Visiting the White Horse and its Blacksmith

The situation was agonising to say the least. I'd just dropped Son the Elder off in Oxford for a day of roboteering when my left shoulder - the nominally non-impinged one, which had been muttering under its breath since the previous day, but which I'd chosen not to indulge - decided to have a full-on tantrum, with pain shrieking down my arm and into my wrist and hand. Luckily, StE managed to arrange an alternative lift for the home leg, which meant I wouldn't have to hang around all day. I still had to drive the seventy miles back home, though, which promised to be tortuous.

Back in the sunlit uplands of pre-pain, I'd planned a tour of churches with connections to the Arts and Crafts Movement, followed by a walk along the dream-road that is the Ridgeway to Waylands Smithy, which I'd never visited, despite having paid my respects to the Uffington White Horse on several occasions. I decided the churches could bide their time for now, but since the White Horse car park was more or less en route, why not break my journey and give my arm a bit of a rest by doing that part of my itinerary? 

The ancient Ridgeway is a track running from Overton Hill near the West Kennet long barrow in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire. Son the Younger and I walked the southernmost end back in January 2020, with our old dog, Ted.

Somehow, despite running through the heart of Southern England, it manages to be quite remote, and has many ancient archaelogical features along its length, including numerous hill forts to defend what was an important trading route, long and round barrows, and the Uffington White Horse, plus - nearby - Avebury Stone Circles and Silbury Hill. 

Just under a mile and a half to the south east of White Horse Hill car park is Wayland's Smithy, so I set off, ignoring the ache in my arm. It was a joy to feel the old chalk path under my feet again. I don't what it is about chalk that draws me - it's not a landscape from my childhood - but I love its light, both during the day and at night, as well as the grasses and flowers that grow in it, which, on this day, were telling a story about the end of summer.  

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Meadow Crane's-Bill; Field Bindweed; Kidney Vetch; Tufted Vetch; Weld; Climbing (Woody) Nightshade; Butter-and-Eggs (Toadflax); Lady's Bedstraw; Field-Scabious; Red Bartsia; Burnet-Saxifrage; Yarrow; Spear Thistle; Harebell; Knapweed; Red Campion; Hogweed; Field Scabious again; Great Hairy Willowherb; Bird's-Foot-Trefoil

Shrill Carder Bee

 

For much of the time a red kite circled overhead, so I kept scanning the ground, as I'd love to add a red kite feather to my collection, but the track is well frequented and, as last year at Watlington Hill, I had no luck. 

Looking back to White Horse Hill

Wayland's Smithy

Wayland's Smithy reminded me very much of West Kennet long barrow, except you can't get inside it. It's actually two barrows constructed one on top of the other, with the remains of fourteen people having been discovered inside the earlier construction.

It felt very special, very atmospheric there.

I then retraced my steps along the Ridgeway and then climbed White Horse Hill.

Looking back the way I came

My arm was pretty painful still, so I decided, as I'd done it some years ago, not to explore the hill fort this time. I did wince my way up to the vantage point near the Horse's head, though, and it was worth it. 

The dry valley that is the Manger

Next time I must make sure my route takes me over Woolstone Hill, the best vantage point for the Horse (other than a hot air balloon). And not leave it so long before I get chalk beneath my boots again.

A flying visit to Alderley Edge

The writer Alan Garner has been a travelling companion of mine ever since I was nine, when our teacher, Miss Ward, read 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' to our class, and our recent holiday in Lancashire offered the opportunity to visit Alderley Edge, where so many of his stories are set, on the journey up.

Except the Northerner realised he'd lost his phone the morning of our trip, and the ensuing (fruitless) search meant we were late leaving, and this in turn meant we had to postpone our visit to Cheshire till the return journey - a very different prospect, because by then the focus would have switched from forthcoming-holiday-adventure to getting-home-and-getting-the-laundry-in-the-washing-machine.

All the same, we were there, and even though it was the Saturday of the August Bank Holiday weekend and the Edge was bearing all the signs of being irrevocably National Trustified, there were, nevertheless, indications that the Morrigan was still in residence.

I'd found a map online of the walk I wanted to do, to take in the main sites of Garner's stories - by Seven Firs and Goldenstone! - but it was only when we'd parked and I looked at it properly that I realised it hadn't printed in full. What's more, the Northerner was still having problems with his knees, which hadn't responded properly to his latest steroid injection, and so we decided - reluctantly, in my case - to follow the blue arrows that marked a much shorter 'Wizard's Wander'.

The Edge was crowded at first, but as we walked further from the car park and tea room, there were fewer people about and something of its wisht-ness was  evident. In places, where there were gaps in the trees, you got a sense of its geography, and how proud of the landscape it stands.

I was delighted when we reached Stormy Point, which features heavily in the stories, with its views towards the Pennines ...

... and even more pleased to find a fragment of blue and white pottery there.

We also reached the Armada Beacon, which consists of a stone-built platform on top of a Bronze Age round barrow, and plays an important role in 'The Moon of Gomrath'. Because the immediate area around it is wooded, it's quite hard to appreciate how high this actual spot is and how visible the beacon would have been from the surrounding area.

The woods were lovely, though, and there were some magnificently gnarly, individual trees, which added to the atmosphere ... 

... as well as lots of fungi. 

I was also thrilled to spot the Goldenstone at the side of a footpath. Believed to be a fallen menhir, it was used as a boundary marker for centuries, and it really does have a golden sheen to it, though it's hard to capture in a photo. It really did feel a bit magical. 

By this stage, the Northerner's knees had had enough, so we decided to go full National Trust and had a cream tea with the nicest scones I've eaten in a long time. (So impressed you can get clotted cream and cider in the north these days.) 

Sadly for me, we missed the Wizard's Well, which is at some distance from the other sites, but this means, of course, that I'll have to go back, and that's a pretty good way to leave a place, I think. And once home there were souvenir feathers from the Morrigan to gloat over, as well a tawny feather, three jay feathers and one from a Great Spotted Woodpecker. A special place.

Dolphinholme, mon amour

After a week of overnight roadworks within earshot of our house - at least, when the bedroom window was open, which, of course, it had to be during the hot nights of August - we were glad our holiday destination was in the middle of nowhere, with only the sound of tawny owls to disturb our sleep. 

It was all very grand. We were issued with a fob that opened the wrought iron gates remotely, like we'd been parachuted into 'Five get into Trouble' and were being admitted into the grounds of the rather sinister Owl's Dene. 

Not that we were staying in the hotel; rather, the coach house from when this place was a private residence. 

And very nice it was too, apart from there being a wasps' nest in the roof when we first arrived. There were acres of land to walk in, which was lovely for our collie, Cwtch, although she had to stay on the lead because there were lots of hares and rabbits already in residence, not to mention sheep and deer. 

Even the fungi was on the decorative side:

The Hall is just a stone's throw from the pretty River Wyre, which flows into the Irish Sea at Fleetwood.

One day we walked up its opposite bank to the village of Dolphinholme, but mostly we viewed it from the grounds of the Hall. 

To the east of our accommodation we could see the western edge of the Forest of Bowland, the same view that was always on the horizon when I was a student. It was in part these hills that made me want to come to Lancaster to study, as they reminded me a little of Dartmoor, but having no car back then, I never got to go up there.

So we did this time. Sadly, we couldn't go for a walk, as although it's access land, dogs aren't permitted, but I drove to the viewing point at Jubilee Tower, near Quernmore, from where we were at least able to get a closer look.

The jubilee in question was the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897.

Ward's Stone

Grit Fell

Clougha Pike

The more well-known names and landmarks were off to the west:

Looking up to Morecambe Bay and the Lake District

Heysham Power station, far right, and Lancaster University in the middle distance

The Lune estuary

Blackpool Tower, left of centre

Snowdonia in the far distance

One place I didn't revisit was the University of Lancaster campus, partly because dogs aren't allowed on site, but also because some things to do with that time are much more comfortably left in the past. I did, however, think it would be good to get to the horseshoe bend in the River Lune called Crook o' Lune, which was the name of the bar in our college, Lonsdale - this being in the original college buildings, which have now apparently been subsumed into neighbouring Bowland College, with Lonsdale rebuilt elsewhere. It was also a fond nickname for the then barman, John Allan, who wasn't averse to pouring a bottle of Crème de Menthe into the juke box when he wanted some peace and quiet, and was a bit of a legend. 

The famous view beloved by John Ruskin and painted by J M W Turner was obscured by mist, which was a bit ironic. 

We set off on a lovely flat path up the River Lune but the Northerner's knees were being particularly cantankerous and we had to turn back, the Crook eluding us on this occasion. I did find a magnificent pheasant tail feather, though, which conjured my grandmother. I wondered if it was the pheasant that was on one of her table mats when I was really small, before the era of the tin ones with their rather more arty scenes of London, but the memory was more tactile than that. Something about her maybe having a tail feather herself at some point, brought back from Scotland by my Auntie Peggy is ringing a distant bell ... or maybe I'm making it up, I can't be sure.

And pleasingly, if unexpectedly, we encountered one of Carol Ann Duffy's Pendle Witch poems, marking a stop on the route the prisoners took from the Pendle area to Lancaster Castle, where they were tried and hanged. 

A holiday Cwtch

Some holiday feathers:

magpie feather from the Wordsworths' garden, crow, jay, pheasant, kestrel, buzzard, tawny owl, mallard, curlew, oystercatcher, song thrush, mistle thrush