 fieldnotes. Most recent first | Next 20 |
This hill, it has a meaning that is very important for me, but it's not rational. It's beautiful, but when you look, there's nothing there. But I'd be a fool if I didn't listen to it.
-- Alan Garner.
..I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn..
-- William Wordsworth.
|
Log in |
Register
Top of page