The ruined church and kissing trees of Lancaut

 

My walking book for the Wye Valley and the Forest of Dean tells me that the first time I visited the ruined, 12th century Church of St James at Lancaut was twenty-five years ago in February 2001, with my now ex-husband and our four children. I remember this walk well; it was during February half-term, the first cases of foot-and-mouth in what would be a devastating outbreak had just occurred, and I was desperate to get out for a walk before the countryside was closed down completely. 

The second walk was eight years later, in October 2009. This time I was with my late collie, Ted, who was just a puppy and my initials had changed, as had my marital status (or at least my divorce was under way). 

It's now nearly 17 years since that second walk, so ... high time I went back. Though I wouldn't be retracing my steps today; it's far too hot right now for me and Cwtch to go clambering over the boulders that form part of the route alongside the River Wye. Instead, I decided to drive to the car park high above the Lancaut promontory and walk down through the woods instead.

A fellow dog-walker warned me that cows were loose down by the church, so I put Cwtch back on the lead as a precaution (though unlike the aforementioned Ted, she's far more likely to hang back behind me than charge at such large, lumbering creatures). We sat on a stone stile for a time, in the hope they'd wander off so we might explore the ruins, but they didn't, so we had no choice but to brave them. A fair bit of staring each other down ensued, but we reached the church without incident.

St James, such as it is, is all that's left of the village of Lancaut, which, after centuries of dwindling population numbers, was finally abandoned in the 19th century. Just outside, there's a socket stone that presumably once held a stone cross. 

The lead font that belonged to the church now stands in the Lady Chapel in Gloucester Cathedral.

The piscina

I was sorry to see that someone has scratched some crude religious slogans on the 17th century ledger stones. Here's how one of them looked in 2009:

The cows were still hanging about while we were inside the church, but then disappeared, much to our relief. We explored the outside ...

... carefully avoiding what remained of a poor, dead thrush ...

... and then headed down to the very edge of England. 

In addition to the church, I wanted to find two trees I'd seen online, an ash and a sycamore, that are growing so close to each other they've become inosculated - ie 'kissing'. This is a fanciful way of saying that their trunks and branches rubbed against each other, wearing away the bark, so that they are now fused and share the same support systems, maybe even being the same tree. Or not. All I knew about their/its location was that they/it are/is near the ruined church on the banks of the Wye. 

Lancaut's horseshoe meander, looking downstream towards the cliffs of Wintour's Leap

I decided they must be a little way along the river bank, but the footpath was temporarily closed, presumably because of this downed tree (which means we wouldn't have been able to do the Chepstow to Lancaut walk even if we'd tried). I resigned myself to not seeing them this time, and headed back up through the woods by a different route ...

... encountering on the way this magnificent oak, which has clearly lost several enormous branches recently.

And then, as I sank onto a bench thoughtfully positioned at the top of a particularly steep flight of steps, I saw, off to one side, the kissing trees.

sycamore and ash

Obviously, I didn't have time to get to know them intimately, but I wouldn't mind betting their pronouns are they/them. 

hoggin

pheasant, jay, blue tit, thrush, tawny owl

Remembering the beauty of Chris Palmer

It was a dark day in mid-February when I arrived home from a morning out with my sons to the news that our friend, Chris Palmer, had had a brain haemorrhage and was undergoing an operation in hospital. As the days have lengthened and the light has come back, my delight in the renewal of spring has been tempered by worry and feelings of helplessness towards Chris and her wife, Jinny; how they were and what was going to happen, as hope ebbed and flowed. Like many others, I carried them with me everywhere I went.

On Wednesday night came the news that Chris had died. Yesterday I drove up to Symonds Yat, wanting to be by the river, in nature, on the edge of one land and another. I thought there might be solace there, but didn't find it. (There were maps, but they can be hard to read.) 

Chris was a leatherworker, an artist and a writer, with a profound empathy for the natural world. She was the sort of person who, if you were lucky enough to make a connection with her - and so many were - she would open her life to you and it would feel like a homecoming. When I think of who she was, I can see she was the epitome of an old soul, countering more than her share of tribulation with the unrelenting beauty that permeated her work, and an attitude of curiosity, gentleness and fun. 

The satchel of poetry

I felt quite desolate when she and Jinny left the west end of the Kennet & Avon canal a few years ago and travelled east and then north-west on NB Netty to be nearer family, but it was easy to stay connected, through discussions about poetry and our MA studies at Manchester Writing School with Jinny, and through Chris's wonderful art and the entertaining blog she'd post daily on Skyravenwolf's Facebook page, where she had a devoted following. Chris and I would message too, from time to time, occasionally addressing a painful set of circumstances we had in common with each other. There were no answers for either of us, but I found comfort in our communion, and came to understand that the inability to resolve this particular issue is not necessarily the disaster I'd previously imagined it to be. Ultimately the responsibility we have is to our own lives, and Chris met that responsibility head on, day after day, regardless of any troubles she might have had. In this she has shown me how to live.

We all wanted Chris to be restored to us. We wanted more evidence of how wondrous life was to shore up our own existences. More beauty, more beauty, we cried, open-beaked and demanding. But I think Chris had learnt her lesson for this lifetime so well, she was, in the end, complete. The Finished Chris.

At the same time, I realise how this conclusion is scant comfort for those who were closer to her than me, who now have a void punched through every minute of every day.

People say rest well at this point, don't they, but I'm going to wish for strength and ease in joint and sinew, and enough leather, tools, paper and paints to keep Chris happy and occupied until the rest of us catch her up. 

A truncated tour of Chepstow Castle

Son the Younger's car was due for an MOT and service in Newport, and since the weather forecast was good and since he's moving Up North (to Coventry) soon, I decided to make the most of him, and spare him the misery of hours spent waiting in Dunelm for it to be ready.  

On previous such occasions we've been to Porthcawl and Merthyr Mawr, Llandaff Cathedral and the Welsh Folk Museum at St Fagan's, and Kenfig Burrows. This time we headed east to Chepstow ... 

... and its monstrous castle which, I'm ashamed to say, I've never been inside in all my 60 years, despite having lived within 12 miles of it ever since the opening of the old Severn Bridge in 1966. 

I say monstrous because it really is - a colossal weapon of mass oppression, the building of which was started in 1067 by Baron William FitzOsbern, a Norman warlord. This makes it the earliest stone castle in Wales; yea, verily, the oldest surviving post-Roman stone fortification in Britain. Look at these buttresses:

Marten's Tower, c1270 - 1306 (but named for regicide Henry Marten, who was imprisoned there from 1668 to 1680) 

The gatehouse, c1189 - 1219

And the original castle doors, which have been dendrochronologically tested, date from at least the 1190s, and are the oldest castle doors in Europe.

They look like they could do with a lick of creosote, though.

The castle is built atop limestone cliffs that form a ridge of land between the River Wye and a small valley known locally as the Dell. 

In the cellars of the Lower Bailey you can see where provisions would have been winched up from boats moored below the castle walls.

The cellar steps

Doorway into the Middle Bailey

Unfortunately - given that it had taken me so long to visit - the Great Tower, which is the oldest part of the building, the Gallery, the Upper Bailey and the Upper Barbican are all currently out of bounds, owing to conservation work. Although the people we saw wandering around at that end of the Castle looked more like speleologists than conservationists. 

The Great Tower is the oldest section of the Castle, the part Baron William FitzOsbern built, incorporating some already worked blocks of stone from the Roman ruins at nearby Caerwent.  We did get to see the typically Norman chip-carving on the tympanum, though, and an overhead gull ...

... which made a change from all the feral pigeons copulating in various crannies.

Another ancient door leads into Marten's Tower ...

... where's there's quite a lot of old graffiti on the walls.

Inside Marten's Tower

The romantic Chapel window, with nature imitating art

Views from the top of Marten's Tower included:

Across the Lower Bailey to the Wye

The Priory Church of St Mary and the old Severn Bridge

The 1816 Chepstow Bridge

Look, I'm the same height as a Norman warlord! (Or did they have to stoop?) 

After we'd done with the Castle, we made for The Cwtch cafe (where else?) for a little lunch and then headed to the Priory Church of St Mary, in the floor of which the aforementioned Henry Marten is buried. I'd run out of charge for my phone by then, but Son the Younger kindly took a photo of one of my favourite ever tombs, that of local benefactor Margaret Cleyton, who died in 1627, her two husbands, and twelve children (ten of them girls).  

It's the skeleton that fascinates me with its unfeasibly pristine teeth. (I do wonder how faithful was the restoration the tomb underwent in 1967.)

And then, after a ceremonial stand in the middle of the old Chepstow bridge, where Wales becomes England, it was back to Newport to drop Son the Younger off at the garage and home to Cwtch, who is now poised to learn how to ignore me in two languages.