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.

When we went to Gwent (and Cardiff)

Once again, it was the time of year when the Severn tunnel is closed for maintenance - very important - and whoever it is who runs the railways these days fails to put on an even half-decent replacement coach service between Cardiff and Bristol. Not wanting the Northerner to have to return home via Gloucester and, per chance, Swindon, I drove him to and from work on the days it was possible for me to do it - four in all.

Although eight hours is a long day out, I wanted to stay in Wales if I could, to reduce costs and my carbon footprint, but one day was forecast to be full of heavy rain and thunderstorms, and another over 30°C, so on those days I made the two round trips, regretting my decision the second day when it took me two and a half hours to cover the 36 miles from home to his workplace on Newport Road in extreme heat. 

The other two days were hot but not oppressively so, so Cwtch and I pored over walk books and websites and found two places in nearby Gwent for us to visit.

First stop, the Sirhowy valley, in the next valley from where Son the Younger used to live, so full of familiar skylines. The outward leg of our circular walk started just south-west of Crosskeys and took us along a disused railtrack, the former signal box now seeing service as a toilet. 

high above the River Sirhowy

sycamore and whitethorn

foxglove

It's an easy walk through the woods, though given the number of little streams crossing the path, I imagine it must be muddy in places when it's not summer.

There were some quite steep steps to climb at the point where our route turned back on itself, which caused my knees to grumble a bit, but we made it. 

Cwmfelinfach

Returning along a higher path, there were some lovely views along the valley to where the Sirhowy meets the River Ebbw. I was thrilled to hear both a cuckoo and a curlew.

non-native fiddleneck

enough hemlock water dropwort to poison the entire population of the British Isles

one of many self-seeded alders lining the path

broad-leaved marsh orchid

marsh valerian

The worst bit of the walk was right at the end when our route took us down an extremely steep, stony path to our starting point, but again I managed to negotiate it without doing myself any damage. I think I might try the longer walk through Sirhowy Country Park next time, as it's definitely worth a revisit.

Our second destination in Gwent was Wentwood , formerly ancient woodland that was part of Chepstow Castle's hunting grounds and is now mostly conifer plantation (though the long and laborious job of replanting native species has started). I was following a walk I'd found online that would take me to the Curley Oak, reputed to be between five hundred and a thousand years old.

                                                   

distant view of England adrift across the Severn

Our route took us past not one but two Bronze Age round barrows in a truly lovely spot.

Fallow deer slots

The track through the woods was still quite muddy in places, despite the warm and (mainly) dry summer weather we've been having.

heath-spotted orchid

honeysuckle

yellow pimpernel

Our route to the oak relied heavily on waymark posts, rather than giving estimated distances between instructions, which was a shame as many of them were no longer in place. Much of the time I had to guess whether a path was the right one, and we did get a bit lost, but not in that trackless-middle-of-the-wildwood way; it was more 'well, I'm pretty sure the car park is back in that direction so I'll take this path for now and head left when I get a chance'. I made a few of my own waymarks for the return leg. 

Eventually - having been distracted by its fence and missed it altogether - we looped back around and reached the Curley Oak. I have to say, it looks rather older than five hundred years to me.

As is the custom with ancient trees, people had left little gifts for it, the most striking of which were limpet shells. I'd picked up a bit of blue pottery earlier on our route, so I left that.

I felt a bit of a pang standing there, as Curly was my father's old nickname and the name his grandchildren called him. I'd have liked to have learnt about this tree thirty years ago, when he was still strong and I could have walked to see it with him. But in any event, it was a stunning high point for a walk.

Since I was in the area with time to spare, I did stop off in Cardiff to visit another memorable tree, this one a London Plane near Roath Park that's in the process of eating a Victorian pillar box. 

And I also got to while away a couple of hours in a favourite spot in Llandaff, namely the wild bit of the graveyard in the Cathedral precinct. Even under the trees it was hot, though, so Cwtch and I headed down to the River Taff where there was a bit of a breeze.

Cwtch is still too scared of water to chase the ducks, thankfully.

It must have been during the 1980s that I last stood in this spot. Much water over the weir since then.