Thornbury Wayfinders

Up in the Air

Midsummer’s Day 2014

It was Richard Long’s idea:

ON MIDSUMMER’S DAY 

A WESTWARD WALK

FROM STONEHENGE AT SUNRISE TO GLASTONBURY TOR BY SUNSET

FORTY FIVE MILES FOLLOWING THE DAY

1972

Richard Long is a Bristol artist more famous abroad than at home and walking is a fundamental aspect of his work. 

…

Stonehenge stands in the middle of a charnel ground. Over a hundred assorted burial mounds, tumuli and long barrows pockmark the landscape within two miles of Stonehenge – parts of the countryside look like the surface of the moon on the 1:25000 Ordnance Survey map of the area. 

The stones seem to attract death. 

The latest two memorials mark the new entrance to the site from Airman’s Corner off the A360, which is named after Captain Eustace Loraine, the first airman to die in service in the Royal Flying Corps along with his spotter, Staff Sergeant Richard Wilson in a Belgian built Nieuport monoplane on 6th July 1912 (I don’t believe it!). A second memorial off to the left past Fargo Wood (nothing to do with the Coen brothers homespun murder story) commemorates Major Alexander Hewetson of 66 Battery Royal Field Artillery, who was killed taking his Aviation Certificate test on 17th July 1913.

As I ran towards the stones the skylarks reminded me that although it was not long after 5 am, dawn had passed and some of the thirty six thousand revellers had already begun to stream off the site.

I should be concentrating on the concept. Richard Long recorded only the bare bones of what he did, but I wonder if he was really concentrating on ‘following the day’ as he walked, without being distracted by sights and sounds along the way. If it was a sunny day his shadow would keep him informed of the progress of the day as he walked.

In the end, I didn’t actually try to get to the stones. Instead I turned right parallel to the byway from Larkhill to Druid’s Lodge that had been closed by the local council for the duration of the solstice. It seemed to me that Long’s “Stonehenge at dawn on the solstice” no longer existed. How could it with 36 000 revellers around it and a police presence. 

So, my starting point had become a pair of memorials to pioneers of the Royal Flying Corps and the sound of larks ascending.

I descended to the A303 over grass and the detritus of revelry. 

Past the barriers on the byway, the chalk trackway was easier on the feet than it had been on my bicycle, when I reconnoitred the route earlier, and I overtook revellers returning to their cars parked at Druid Lodge. 

I crossed over the A360 and followed York Road past a red phone box masquerading as a woodshed at York Farm and down to Druid’s Head Farm nestling against Druid’s Head Wood.

The second path opposite the farm descends over Chain Hill down an ultimately overgrown track to Stoford, past the Swan Inn, then right to cross the bridge over the River Wylye into Great Wishford (Wiche-ford, the elm-tree ford). 

I had reached the edge of an ancient forest.

The church on the left is dedicated to St Giles, a forest hermit in France who followed a vegetarian diet and was looked after by a hind that gave him her milk. He got between the deer and the king’s hunters and was crippled by an arrow, after which he came under the protection of the king who made him an abbot.

The pub at the end of the village is the Royal Oak. Great Wishford is intimately connected to the legend of Oak Apple Day, 29th May, which is said to celebrate the restoration of the Merry Monarch, King Charles II, who had hidden in an oak tree after the Battle of Worcester. I had followed the Monarch’s Way footpath, which traces the route of Charles’ flight  from England, when I descended from Chain Hill to Great Wishford. 

On 29th May the villagers enter the woods on the hill to gather an oak bough that is hung from the church tower. This is in pursuance of their right to gather wood in Grovely Wood on Oak Apple Day. To maintain this right they have to go to Salisbury Cathedral and chant “Grovely, Grovely, Grovely and all Grovely” in accordance with a charter confirmed in 1603. It is allegedly a medieval custom going back to 1189.

Before entering a forest, a 14th century Welsh soothsayer would chant:“To the king of spirits & to his queen,Gwyn ap Nudd, you who are yonder in the forest for the love of your mate permit us to enter your dwelling.”Gwyn ap Nudd is a Welsh god, whom neo-pagans associate  with Glastonbury Tor.

The swanimote of 1603 mentioned 14 coppices in Grovely Wood, seven north of Grim’s Ditch and 7 to the south. Ebsbury and Bemerhills are two of the coppices whose names remain on the OS map along with Ashgoe, Hadden and Powten Stone (Stotfield and Radneth are missing). Shortengrove, Himsel, Appledoe, Chilfinch and Thornhills remain to the south. 

It is probably in Shortengrove that the ghost of the Barcombe Woodsman appears. He is either a poacher lynched by hanging in the wood or a watercolourist accidently shot during a deer cull, a reminder of St Giles.

I turned right along Second Broad Drove in Grovely Wood through Four Sisters to Powten Stone. The four Handsel sisters were foreigners from Denmark who arrived in the Wilton area during a smallpox outbreak in which 132 people died in 1737. They were accused of causing death by witchcraft, but this had ceased to be an offence the previous year when the Witchcraft Act of 1736 was passed. So local vigilantes dragged them up into the woods, bludgeoned them to death and buried them there. Four odd looking trees are associated with their graves, and offerings are made there.

This sounds like the sort of things that the Roman and Greek writers attributed to the druids.

Instead of following the main drag that follows the line of a Roman Road, I chose to follow Grim’s Ditch along the northern edge of the woods from the approximate location of the mysteriously missing Powten Stone. This is a very old boundary ditch whose origins have been forgotten, so it is attributed to Grimr, a byname of Odin, which later became an appellation of the Devil. This path had been obstructed by fallen trees, but earlier footsteps had created new paths around them. One tree seemed to be hanging over the path ready to drop on someone’s head!

Grim’s Ditch rejoins the main drag in Dinton Beeches and crosses the road from Wylye to Dinton. On the other side of the road, the route rejoins the Monarch’s Way and the Ox Drove, which has shadowed the southern edge of the wood up from Wilton.

From Dinton Beeches to the roads from the A303 to Teffont Magna and Chilmark, the Ox Drove has a concrete surface bordered by a broad grass verge. Sometimes, when the grass has been cut, it is easier to run on the verge. When the vegetation is tangled and the underlying clods dried hard, as on the solstice, the concrete seems inviting. As my shadow led the way, I tried to concentrate on maintaining my form and lifting my feet behind me in a somewhat superficial attempt to apply Danny Dreyer’s principles as set out in “Chi Running – A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running.” 

I had been trying to follow this system for some months as a follow up to experimenting with minimal shoes – starting with Merrells with Vibram soles and then going on to New Balance Minimus with hexagonal patterned Vibram soles. I found these did not give enough protection to the feet and I ended up with blistered heels in a multi-terrain marathon in Bath. I realised I needed to adapt my running style to the footwear hence Chi Running. I also changed to New Balance MT810s which are fairly level but protect the feet. I think my style has evolved to a midfoot strike, but my worn heels tell a different story!

Danny Dreyer writes, “In Chi running, every foot strike is an opportunity to feel your structure supported by the earth…feel the power of the earth beneath your feet.” Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk goes further. “Consciously make an imprint on the ground  as you step. Walk as the Buddha would. Place your foot on the surface of the earth the way an emperor would place his seal on a royal decree.”

Past the roads from the A303, Ox Drove grows grass between the ruts, tangled in June, forcing decisions – grass or rut – dancing from one to another – alongside Chilmark Down until the track from Manor Farm informs me that it is time to turn right up the bridle path past Hart Copse and across the A303 into the corner of Stockton Wood. The route picks up Grim’s Ditch again and follows it through Fonthill Bushes, twisting up and down the banks round more fallen trees until it reaches a forestry road. 

A right and left turn brought me to another forestry road and the problem of what to do about the bodily necessity brought about by rising at 3-30am. Habits built up over decades required that I imitated the bear in the wood. 

My shadow led me along the forestry road with logs stacked on either side. There is nothing visible to tell me that the forestry plantation conceals Grim’s Ditch on one side and a Roman Road on the other. 

Beyond a crossroad, the route is supposed to follow a bridle path along the line of the Roman Road, but the line has been obliterated by forestry planting, whose serried ranks have little to do with the ancient concept of a forest, which was an area set aside for the protection of wild animals. So, it is necessary to turn right and then left along another forestry road from an iron age enclosure – only visible on the map – along the Great Ridge between Stonehill Copse, Musseldean Copse, Pound Copse and West Wood, where deciduous trees give a more natural impression. Some parts of the woods on Great Ridge still have a natural appearance with random trees and glades resembling the ancient forest that once linked Grovely Woods to the Great Ridge woods without any intervening farmland. Grim’s Ditch winds through the surviving and felled trees separating the parishes clinging to the River Wylye from the settlements in the Nadder Valley. For medieval peasants, the forest along Grim’s Ditch represented the margin of the known world. It is still a blank space on small scale maps.

The forestry road and the bridle path come together between Stonehill Copse and Pound Copse and debouch onto open countryside beside a memorial stone, which commemorates an air crash that took place at Cratt Hill nearby in the parish of Chicklade on 22nd October 1963. 

The plane was a BAC One-eleven G-ASHG that was performing a stall test on a test flight from Wisley Airfield in Surrey. In the process they discovered a deadly effect known as Deep Stall or Superstall, which afflicts jet aircraft whose tail is T-shaped. When the plane stalls, turbulent air from the wing fouls the tail making recovery unlikely, especially when the plane has rear engines like the One-eleven. Seven men died to discover this effect. 

The memorial carries the epitaph, ‘And everywhere the blue sky belongs to them and is their appointed rest and their native country.’ The epitaph is a gloss on the text of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. It seems to be a reference to the albatross.

Finding this stone, on a second visit, after getting lost, was a key experience that led to my reinterpreting the whole project in terms of the Air Element. The Air Element is associated with the Green Buddha, one of the five Tantric Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism. This system differentiates between the Air Element, which is non-dual and supports effortless self-fulfilling action and the dualistic air element, which leads to paranoia and violence. 

The role of green chlorophyll, in the production of oxygen in the atmosphere, connects the air element to the green trees of the forest.

From the memorial, the route goes left along the wood-margin to a pair of storage tanks then right along a bridle path under an accidental avenue, which ensures that mud and standing water survive the heat of summer.

My planned route followed the Roman road across the fields to Lower Pertwood Farm and up onto the access land leading up to Summerslade Down and on to Monkton Deverill, but I couldn’t find the beginning of the track where it was shown on the map, so I went north past Botley Oak Brake and Pertwood Wood to a nameless crossroad on the A350. [I would have tried harder had I known then that Lower Pertwood Farm hosted Big Green Gatherings between 1995 and 2000 and is now an organic farm. I must go back and establish this route because another green connection at this point would be a beautiful example of serendipity. This was also the site of the Tribal Gathering Music Festival in 1993.]

As it was, I headed north ignorant of the fact that Pertwood Wood marked the northern boundary of an extinct civil parish reduced to a single house at Lower Pertwood and a row of cottages, a small church and a manor house at Higher Pertwood. Larks sang and partridges sped away as I jogged along the top of Long Bottom, and I didn’t care.

I arranged to meet Libby at the crossroads off the A350. The crossroads is disconnected from the trunk road. Evidently ‘travellers’ have used this site, so someone has illegally obstructed the northern arm of the crossroads with earth and rubble to keep the travellers off. 

Across the A350 the bridleway heads over Summerslade Down, where the water company was building a reservoir and laying pipes down the other side. The reservoir was incomplete and the scars from pipe laying were still fresh. The first part of the descent had poppies and other weeds of cultivation that attracted larks and other small birds, which flew from my feet. 

The path through the last field was tangled enough to make me appreciate the road through Monkton Deverill and Kingston Deverill, which is flat because it follows the River Wylye, also known as the River Deverill at this point.

Afterthought: I have since discovered the Voice of the Deverills, a duo called Liesmaic and Laura, a.k.a. Deverills Nexion a traditional Nexion of the Order of the Nine Angles. They are a Death Metal group distributed by Todestrieb (Deathwish) Distro. They sound aetherial and I read it as angels rather than angles, but the Order of the Nine Angles are a satanist group who follow the teachings of Anton (rather than Richard) Long. If you were being kind, you could say that the Order of Nine Angles is an extreme form of Tantrism, which aims at self realisation through living alone in the forest for at least three months and extreme physical challenges like running from Stonehenge to Glastonbury Tor! However, there are other aspects like human sacrifice (culling) and links to Nazi organisations, which cross an obvious line!

Past Kingston Deverill, the route goes diagonally up across a field of sheep from the corner of the track up to the Bath, Wiltshire and North Dorset Gliding Club. The path follows the contour for well over a mile, past a tumulus and a wood called Peter’s Penning and round to the end of the airstrip – not easy when your knees are beginning to protest. They winched up a glider as I was underneath and I suddenly realised the cable was going to drop nearby. Luckily they knew what they were doing, so my alarm was unnecessary. 

My nerves were further challenged in the next field, which held a herd of charolais cows with their calves and a bull. They took an unwelcome interest in me but responded to noise and a hand gesture. Nevertheless, I was pleased to get into the next field, which held nothing more alarming than sheep and another mile or more on grass, most of it nibbled short.

The path comes out on a byway from Hindon to Stourton. The route goes right along the byway and down towards Stourhead. It is important to go through the car park to find The Drove, a bridle way down to Stourhead. If you follow Whitesheet Lane, you end up in Kilmington. On this occasion, I decided to cut the corner from an interpretation board on the byway. This told the tale of the 8th Baron Stourton, an arch-papist who quarrelled with his mother and his neighbour, William Hartgill of Kilmington. He ended up kidnapping the old man and his son in Kilmington Church and holding them at Stourhead, where he ordered his men to cut their throats. The Baron was hanged with a silken cord and his four henchmen were hanged in chains.

I crossed the field and followed the edge of a Neolithic Camp and a quarry down to the car park and onto The Drove, which runs through the Beech Clump down to the B3092. 

In the Beech clump is another memorial to an air crash. This commemorates 20 pilots who had been trained in the technique of snatching gliders into the air without landing at Zeals airfield, a couple of miles away. They were being flown back to Leicestershire on Dakota TS436 of No. 107 OTU Leicester East when it crashed into the Beech Clump on 19th February 1945 killing all 20 passengers, all trained pilots. 

At the end of The Drove, the route crosses the road and goes left along the verge and into a strip of wood to a stile into the Stourhead Estate. The path heads towards the house then turns left at a lone oak tree to a kissing gate and a drive leading under an arch onto the road. A path leads up to a car park and a cafe where refreshment and a welcome rest can be had.

Ice cream, coffee, coca cola and ibuprofen restored my legs sufficiently to set off towards Bruton. Evidently, I had not been applying the principles of Chi running sufficiently assiduously. 

I set off out of the car park and left along the road past the Spread Eagle and a grottoed underpass. I heard a crash as I turned off to the right and helped a woman get her bicycle upright before heading up the track past Beech Cottage. I headed up the side of Tucking Mill Hanging and Shady Hanging and up into the woods. I eventually realised I had taken a wrong turn and got out the photocopied maps from my bag. I soon found my mistake but instead of going back to where I had gone wrong (the gate before Tucking Mill Hanging, where I should have gone left) I decided to take a shortcut. The photocopy was not up to the task and the path was blocked by fallen trees. I ended up on a track, where I met a man driving a Range Rover backwards down the trail. He lived in The Convent in the middle of the woods and was able to put me right. The correct route was pretty much the opposite of what I expected. I had no compass and was even more lost than I thought. 

Luckily, I remembered the route I had been given sufficiently well to get back on track, out of the woods onto a minor road and through Blackslough Woods on the Macmillan Way and the Leland Trail.

The Macmillan Way runs from Boston in Lincolnshire to Abbotsbury in Dorset (famous for its swannery) and is designed to raise money for the Macmillan cancer charity. John Leland (or Leyland) known as an antiquary was a functionary of Henry VIII attached to Thomas Cromwell, who had a role in rescuing books from destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The trail is a 28 mile route through Somerset from Alfred’s Tower to Ham Hill. Leland’s service to the Somerset tourist board was connecting King Arthur to Cadbury Camp, which is the main point of the Leland Trail.

The stretch of the route to Redlynch is remarkably straight on the map and nearly as straight on the ground. Intermittent metalling under the grass and the presence of Coachroad Farm halfway along suggests that this is a carriage drive rather than a Roman road or a ley line. A felled wood, some dodgy stiles, asymmetric field boundaries and some aggressively placed wire are enough to ensure attention to detail on this stretch. 

At Redlynch, the route follows Macmillan and Leland to the right  along the road to Redlynch Cross, then left to the end of a row of houses and right into a field. The nettles grew so thickly around the stile that I climbed the gate instead.The route into Bruton requires continued concentration, and I experienced it as rougher underfoot than it really was. The last field requires a diagonal traverse of an arable field, which often feels awkward, when it hasn’t been restored after ploughing as the law demands.

On the road, the route takes the second left down a minor road called Park Wall, past the iconic Dovecote and into Jubilee Park, where I had arranged to meet my wife.

The history of the Dovecote is unclear. But it was built in the 16th Century in the deerpark of Bruton Abbey as a house or possibly a watchtower. It was converted for use as a dovecote in 1780. This is not the ornamental dovecote of bucolic tradition but an industrial production unit for eggs, quabs and guano. There is a similar unit in the remains of Hinton Priory at Hinton Charterhouse, which is no longer open to the public. It is basically a unit for the factory farming of doves. Squabs, which are young doves – fully grown but unable to fly – are the preferred meat source. So the Dovecote is yet another memorial to dead flyers.

Bruton is the settlement on the River Brue, from Celtic briwo meaning ‘lively, vigorous powerful’. reflecting the mill turning power of the river. The route discovers the meaning of the river after it follows the road (possibly Godminster Lane) over the railway, across the A359, into the park opposite down the path to a bridge over the river, where remains of a weir are visible. The route turns left along Lower Backway and round into Mill Lane to cross the High Street into a snicket.

The snicket follows a path alongside the Coombe Brook which spreads out into duck ponds on the right and gurgles behind hedges on the left after emerging from a mill. The route climbs a road and turns left into a path ascending Creech Hill after crossing a ford across the Coombe Brook. After winding round Chorley Hill, the route emerges from the weeds onto a wider track up to a cross track. The first time I came here, I followed the path across the field opposite, which came out onto the road between the farm and the farmhouse. On the solstice, the stile was cut off by a gate, because the farmer was bringing his cows in for milking so I decided to follow the track to the right, where I had to climb a gate to get out onto the road.

I followed the road up Portway Hill. The map shows a RUPP across the field on the left, leading to a footpath down the hill to Lamyatt. There was no evidence on the ground for the RUPP and the footpath proved to be choked in a sea of nettles, when I checked out the route, so I kept to the tarmac all the way to Lamyatt.

In the village, the route follows the road to the right to find a gap between the houses into a field. The path goes diagonally left across the field to a horse gate. It was marked by hoofprints when I followed it, but I suspect it may have become overwhelmed by maize plants. The next gate leads into cattle country – Higher Redlands and Redlands Farm – in the Parish of Milton Clevedon. When I went through last, there was a group of people with cars who appeared to be praying in the corner of a field. The route follows a farm track to a cattle grid  and a bridge over the River Alham, which forms the border with Evercreech.

The route goes right parallel to the river towards Cutterne Mill, then left up some steps by a barn to a cross country path. This is a fairly convoluted way to avoid running up the A371, but it is probably worth it. You have to go right up the main road for a few yards anyway, and then second left into an industrial estate. A gate across the road closes it off to traffic at the weekend, but you can get past on foot. At the end, the path becomes grassy alongside the dismantled railway and then heads left over a stile and the ghost of the track to set out along a service road, over a stream into the countryside. 

That was Evercreech Junction – the remains of a railway cut down by Dr Beeching, I presume. Shame – a railway line to Worthy Farm might have come in handy!

The path from Evercreech junction to Ditcheat was characterised by long grass on top of hard uneven ground and nettle infested stiles; so I was uncharacteristically glad that the next section up Ditcheat Hill to the Fosse Way and on through Little Pennard to East Pennard was on road. The route goes past Paul Nichols’ Racing Stables before the climb and there are views from the hill to take your mind off your legs, and gallops on the left to think about. 

Little Pennard brought up the first signs of the Glastonbury Festival that was on the following week – a lighting unit and a portaloo for the men that would control traffic down Pylle Hill.

In East Pennard, my wife was waiting in front of tepees set up in the grounds of Pennard House.

A little further on there were two men controlling access to Worthy Farm via Cockmill Lane in deck chairs beside lighting and a portaloo similar to those on Pylle Hill. A few yards further on there were men in a van trying to find the right route in. 

I nearly missed the stile in the hedge and the path leading to (West) Pennard Hill Farm. The rising field had acquired generators and lighting and at the top of the field there was a light devouring barrier across the top of the hill – the famous Glastonbury Festival Wall.

Round the corner from Pennard Hill Farm, I found myself on Nob Hill. There was a row of Airstream Silver Bullet caravan trailers lined up on the grass beside the drive and herds of yurts and teepees in the field below, elegantly organised around a marquee.

On the other side of Worthy Lane, a low branch obscured access to the stile onto the path along Pennard Hill. The route through to Windmill Lane, was unexceptional apart from nettles obscuring stiles.

Descending the fields from Windmill Hill to West Pennard, the tower of St Michael’s Church on Glastonbury Tor – hove into view – Glastonbury Tor, the reputed home of Gwyn ap Nudd – Shining Son of Mist – King of Annwn – leader of  the Wild Hunt – King of the People of the Wind. He is mentioned in The Life of St Collen (Buchedd Cohen). Collen, the Abbot of Glastonbury, was on a personal retreat on the Tor, when he was summoned to Gwyn’s fairy palace at the summit. He was invited to eat at a feast attended by comely youths and maids arrayed in red and blue. He refused to eat or drink and sprayed the assembly with Holy Water, which made the whole lot disappear into mist – leaving only grass. Later, a church dedicated to St Michael – the leader of the Heavenly Host was built on the site to make sure that Gwyn ap Nudd never returned.

I made my way down the hill towards St Nicholas’ church in West Pennard and followed the roads right down Breech Lane – left on the A361 – right up East Street – round through East Street Farm. 

The footpath on the other side follows the farm tracks rather than the definitive line on the map – round the edge of the field (no cattle today) – one stile then a narrow bridge over Ten Foot Rhyne. There was still a lying notice on the way into East Street Farm saying the bridge was out, but the hazards were only a wonky stile and a track overgrown with nettles.

At the end of the farm road, the path winds through the vegetable garden to the right of Norwood Park Farm. Then all that’s left is the climb up Stone Down Lane and the steeper climb up Glastonbury Tor itself.

As I climbed the steepest part, a red and green microlite flew high overhead to fit in with the themes of the run – flight and Gwyn ap Nudd. For, Welsh does not always differentiate green and blue – both can be glas – and the colours of the microlite seemed to my tired eyes to reflect those of the entourage of the Shining son of Mist, the King of Annwn.

Libby and Boris were waiting for me at the top of the Tor.

A host of youths and maidens were gathering to celebrate the solstice sunset with cider and song. But I was too knackered to do anything other than to accept a lift home.

Gwyn ap Nudd, Gwyn ap Nudd Baw a gwaed a phoer a sudd; Pan fo’r nos un ddu a thawel Fe fydd hustyng yn yr awel…

Gwyn ap Nudd, Gwyn ap Nudd, Shit and blood and spit and sweat; When the night is black and silent He musters whispering in the breeze.

Mihangel Morgan