Arbor Low

thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Mar 20, 2016

November 1997 – Epiphany

My 24th birthday is looming and G/F and I have been together 6 months. We decide to go away for our first holiday together. The Peak District sounds nice and it’s close and cheap, as well as accessible by bus and train. My Dad lends me a map, a great big double-sided thing at 1/25000.

The cottage in Youlgreave has another huge wall-mounted Ordnance Survey map in it. I love maps and I’m soon scanning it to see what’s around and about. We squelched our way to Robin Hood’s Stride the day before, in rain and mud, noticing but not paying much attention to some “standing stones” across the field from us. Today looks like a better day, and there’s this thing, in antiquity type-face: Arbor Low Henge. Like Stonehenge? Sounds impressive. I wonder what it is? It’s not that far away, 3 miles or so.

The walk along quiet country lanes through Middleton gives way to a busier road, where quarry lorries speed by and there’s no verges. At length we get to a farm turning, with a box to put some money. What are we paying to see? We head across fields towards an undulating bank, which reminds me of hillfort ramparts I’ve seen back in Herefordshire.

But inside, it’s something else entirely. A ring of large stones, lying flat like a giant clockface. This first trip, in failing November light, I don’t really notice the wide views, nor do I notice the big mound of Gib Hill close by. I’m too overwhelmed by the stones to notice much else. I ask G/F what’s it for, what’s it all about? She doesn’t have an answer. I don’t understand at this point that those questions don’t have answers. Or they have too many answers.

After a while we return to the road, the truck-dodging even less pleasant as the short day comes to its end. I don’t realise quite what’s happened today.

Before we leave we revisit the marvellous bookshop in Bakewell, which yields a softback book that catches my eye: A Guide To The Stone Circles Of Britain, Ireland & Brittany by Aubrey Burl. It will be another year before I really wake up to the seed that’s been planted here, in a muddy Derbyshire field. When we return the following November for another birthday, G/F has lugged my birthday present here on the train, hidden in our luggage. It’s a huge hardback book, a piece of art resplendent in orange and blue. It smells wonderful and it’s full of promise and potential.

The journey that has occupied the best part of two decades, taking me to the hills, to west Cornwall, Wiltshire, Scotland and especially to Wales began that day. It’s brought me here, to this website and the wonderful people that contribute to it. It’s eaten my time and my money, but has returned something so much more precious. I don’t think it will stop now, until I do.