A day of magic

A few miles away from us on top of a hill is something marked on the map as ‘fort’. I was vaguely aware that it was something prehistoric but in all my forty years of living in this part of the world had never visited it. Frog hadn’t either and he loves things prehistoric. So yesterday, in line with our new policy of avoiding all beauty spots (and as per local Lockdown guidelines) and instead exploring Devon's unknown hinterland, we set off to climb it.

It was a short drive cross-country on icy back roads, so we took it carefully, only for me to nearly lose my footing on sheet ice as I climbed out of the car.

 

 
Frog then spent a long time deciding where best to park so as to keep out of the way, eventually backing uphill on to a grassy verge opposite the church. 

He had to crawl into the passenger seat to get out of car, which he did head first, falling into the frosty grass, while the dog watched, puzzled. Parking is always a problem when you venture where others don’t.

There were only a few scattered houses – no village - but the church was huge.

 

We made our way down the lane to the start of the footpath, me hanging on to the dog lead and trying not to slip as Ellie surged forward, panting with excitement. It’s always surprising how strong she is.
 
Most of the path was uphill through trees where the mud was frozen into ruts and snow lingered. It was the first snow we’d seen as ours at home hadn’t settled. I began to feel excited. I love snow (unlike Frog).

I’d done some research and discovered that ‘hill forts’ are Iron Age villages protected by ditches and banks, but I didn’t hold out much hope for this one as any I’d seen before were hidden in undergrowth and more imaginary than real.
 
We came out into the open. The sun blazed down, and ahead of us was the unmistakable outline of something.

As we came nearer, we could see massive banks and massive ditches.

 

We went through a massive opening . . .

 
. . . into an enormous arena whose ramparts were almost completely intact, stretching all the way round in a circle.

It was extraordinary, perfect. Like Avebury without the stones. I was gobsmacked. How come I never knew?
 
The dog was, if anything, even more intoxicated by the place and the snow than I was. She threw herself on to her back and wriggled in ecstasy, pedalling her legs like an upturned beetle.

She then sicked up her breakfast next to the sign board. Oh dear.

The views were 360 degree, with a snowy Dartmoor to the south-west and a snowy Exmoor to the north. It was stunning. There was no one there but us.

 
I followed Ellie to have a look at a snowperson someone had built, only to realise afterwards, when I downloaded the photo, that my shadow – and the snowperson - and the fort’s northern gateway - were in a line and that I’d probably taken the picture at about midday. Spooky. And I normally try not to have shadows in photos so how this one got there, I don't know. 

It made me wonder whether, like Avebury, the site dated back to the Stone Age when people erected stones in circles - and rows and singly - related to the movements of the sun and/or for spiritual purposes (or at least that's what we think they're for. We can never know for sure. I find that tantalising). That would make the site thousands of years older than the 500 BC to which the Iron Age village was said to date. It certainly felt like it. 

 
Frog needed his lunch, so we propped ourselves on a section of bank, Frog at the top in the wind and Ellie and me hunkered further down in shelter.

 

I think that’s a fox earth next to us. I hope we didn’t disturb the occupant.

Incidentally, there should be a line of snowy hills on the horizon in most of these pictures, but it hasn't come out. Pity.
 
A family appeared in the circle and Ellie raced off to say hello to the child who squealed in terror. She wouldn’t come back when we called and we felt very bad although the child’s mother and grandmother told us not to worry.
 
We retreated to the snowy north ditch with the miscreant.

There was no round walk so we had to retrace our footsteps. Back at the car, while Frog changed his walking boots for shoes he could drive in, Ellie and I toured the graveyard with its snowdrops.

Many of the stones bore the name of the family who owned the nearby historic house – somewhere else I’d never visited. Another day perhaps (not that I’m that keen on historic houses) as Frog wanted to go home. He’d had enough trauma for one day, what with the ice and the snow, the worry about where to leave the car, a new walk where we might have got lost, and the dog. He’d shouldered it all, while I’d had a day of magic. Thank you Frog.

New moon, new broom

At 4.44pm on Wednesday the 13^th, the moon was new. I know this because of our moon calendar.

I get one every year by post from Mystery Arts in Brighton. It’s lovely to look at and, as well as keeping us up to date with what the moon is doing and telling us about eclipses and astrological signs, it helps me with my veg garden. I sew and plant out when the moon is new and waxing. This does make a difference. They’ve proved it on ‘Gardeners’ World’! (For more on this fascinating subject, you could do worse than investigate ‘biodynamic agriculture’.)

 
And if the moon affects plants, it might also affect us, which might account for my recent flurry of cleaning and gardening. Other factors of course are the new year, the lockdown, a few fine days and the fact that I don’t have a big writing project on at the moment (for various reasons which I might go into another time) and so am twiddling my thumbs looking for things to do.
 
First up (as they say) was my workroom. I can’t remember when I last cleaned it and the floor was beginning to scrunch underfoot with a mixture of shredded paper, sewing debris and dead flies.

Dust covered the surfaces.

Ropes of cobwebs decorated the ceiling.

The filing tray overflowed and the storage system under my desk had descended into chaos.

The only neat area was my collection of reference books.

Two bin bags of paper for recycling, several buckets of dirty water, a rattling vacuum cleaner, one visit to the tip and three days later and my room shone with order and cleanliness.

 

Next on the list was the garden. I tore Frog away from the Mini kit car he’s rebuilding (also another story) . . .

Frog's 'Hustler' in 1985 decorated with records for Exeter University Rag Week

 
. . . and we tackled what we call ‘the big bed’, a shrubbery which had become infested with brambles  and grown so tall it obscured our view. (There were no blackberries left so it was a good time to make some changes: we wouldn't be depriving the birds.) Frog wielded chain-saw and bill-hook and I pulled with my new bramble-proof gloves. Two days' work later and we had three large piles on the lawn.

What we do with them now we haven’t yet decided. The birds are loving them, using them as a waiting area for the bird table and investigating them as sources of nest material.

We can now see what we actually have left in the bed and through to slices of our lovely view. . . 

 
We left this leggy mahonia . . .

. . . because the flowers were turning into berries and apparently (I checked) the birds love them. (Humans can eat mahonia berries too, but I’m not sure I’ll try.)

 
Likewise this ivy on a dead apple tree (left).

The spindly trees you can see in the centre of the picture above and in this one below . . .

. . . are elms, which have grown as suckers from a tree which used to live here until it got too tall, contracted Dutch elm disease and died (the beetle which spreads the disease only flying above a certain height). We've since cut their tops off, both so that they survive and in the hope that they will bush out and help fill our now rather sparse shrubbery. I'm all for native species.*

 
I wanted to do this post last weekend for Kate’s blog link-up party on the theme of ‘new’ but it wasn’t ready. Instead I’m doing it in advance for this weekend's (22nd to 24th) on the theme ‘moon’, and sneaking in the ‘newness’ that should have been there last week. Do take a look the party and maybe even upload something of your own - it's very easy.

*I had a feeling elm wasn't native so I checked and here's what I discovered (from various sources). There are two sorts of elm - Wych elm and English elm. Wych elm is the only true native, but grows naturally only in the northern half of the UK. The English elm is thought to have been introduced by Bronze Age people from southern Europe, and this is the version in our garden. I find these elms easy to distinguish from other trees by their ultra-knobbly bark and the strange thickness at the bottom of small branches. (Wych elms on the other hand have smooth bark.)

The ultra-knobbly bark of English elm

The strange branches of English elm

Nature washing over you

Here are three recent walks that I didn’t want to go on because of the weather – and the time of year – and the global pandemic - but which turned out to be full of fun and interest. As Kate of ‘I live, I love, I craft, I am me’ says, ‘Sometimes it is hard to get past that initial ‘grump’ then suddenly you feel nature washing over you and you feel so much better.’ Thank goodness for dogs who drag us out.

Ten days ago

Two noisy collies used to race over this stream and nip your ankles. It was a little unnerving and one friend wouldn’t even walk this way because of them, so one day I wrote a letter to the farmer explaining what was happening and saying that I didn’t want his dogs to cause severe injury and get into trouble. I had a very nice letter back, the farmer promising to fence his side of the stream and put a gate on the bridge, which is exactly what he did. Peace now reigns - for which I'm grateful (in spite of my opinions on fences).

The stream, the bridge and the gate

Oh dear, here’s one of those signs that make me see red. It’s children I worry about. Do they ever get the chance to be out in the countryside by themselves, to explore and play and use their imaginations?

The unwelcoming sign

There are lovely views, however, a little further on. I’ve seen red deer here twice and there’s a heronry in the trees below. In spring, you can watch the birds coming and going from their tangled-twig nests in the treetops. There’s not much life in evidence today though, in the depths of winter on such a cold day.

Lovely views

And there’s plenty of woodland here accessible from the path.

Accessible woodland

Oh dear. Here’s a new fence.

A new fence

 And what about this? I call this sort of footpath a ‘gulag’. (The bridge is for the animals.)

The gulag

We come to a fork and I say to Frog, ‘We can either take the easy but boring top path or we can take the interesting lower one which goes through the watermeadows. They’re much prettier but they’re wet at the best of times.’ 

The watermeadows

He surprises me by choosing the second option.

We hang on to each other and try to negotiate the mud without falling flat on our faces.

 

Negotiating the mud

As we reach dry land, I say to Frog, ‘I’m so glad you chose the lower path. That was the best bit of the walk. It was an adventure.’

He surprises me again by agreeing.

Two days ago

It’s Sunday and lockdown and people stream round the lanes and paths which I’ve had to myself for four decades. I don’t know where they all come from but I suspect Exeter, whose new housing estates are spreading our way, and from a new town which has sprung up a few miles to the east of us.

Nevertheless I’m charmed by a clump of gorse in flower as ever, some bedraggled left-over red campion and some toadstools projecting horizontally from the hedgebank. What on earth are they? They look like felted drumsticks.

Red campion

 

What are these toadstools?

Yesterday
 
We’re in what I call ‘Deliverance country’, Devon’s interior. As a neighbour says, herself a farmer, ‘You wonder if some of the people who live there have ever seen another human being before.’ The countryside is what I imagine most of Devon once was: rushing streams, tangled woods and small steep fields.

 We descend to one such stream and find a brave primrose shivering in the leaf litter.

Now we have to cross the stream, well churned by cattle. Ellie charges through, splashing mud up our trousers. Frog treads warily. He’s wearing walking boots which reach only to his ankles. I’m wearing wellies so I wade over, trying each foot before putting my weight on it, remembering a time when I sank into quick-mud and had to abandon a wellie, throw myself forwards and crawl out (then walk home filthy and one-booted).

 
Next we have a muddy slope to negotiate. Frog chooses this route, the long less-steep one. Just to be different, I choose the short precipitous one, the other side of the bramble clump, thinking that I see well-worn footprints that I can use as steps. I can’t. The whole area is treacherous and, with only brambles to hold on to, I imagine myself hurtling down backwards, head over heels. I have a few nasty moments.

 
At the top, we decide it’s time for lunch and get out our egg sandwiches, tangerines and coffee. Ellie whimpers under her breath, hoping we’ll take pity on her and share our food. We don’t. We’re wise to her by now (after ten and a half years).
We wonder about the green pimples all over the grass.
‘Perhaps they’re fairy houses,’ I say whimsically.
‘Maybe,’ says Frog. ‘I did think I saw a door in one.’
I suddenly feel terribly excited. ‘Where?’
It turns out to be a leaf.

We have a choice of routes, but there’s not much in it. Each is as muddy as the other.

The unmetalled road

The bridleway (right)

A blue waterpipe dangles through the trees, reminding us of Greece where utilities are hit and miss, especially on the islands.
 
We descend to a hamlet, so damp and deep that the lichen on the trimmed hedge looks like a forest of miniature Christmas trees.

My back’s beginning to ache so we rest at the gateway to a farm. Two muscular collies charge out barking, look us over, and then wander off, having decided that we’re OK. I feel honoured.
 
A man on a tractor raises his hand to us in greeting. He's the only person we've seen all day.
 
A speckled grey collie who I remember as snarly from a previous visit, potters out to see us in silence and then hangs about shyly as if she remembers us.
 
I love it here. It’s my sort of place.

Geoffrey Grigson, Samuel Palmer, John Clare and me*

A long time ago in the days when I earned money as a writer and editor and did my research not on the internet but in libraries (among other places), I came across a fascinating book. It was called The Englishman’s Flora (rather unfortunately, but those were sexist days – even more so than now) and it listed all the country names for wildflowers as well as some of the folklore associated with them. It was a big beautiful hardback, available for reference only.

This summer, when I was inspired to write about my passion for wildflowers – because it was a beautiful summer, because walking in the countryside was mostly what I did and because Kate of the blog I live, I love, I craft, I am me took an interest in my blog and gave me confidence, I looked out for the book again and discovered that it now lived in the library’s ‘stack’ – that mysterious dusty cellar where old books went to die – and that it could actually be ordered and borrowed. So I borrowed it.

Original version

It was, I found, first published in 1955 and is not even listed on Amazon. A second-hand 1987 reprint on the other hand is listed as ‘from £430’. And I had the original in my hands. What’s more, because of the on/off Lockdown, I could keep it for as long as I liked (unless someone else wanted it which didn’t seem very likely). Libraries are wonderful places.

1987 version

I looked into the author too, which was the poet Geoffrey Grigson, husband of the cookery writer Jane Grigson and father of Sophie Grigson, cookery writer and occasional television cook. He’d also written a book called Samuel Palmer: the Visionary Years. I borrowed that too because I knew that Samuel Palmer, a painter, had lived for a time in the village where I was brought up – Shoreham in Kent. It turned out that those visionary years were his time in my village. I wasn’t surprised, but at the same time none of his pictures conveyed the place to me. The colours were wrong for a start.

A painting of Shoreham by Samuel Palmer

Then, a week ago, I borrowed a book of Geoffrey Grigson’s called Poems of John Clare’s Madness, both because I’m fascinated (and terrified) by madness and because of my interest in John Clare. As I said in my recent post ‘May every cage be open’, John Clare is known for his nature poetry and for the madness caused by separation from the countryside of his childhood. I could relate to that, seeing as mine is now the M25, but I didn’t know how I knew that about him and felt that I ought to find out for myself. (And both GG and I are using the word ‘madness’ in its English sense of ‘insanity’, not the American one of ‘anger’. Incidentally, this applies to the title of my blog as well.)

John Clare aged 27 

John Clare in a mental asylum, aged 51

Then, although I don’t normally read poetry, I thought I might read some of John Clare’s, and I started with the one whose title leapt out at me. I loved it and reproduce it here for you. (As far as I know, it’s not in copyright but if you disagree do please let me know.) Amazingly, it was written while he was in the mental asylum where he spent 28 years.

Clare hated punctuation apparently and fought with his editors. I hated the punctuation in the printed poem and so have taken the ENORMOUS liberty of removing or changing nearly all of it. I've also taken out some of the capital letters, especially those at the beginning of lines, because to me they were unnecessary and misleading. (One day I ought to try and look at Clare's original manuscripts, if they exist.)  

I Am

I am, yet what I am none cares or knows

My friends forsake me like a memory lost
I am the self-consumer of my woes.
They rise and vanish in oblivious host
like shadows in love’s frenzied, stifled throes
and yet I am, and live like vapours tost.
 
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise
into the living sea of waking dreams
where there is neither sense of life or joys
but the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems,
even the dearest that I love the best
are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.
 
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
a place where woman never smiled or wept
there to abide with my creator, God
and sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept
untroubling and untroubled where I lie - 
the grass below, above the vaulted sky.

                        John Clare (1793-1864)

*The ‘and me’ bit in this title is partly an ironic nod to the current fashion for adding it to the title of every television programme. I'd hate you to think I was conceited.