According to legend the ghosts of Arthur and his knights make a periodic nocturnal ride over the hilltop and down to Sutton Montis below, where their horses drink at a spring. This is reputed to happen on Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Night, or Christmas Eve, or every seventh year, so the ghosts may be difficult to catch riding.
I have kept the vigil twice without seeing them, but perhaps I chose the wrong night; and I do recall walking along the uppermost rampart in pitch darkness, and hearing, far below in the woods, the sound of a flute.
p45 in ‘The Landscape of King Arthur’ by Geoffrey Ashe (1987). Hmm. A flute – or maybe pan pipes?? Spooky.
The name of the highest part of the plateau can be traced to at least the same kind of time (1586): ‘Arthur’s Palace’. Curiously, (although no trace was known before excavation) there actually was a timber hall on that spot in the 5th century – the era that an ‘Arthur’ would have lived. There was also a gatehouse (in the gap in the top rampart to the SW) and the whole perimeter was protected by a 16ft thick fortification made of stone and wood. Such a type and size of structure is apparently very unusual for this period – so ‘Camelot’ is actually quite credible as the headquarters of a king or regional chief, according to Ashe’s book.