This one ought to be brief, but unashamedly I’ll draw it out for dramatic effect. Now that Unitary Authorities (UA’s) had entered the equation and given that I was travelling from Lyme Regis to stay the night with a couple of old work colleagues in Portsmouth, I felt obliged to seek out the highest points in Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch, which according to my enormous map of the UK were three separate UA’s. Given that each lay approximately on the route, I considered that locating and cresting each would be fairly straight forward.
In my room at the Nags Head Inn the previous evening I had spent some time on the laptop typing in search variations for the highest points, and to be honest it was tying me in knots. I had confidence in the location for Poole – Corfe Hills – but searches for Bournemouth and Christchurch threw up various options, which often seemed to find their way back to the Corfe Hills. Surely it couldn’t be the highest point for all three authorities. I couldn’t fathom it out, so in the end gave up, went out for something to eat and a couple of beers before the slow trudge back up the hill for a whiskey nightcap, and a nod and a wink to the framed photo of Harold Wilson that hung on the wall of the bar. Whatever else, he’d see me right.
I drove out of Lyme Regis, took to the A35 and stopped for a while in West Bay, where I sat on the cob for an hour contemplating the rapidly retreating Jurassic cliffs to the east and west. Given that West Bay is definitely not in the oldie woldie West Country tradition (apart from a small cluster of older buildings by the harbour) there was something about it I really liked.
The cliffs in retreat – West Bay
Back on the A35, and taking the high road above Chesil Beach, with not a cloud in the sky, the views towards Portland demanded a couple of mandatory photo stops; which in the end singularly failed to capture the mood, but here you go.
Chesil Beach to Portland
It took another ninety minutes to get from Abbotsbury to the outskirts of Poole (navigating the English south coast by road is, if you’ll allow me to dabble in metaphor – no small walk in the park). Even though it was only a few weeks ago now, I couldn’t tell you a thing about the drive into Poole, and nor do you need to know either, but from my map research I had a fair idea of where I was going. Naturally, trusting in my outstanding memory and recklessly not having a sat nav system, I did get into a bit of a pickle at a point where the A35 encountered multiple roundabouts. Thus, after some pottering about in a carpark between an Aldi and a B&Q, I was heading north on Broadstone Way, and then at Broadstone itself turned left at another roundabout onto Higher Blandford Road. I was now within touching distance of my objective.
Higher Blandford Road headed steadily up for about a mile, then levelled out with a large school to the left before starting to show signs of descent, at which point I pulled over, turned the car around, and back near the school pulled over at a handy layby. I wasn’t sure if I needed to get out of the car, given that I was 100% certain I had arrived at the correct spot, but I had been driving for what seemed like hours and so stretched my legs for five minutes, taking in the impressive view of a modern school and a communications aerial opposite. Judging by the moans and groans of two men hidden behind the tree flanked heathland next to the layby, their search for a lost ball or two indicated a golf course.
This should put most people off – the top of Corfe Hills with the golf course beyond
Yup ☹
It was now just past 2pm. My ETA in Portsmouth was around 5.30pm, so despite not being in a rush I was going to have to get my skates on if I was going to get to grips with the highest points in both Bournemouth and Christchurch, neither of which locations I was sure of. Back in the car I did another search for Bournemouth and again it threw up Corfe Hills. It was patently a lie, given that where I sat was clearly in Poole and the border with Bournemouth was miles away. Another option was offered up. Hengistbury Head. Well, a nod is as good as a wink as “they” say, so off I went.
Another 30 minutes on and eventually I pulled up at the side of a long road near the seafront, with rough grassland either side, and in the distance the low hump of Hengistbury Head. A pleasant enough looking spot, but I was slightly doubtful about the “highest point” claim. In any case, I’d been driving for hours and needed to properly stretch my legs.
A brisk wind but a crystal-clear day, I walked the tracks to the gradually rising land and after no more than a mile was standing at the top of Hengistbury Head, looking out across the Solent towards the Needles at the western tip of the Isle of Wight.
Towards the Needles and beyond
The wind came from the east (a constant trend in recent weeks; increasingly becoming the prevailing direction) scuffing up thousands of white horses on the crest of the waves. Looking to the northeast a sandbar almost, but not quite, connected the Head to the mainland; lined its entire length with what appeared to be beach huts. I realised that I didn’t know this area at all but was in no doubt that each one of those small holiday boltholes probably had a land value higher than anywhere else in the country.
The most expensive real estate – not long for disappearing I suspect
I was standing at 36 metres, yet despite a very tangible sense of elevation, looking back towards Bournemouth, and with the exception of the nearest mile, most of what I was looking at appeared to be higher. Maybe not by much, but certainly enough to convince me that this wasn’t the highest point in the borough.
West to Bournemouth and higher ground
I appeared to have been duped, but didn’t regret having found this spot. If you happened to live nearby It is a magnificent asset to have on your doorstep. Walking back to the car I passed the visitors centre, a small enclosure that boasted what appeared to be a replica Iron Age roundhouse; apparently built to ancient beach hut style and standards.
An insight into the beach life of our ancestors
A quick coffee at the nearby Hiker Cafe and then back to the car for the onward journey to Portsmouth. Time was pushing on and I was no longer enthusiastic about hunting down Bournemouth’s highest point, let alone any further investigations in Christchurch. These UAs were proving to be trickier than I had expected.
So, here’s the thing. In 2019 (five years after the publication of my very big wall map), the three separate Unitary Authorities of Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch were combined into one single UA. And that, I can tell you, is a blessed relief, because, let’s face it, life really is too short. Delightfully, Corfe Hills were all I had needed to do.
I hadn’t seen it coming, but when it did, I had to confront the beast. The Unitary Authority! But before we meet the beast, time to reflect.
On the 10th May 2024 I parked up in Westerham, Kent, marched north out of town and fifty minutes later was standing by a wall, looking across a field where my very basic research had established the highest point in Kent. Betsom’s Hill. It was a small start, but as the months progressed, further counties’ highest points were reached, either on foot, or drive by. I’d have liked to have done one on the bike, but that may remain a pipedream.
I had initially been inspired to take up this arguably pointless activity after a climb to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Monmouthshire, with my daughter and her partner J. After the climb, in March 2024, I read that Sugarloaf was the highest peak in Monmouthshire, and I realised that there might be other opportunities, either by chance, or by deliberate choice. Indeed, as I began to research the topic, I realised that over 66 years I had achieved some already. Just a few weeks later, again with my daughter and J, we were standing at the top on Ben Nevis, in a thick, cold cloud. It didn’t matter, I had done it once before thirty odd years earlier with my son, on a glorious Highland day. Just getting there had been an adventure. On the way back home, and due to far too casual planning, I narrowly missed out on the highest point in West Lothian, but three days later I drove to the highest point in Nottinghamshire.
Early on I realised that if I was going to take it a bit more seriously, I would need to compile a list of counties and establish the highest points. With the immense power of the internet this would surely be an easy matter and completed in a couple of hours.
Days later, and despite numerous searches, I hadn’t yet found what I considered to be a definitive list of British counties. Eventually I settled on a list that, from all the indicators, felt about right. It contained all the counties in Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. I created a table and placed each county in alphabetical order. Whilst I had included the six counties of Northern Ireland, but with no friends or relatives to justify a visit, I rationalised that it was unlikely any would be trod. The list understandably included Greater London and Greater Manchester.
Over the following weeks I researched the highest points and began to log by county, nearest place and height. What this process began to reveal was that I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t been naive enough to think that I had come up with an original concept, but as the weeks went by, I came across more and more sites written by others (all men so far) who were committed to the cause. In due course it became apparent that far from being a micro niche activity, after angling, it was almost certainly the largest mass participation leisure activity in the country. Oh woe…!
Well, it was what it was, and I was enjoying going to new places, finding out more about areas I may have been to before, but more interestingly, the places I had never been to before and, up until that point, had never intended to go to at all (Warwickshire being the best example so far).
Ebrington Hill, at the western most point of Warwickshire, was the last to be achieved in 2024. Winter set in, and that involved it raining almost every day for the first few weeks of 2025. I wasn’t going anywhere, not least because the roof had surrendered to the elements and I was going to have to dig deep to get it fixed.
To fill the vacuum, I went online and purchased a very large and basic map of the UK, divided by county. Simple, but beautiful in its own right. Once I had carefully mounted it onto a sheet of ply, cut from a much larger sheet that I left in B&Q when I realised it wasn’t going to fit in the car, I could now sit comfortably and gaze lovingly at the entire UK and contemplate options for the coming months. When I wasn’t hypnotised by the map or watching steady rain on the window and getting more and more anxious about the arrival of the scaffolding, I started to research the underlying geology of each of the heights. I’d previously downloaded the British Geological Survey’s Geology Viewer (BETA), and this amazing work of science, art and technology was all I needed to not only establish the underlying geology, but also accurately pinpoint the highest points (believe me not everything published online about highest points is correct or accurate).
In late March 2025 I set off for a few days in Bristol and the West County. Before leaving I sat down and took a close look at the enormous map.
An Enormous Map
The good news was that I would be passing through the north of Hampshire, where Pilot Hill marked the county’s highest point. The City of Bristol was also on my list and would be an easy win. But, looking more closely at the region around Bristol, it became clear that any previous assumptions had been misplaced. Somerset had been on my radar, but the map, published in 2014 was showing far more “counties’” than I had expected, not least South Gloucestershire.
Back in September 2024 I had climbed Cleeve Hill in Gloucestershire and had assumed it had been a done deal, but no, not according to my map. It was a mystifying blow. What had I missed when I created my original list? Turns out that what I had missed was the huge change in the political landscape that has taken place in the last half century. Of course, I knew that some of the old historic counties had long gone, Middlesex and Caithness for example, but it had completely passed me by that much of the country, (especially England) had since been subdivided (presumably due to shifting demographics, or let’s be a tad more cynical, gerrymandering?).
What my planning strategy to visit the West Country had revealed was another entity, with, from what I could glean, similar powers to traditional counties – the Unitary Authority (UA).
On one level this was deeply troubling. At the time I didn’t have the gumption to count how many additional regions were about to enter the fray, but a brief look suggested at least some tens more. But on a more positive note, this now offered up many more opportunities, not least the many Unitary Authorities that now presented themselves for inspection over the coming days. South Gloucestershire for starters, but also Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch, Southampton and Portsmouth, that I would be passing through on my drive home a few days later. And that didn’t include North Somerset, and Bath and Northeast Somerset, which, whilst being near Bristol would have been too much to attempt during my tour.
Over the last few weeks of the self-imposed calendar year (May to April), I started to update my list of counties by adding in the Unitary Authorities. This revealed other troubling difficulties. Again, working from information on the internet, inconsistencies began to emerge. For instance, my map had shown there to be three UA’s sitting next to each other in Dorset; Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch. This had led me astray when I had passed through the area on my way to Portsmouth. The reason being that in 2019, long after the publication of my map, these three authorities had merged to become BCP Council (Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole). Shucks!
What this confirmed, had I not already known it, was that whilst the map was helpful, it was already out of date, and couldn’t be relied on to provide a definitive list. Again, I faced the difficulty of trying to locate an accurate list of all the UA’s. In the end I decided to opt for the information on Wikipedia, which from what I could tell, was likely to be as accurate as anything.
Needless to say, my list has expanded exponentially and is likely to keep me occupied for some time to come.
The UA/County, West Country complication
Local authority elections were held in England in May 2025. I spent most of my life in London but now live in East Sussex. I am pretty sure that when I was growing up the county of Sussex was a “thing”. But I am wrong. Sussex has been divided between East and West Sussex for centuries, and maybe as long ago as the 12th century. 1889 was the year that saw them fall under separate council governance, and in 1974 this was formalised following the Local Government Act of 1972. Now what constitutes the entirety of old Sussex consists of East and West Sussex, and the Unitary Authority of Brighton (yet to be topped).
Along with all residents of voting age in all three authority areas I was unable to vote in May. Along with several other areas across the country the government paused elections whilst a period of consultation took place to decide on whether the whole of the county should come under a single authority. Because the outcome is due in the next year or so, it was decided that it would be too expensive and impractical to hold elections for councillors who may, or may not, be out of a job in just a few months. Not only could that see the end of East and West Sussex and Brighton, but potentially lower tier authorities such as Lewes, Worthing and Hastings.
Sussex covers a massive area. It stretches from Camber Sands in the far east, East Grinstead in the north and to Wittering Sands in the far west. It’s approximately 90 miles from east to west along the coast, and, just for the record, takes bloody hours whether by road, or even worse by rail. And, apart from the Channel, what these places have in common is probably restricted to the consumption of the rather fine Harvey’s Best. Of course there is an argument that in an age of austerity, and where confusion presumably reigns over the plethora of computer and information systems that must operate, combining the authority into one, would, in a nutshell, bring obvious efficiencies of scale. I can see some benefits in that, and am yet undecided, but my gut instinct is that if it is agreed, local democracy will be stifled. At a time when there appears to be a thirst for more localism, this feels to fly in the face of that process. A single authority and an elected Mayor running this huge, and hugely economically, politically and geographically diverse area? Hmm. I’m not so sure. I certainly need to give it more attention. At least (except for Brighton, which I guess I may need to do pretty sharpish) I have stood on the highest points of both East and West Sussex.
My last walk before the end of the calendar year took me on a train ride into Kent, and from Snodland Station up to the top of the Medway Unitary Authority (yup, this wasn’t a place I had anticipated visiting until recently). That day marked the first day of Reform UK gaining control of Kent County Council (not subject to any consultation on a single authority). Hmmm, well we’ll have to see how that goes. Their first act in office was to remove the Ukrainian flag at County Hall. Gesture politics, tokenism, who knows but feels like Vlad the Invader has just got his little tippy toes on the beach at Pegwell Bay.
Before I end this introspection, a word of warning to anyone thinking of putting on the boots and pursuing the county tops (and UA’s, and Metropolitan Districts – Oh, did I not mention them?). Speaking of Sussex and putting it back into the context of this arguably futile pastime, whilst looking at some of the many blogs and websites by other committed county toppers, one in particular caught my eye. I can’t now remember how I got to Richard Gower’s site, but not only was he going after all the current counties, he had gone so far down a wormhole (and I say this with affection), that he had completed all six of the ancient “Rapes of Sussex”. These ancient administrative areas divided the county, running west to east, into six areas: Chichester, Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey and Hastings. It’s fascinating stuff, but it’s a cause too far for me. It may be that as the sands of time catch up with me and I find myself less able to travel, visiting their respective highest points (and as it happens, I have already unwittingly done at least two of them), could become an attractive option. I’m also imagining that if the rest of the country was at one time divided into these ancient domains, the quest would become an unending toil in every sense. All that aside, I must take my hat off to Richard Gower. It’s a pukka site. **
Just a final note on the website (if that’s what it is?). It’s rubbish. Moons ago I completed several bike rides along the coast from London, around Kent, and most of Sussex, and after each wrote up some notes on a Word document. All very well but once done, would I ever revisit them? My daughter had started posting some things on a website/blog. I liked the appearance, and as importantly I could read them on my phone without the word blindness that normally prevails. For no reason, other than I had heard of it, I started to transpose the words from Word to WordPress, added a few photos and some infantile art, and began to post each leg of the bike journey under the perhaps less than original title of Pier to Pier. *** Whether or not people read the posts (on one day I had 15 odd “likes” from what I had to assume were “bots” and emanating out of the US, given that it appeared nearly all were teenage females whose likely interest in a cycle ride round the Isle of Sheppey was deeply suspicious), didn’t concern me. What I gained from it was the thought process and then, whenever I chose, being able to read them on my phone, or any other device, to remind myself of what I had done.
I’ve been writing since I was ten (to paraphrase Marc Bolan). Immature diaries, essays, short thoughts on bands and gigs, futile attempts to write a book, and then over thirty five years, millions upon millions of words in memos, letters, works order tickets, emails, reports, presentations, minutes and many moments of long reflection when things might be getting too much, and when self-articulation through pen and paper, or keypad and screen, relieved the pressure; like lancing a boil. It may sound a bit contradictory, given that each escapade I publish an account online, but I write (primarily these days) for myself. The accounts reflect how I was feeling at any one moment, what I might have been thinking about, if there were local or international events that might influence the narrative and any significant landscape or features worthy of note. They are not intended to be a fully formed guide to other intrepid walkers, so beware should you choose to make one of these ascents solely based on one of these reads. Unless it’s obvious or easy, always take a map, and of course a phone (and keep in mind that a phone can run out of battery or connection, a map never does).
None of the above justifies the utterly useless presentation. I have honestly tried for hours to create a landing page where different threads and menus are clear to see (like everyone else’s), but I’m no further forward that I was years ago. The next time anyone younger than me visits, I’m going to have to collar them. In the meantime, what it is will have to endure.
The music – well that’s just an afterthought if something about the day has brought a tune to mind.
So, having walked to the top of Betsom’s Hill, and with some more county tops on the near horizon, so to speak, it made perfect sense to commit each experience to the page, and then the world.
I discovered one other key detail, and as such see the need to advance a precautionary slice of advice. Some weeks after climbing it I discovered that Sugarloaf Mountain was not the highest point in Monmouthshire, it’s the highest peak. When I found this out and given that it had been the motivation to start this project, it came as a bitter pill to swallow, not least because at some point I’m going to have to go back and climb to the actual highest “point” – Chwarel y Fan, which sits a few miles to the north of Sugarloaf. Well, at least now I know. Here’s coming for ya..?
Having spent the weekend with my daughter and her partner in Bristol, and having successfully claimed Hanging Hill in South Gloucestershire, rewarding myself with a strong coffee at the Swan Inn at Swineford, I drove south down almost vehicle free roads through Somerset, then east Devon and eventually into Lyme Regis in Dorset. A couple of nights booked in the Nags Head before heading back east to see friends in Portsmouth, then home.
After booking into my small room in the Nags Head and then having spent a couple of hours near the sea front trying the fish and chips and a couple of pints of the local ale, I set off up what felt like a 45% hill back to the Nags Head. By the time I arrived, panting and crawling over the threshold, with one of the patrons saying to me “have you been out there the whole time?” to which I had no answer, I flopped at the bar, rationalising that I desperately needed a small whiskey before bed. With fortification in hand, I took a seat whilst the last of the punters supped up and left. On gazing around my eyes fell upon a picture on the wall. It spoke of more optimistic times and for a moment I felt privileged to be in this space.
Toasting the man
Lewesdon Hill, Dorsets highest point, was a thirty-minute drive northeast of Lyme Regis. I decided on parking up in the village of Broadwindsor, located just north of the hill. As I neared the village, driving along the B3162, a stationary police car was parked up on the road ahead. I drew up behind but was waved on. Just up the hill, a second police car was pulled over next to what appeared to be an abandoned car, and a couple of officers stood silently by, with arms crossed.
I drove on and within a minute was parked up in a small close to the south of the village. The weather was perfect. Almost too perfect. I had no summer clothing so chose to leave my coat in the boot. The OS Explorer map (116) showed a route out of the village and straight to the top of Lewesdon Hill. It required walking into the village, which was fine because I needed a snack and guessed that the settlement was just big enough to support a shop. Fortunately, there was a profusion of old-fashioned signposts, and on each the words, Village Shop, as if it was the biggest attraction in the area. Maybe it was.
Surprisingly, being a Monday, the small community shop was open, although in truth it was rather lacking in immediately edible stock. Reluctantly, (I had walked in and so walking straight out would have been seen as a tad rude) I settled for a rather unappetising looking vegan sausage roll thing, made by a large food company that rhymes with “balls.” The shopkeeper was almost certainly delighted to see the back of it, but hey, needs must.
After procuring the snack and a cola, I walked back up to the White Lion Inn (closed Mondays) and headed west on err… West Street. A small house on the corner had a stone sign above the door that claimed Charles the Second had stayed there for a night in 1651. What it didn’t say is that he was fleeing from Parliamentarian troops after the battle of Worcester and escaped the village dressed as a woman. Just the previous day I had stood at the top of Hanging Hill in South Gloucestershire where, eight years before, a large force of his father’s military sustained appalling losses against a Parliamentarian army, taking the high ground before retreating.
Perhaps more interestingly, Broadwindsor also had a 17th Century vicar called Thomas Fuller who, apparently, often had his congregation in stitches. Who wouldn’t have wanted to live in a place which, whilst plague, and the warring elite ravaged the land, had a Sunday morning comedy club? I have an image of Paul Merton standing at the pulpit and drifting off into a flight of fancy, although having read a couple of Fuller’s “jokes” I think it’s likely that these days we would struggle to understand the nuance. By the time Charles the Second sought refuge in the village, Fuller was no longer the vicar, so missed the opportunity to crack a line at the King’s expense.
West Street wound down a hill to a bend in the road (which headed on up beyond). A footpath sign pointed south and confirmed the evidence on my map. Passing between a handful of buildings the path crossed a sparkling stream before reaching a large gate, with fields beyond. So far, so good. The gate, of course, was locked. There was no sign to indicate why. I don’t get annoyed in these situations, but it happens too often these days and can be mildly disconcerting. I looked around to see if I was missing something and noticed a small track leading away to my right, following the stream and through some woodland. It felt a bit unlikely, but I was in no rush so decided to follow the path and see where it took me.
Which was about 200 metres. The path petered out as it became overwhelmed by marshy ground. A delightful spot, but for me it was back to the drawing board, which meant a retreat to the gate. I looked beyond the gate and eyed up the path that clearly led to the top. No sign of a bull. I looked at the map, which showed an alternative path, but which required beating back through the village. I looked around. No one was in sight, so without further thought I was up and over and then stepping boldly along the path.
From there on it was reasonably straight forward, although at another locked gate a sign pointed east towards an alternative route, which I duly observed. After twenty minutes or so I arrived at a gate that marked the entrance to the Lewesdon Hill site, managed by the National Trust. Ahead lay dense woodland, with a variety of mature trees climbing up the steep slopes towards the top.
The approach to the enclosure
Proceeding through the gate, a large, mounted sign provided information about the area, the flora, the fauna and that an Iron Age settlement had probably existed on the site. That this seemed to be any doubt felt odd. It seemed to be a perfect setting. The board also stated that Lewesdon Hill was “the highest, quietest and most remote place in the county”. From what I had witnessed so far it felt a little bit like stating the bleedin’ obvious, but I wasn’t complaining.
A few steps on and a second sign. Slate grey, with the image of a Spitfire flying overhead in the top right-hand corner. I anticipated a sombre story.
In summary, on 15th March 1942, Jean Verdun Marie Aime De Cloedt, a Belgian in the RAF, in poor weather and with a faulty engine, crashed into the top of Lewesdon Hill. The commemorative board also mentioned that it was still possible to see the destructive path the plane had taken through the trees at the top. It felt like an unnecessary detail, but regardless it was a poignant tale. An intimate human story at “the highest, quietest and most remote place in the county”. Wars and hilltops. It was becoming a theme.
Chert stones that must have travelled down from above and onto the sandstone bedrock, scattered the path that headed south towards the top. Unusual, but would almost certainly have made this an attractive spot for early flint pioneers.
Within five minutes the path broke from the cover of the trees onto a heathy plateau and continued towards the only point that looked slightly higher than the surrounding topography. There was nothing of note to pinpoint the spot, but a hump of grassy earth seemed to be the place. I looked out to the south and towards the sea some miles away. Rays of sunlight swarmed through the large gaps between the trees. Looking down the steep escarpment the sun on the otherwise stark branches revealed the first, almost indiscernible, green blush of new growth.
From the top – Looking south southwest towards Morecombelake
Despite the delay in making progress at the foot of the climb, (due to the locked gate) I had made good time, and so after taking a few bites from the almost inedible vegan roll (cardboard wasn’t included in the list of ingredients, but I think it should have) I followed another path heading west and above the drop to the south. And a considerably steep and long drop it was too. Despite almost qualifying as a cliff, ancient birch and oak trees rose up from below, climbing and clinging on bravely to the thin earth. At some point it occurred to me that this was likely to have been the area where Jean Verdun Marie Aime De Cloedt’s plane had torn through the trees. I chose not to try and work out where.
Reaching the end of the plateau area another notice board gave more information, which must have made no impact on me at all, given that I can’t remember a word. A view opened out. The land fell away, but then rose again to the top of Pilsdon Pen, about two miles to the west, which even from a distance revealed features consistent with a hill fort.
West towards Pilsdon Pen
Scrambling down the north slope, on land recently cleared of larger trees, I was back on the main track which forms part of the Wessex Ridgeway and banked up to the right. The sound of a helicopter overhead intruded but tailed off as it headed north. Soon I was back at the entrance with the information boards, and after a quick look back set off across the first large field. I had noticed on the map that at the end of the field another path veered to the northeast and past Fir Farm. This was a more direct route back to the car and avoided having to negotiate the closed gate.
Objective Broadwindsor
By a large farm building I found what appeared to be the route, heading into some woodland. The noise of the helicopter should have long gone by now, but it was still audible, somewhere just to the north. Entering the woods, it was evident that the trail was little used. A sign had been attached to a tree, informing people like me that due to storms the previous year some of the trees were unsafe and walkers proceeded at their own risk. The sign itself was a year old, and I figured that the landowners would, by now, have taken the necessary action to make the area safe.
This was a lovely spot, a proper dingle dell. A low wall appeared ahead, with a nook cut out to allow the traveller to cross with ease. As I stepped over, something about its appearance had me confused. What kind of stone was this? I looked more closely. What I had thought was a stone wall was in fact a massive fallen tree, so embalmed in moss and lichen that it mimicked a human structure.
Not exactly sycamore gap, but art in nature nevertheless.
Carrying on down through the winding path the noise from the helicopter began to increase, annoyingly. Perhaps it was the military on manoeuvres, or a crop being sprayed with agent orange. Either way it was taking the edge off the afternoon. A bit further on and the path began to flank a track leading back to the farm. Looking ahead something stopped me in my own tracks. Through the trees and hedges, and about 200 metres further on, I could clearly make out the intermittent red and blue lights of a police vehicle.
In the 1935 film, The 39 Steps, Richard Hannah (Robert Donat), is on the run on a Scottish hillside when out of the blue (and out of all context given that Buchan’s novel was set before the Great War) a helicopter appears, hunting him down. Now, I should say at this point, nothing remotely interesting has happened to me for a very long time, although two evenings earlier in Bristol I had witnessed what might well have been a stolen motorbike being crashed at 5mph, and completely bizarrely, into a wall, before a car pulled up and swished the fallen rider away. Surreal. Nevertheless, and just for a moment, with the sound of the helicopter above, and knowing the cops were hovering somewhere just down the lane, my thoughts were suddenly hinting at the prospect of a manhunt! But who, and why? Was it fight or flight time?
Momentarily I engaged in mental research. Who was I? Robert Donat, Kenneth Moore, or, controversially, Robert Powell. I settled on Robert Powell, largely on the grounds that I had liked him a lot alongside Jasper Carrot in the TV show The Detectives. Now all I had to do was to get past the police checkpoint. Did I have my papers? It’s essential to have papers on you in these situations. I patted the inside pocket of my jacket. Hmm… would the Nectar loyalty card suffice? I was about to find out and started to walk purposefully towards the blues and twos.
I noticed that the police car lay beyond another vehicle and realised that I had reached the point I had passed in the car on my way into Broadwindsor. Whatever was going on seemed most particular. I reached the end of the drive and volunteered a “hello” to the two officers idly guarding the mysterious car. I think they may have said something back, but either way I wasn’t subjected to any stop and search, or interrogation, for which I was most grateful, although as I carried on along the road back into town, with the helicopter still bothering around above, I wondered whether the officers might have been a tad neglectful in their duties.
Back at the car I checked the app which had been recording the walk. 2.79 miles. 411 ft elevation gain. 670 calories. 8k steps. No more, no less. Oh, for 39 more! But never mind, for an hour or two, in a remote part of Dorset, which had once been the home of “Have I Got Sunday Morning News for You”, I had been away from the numbers.
A beautiful Spring morning in Bristol, and a few hours to spare with my daughter and her partner J, before heading south after a short but very enjoyable weekend visit. They were both aware of my growing interest in seeking out county high points and indeed had previously enabled me to the tops of Ben Nevis and Snowdon. Was there somewhere locally where a short walk could take us to another county top? Well, up until a few weeks earlier I would have said no, and time was too short to hop over to south Wales. But that was before I had discovered a new county (or so I thought).
In October 2024, when I had climbed Cleeve Hill, I thought I had ticked off Gloucestershire. As winter came and held me in the grip of my local area, I found a map of British Counties online and ordered it. When it arrived it was exactly what I had in mind. Very simple, with the key information, and massive. I bought a large piece of plywood and carefully mounted the map using double sided tape. Now, all I had to do was work out a methodology of categorising the high points (by height obviously, but also by geology, for no other reason than to complicate the process), and then begin to annotate it as and when a new cresting occurred. I should say at this stage that it’s become quite a complex beast, and I’m a while away from any annotation, but something happened a few weeks ago that radically altered the dynamic.
One of the joys of having a huge, mounted map is that it’s easy to look at and take in geographical relationships and direction. When it comes to looking at maps on my phone, or on a PC, my spatial/visual awareness seems to go out of the window. I guess I was just born too late but give me a map in the hand and by and large I feel like I am in control. Of course, I couldn’t fit this map into my hand, but when I was planning the weekend in Bristol I had sat down and looked at the big one to see what counties might provide opportunity, either on the way there, or on the way back. It all seemed straight forward, until err… until, just past Wiltshire (yet to do), appeared a county called South Gloucestershire. What the what the?
South Gloucestershire wasn’t on my original list of counties, but sure enough it exists, as a Unitary Authority since 1996, and after the abolition of the previous authority of Avon. Whether or not including it in the itinerary is open to debate, but it was on my map and delivers all the services provided by Gloucestershire council to the north. It couldn’t be ignored and given that its high point was just a few miles to the east of Bristol, I offered up Hanging Hill as a short walk option before parting company.
We drove out of Bristol on the A431 (Bath Road), and just before the Swan Inn at Swineford turned left and along a track through a farm, pulling up at a small, very serviceable and free, car park set in a thicket of trees. You don’t get many of these for the pound these days, but without the need to have a ten minute confrontation with a pay by phone pay and display machine, I wasn’t complaining. J had done the research, and we set off east, past an old mill stream, and then into a large field with what appeared to be free range ostriches in the one adjacent.
Passing through a line of trees we entered another field, with the path then rising steeply until reaching another tree grouping flanking an ancient drover’s lane. The track, with steep banks on either side, continued up, but without being obvious, started taking us southeast, and away from our objective.
Steeply hollow
After plodding on up for nearly half a mile a path leading away from the track appeared to our left. Following a straight path we entered the seemingly exclusive hamlet of North Stoke. A road continued taking us east. A small red-letter box set into an impressive stone wall forming part of one of the more impressive buildings gave rustic charm. Continuing on and then left again past the modest but aesthetically pleasing St Martin’s church, we started to ascend another steep track that formed part of the Cotswold Way.
I should just say that, having stripped off various layers, and now down to my T-shirt, I hadn’t expected to still be climbing UP at this stage! I hadn’t really been paying much attention to the route and had assumed that we had parked quite close to Hanging Hill. I made my first inquiry whilst panting at each weary step. “Are we nearly there yet J….?”
Reassuring noises came back. Suitably reassured, I found a new lease and before too long (at least another half mile!) we reached a bench next to a gate leading onto a golf course. We were now on the Cotswold Way and that meant more walkers. A shame for me as out of nowhere an enthusiastic group appeared and colonised the very bench that, as we had approached, I had coveted over the previous two minutes.
We stopped, standing, to get our breath back (well, that’s what I was doing at any rate) and took in the impressive panorama looking west and towards Bristol, the Severn, and the Welsh mountains beyond. From the lie of the land, I assumed that we weren’t too far. “Are we nearly there yet J….?”
J consulted his phone. “Yup,” he replied. “That’s it just over there.”
Of course it was…
I looked north. The land fell away steeply into a valley and then rose again towards a clump of trees at the end of a ridge. Just over there, yup, about a mile just over there (as the crow flies). Now, I had all day, but it was a Sunday, and I hadn’t wanted to eat into too much of my hosts remaining hours before their new working week. If, at that moment someone had said that getting to Hanging Hill was going to take too long, I would have surrendered the task there and then, to return another day. But nothing was said and so we continued on, flanking a pleasant looking golf course to the right and woods to the left. At least now we were on the flat.
Just past an old farm building, in a fallow field, a collection of metal fantasy sculptures had been let out to rust slowly in the elements. I’m not necessarily a fan of “industrial” art, which I find somewhat contrived (I can’t find an emoji of Morrissey, but if one exists, insert here), but on this occasion I was suitably impressed. Something about the location perhaps, but also the aesthetic and the way the Grim Reaper with dog, and other Tolkienesque characters had been positioned pulled me in. I considered taking a closer look, but time was pressing, and the need was to move on.
Sculptures by David Michael Morse – Deceased
The track continued up to a crest, with the golf greens now on our left. We headed northwest, still on the Cotswold Way. A delightful wood, covered in a carpet of thousands of wood anemones stretched out to our right. A suggestion to wander through these woods was vetoed. We appeared to be at the limit of our time window. The greens we passed seemed to stretch forever, and judging by the disastrous tee-shot swing (and hope) by a possibly hungover weekend golfer at the nearby tee, his game was going to be a stretch too, far.
Here the course ended and just ahead a gate beckoned us into a large field that vanished to the horizon, which was dispiritingly far away. By now there was a palpable tension. I’ll leave out the details, but entertaining the old man’s cranky new hobby had clearly run its course, and I had run out of credits. We had come too far to turn back. My own assessment of the land and the area suggested that we could make a dash back to the cars an alternative way, but for the moment it was important that I focused solely on apologising with conviction for my selfishness and trust for the best!
We crossed over the large field, a path clearly pointing us towards our destination. Minutes later, and to my overwhelming relief, we reached the trig point that marked the top of Hanging Hill. I was tempted to say we didn’t hang around, but sensibly we stopped and took a five-minute break. Hanging Hill? No idea. The next one to the north was called Freezing Hill. You get the medieval idea here.
Just hanging around. Trig points are handy things to rest on.
Just past the trig point, an information panel told us a bit about the Civil War battle of Lansdown, fought on this spot in 1643. With time pressing I chose to take a photo and read it later.
Limited information
This is not a history lesson, and in truth, as I found out later, neither was the information panel. * If we had had more time, it might have been possible to survey the scene and appreciate more the scale of the carnage that had occurred here four hundred years earlier. But the research would have to wait.
The killing field
The prerogative now was to get back to the cars as sharp and as shipshape as possible. We’d been out too long. The good news was that it looked like it was going to be all downhill from now on. Except we chose to set off northwest, heading away from where the escape vehicles were parked up. We trod carefully down a steep track through dense woodland, with the first signs of new growth all around. With continuing murmurings of discontent amongst some of the team, I quietly hoped the correct decision had been made. The track continued for, in my mind, too long, but eventually we spilled out onto a narrow road, and despite some hesitation decided to bear left and head west.
Marshfield Lane proved to be the win bonus of the day. Hardly a vehicle passed us, and progress was swift. A bank to one side of the road stretched for some distance, covered by hundreds of yellow primroses. Soon after we were passing the rather appealing looking Upton Arms in Upton Cheyney. No time though to contemplate the achievement over a coffee or cold drink. Onwards and downwards on Brewery Hill and then, at a sharp bend in the road, we followed the footpath directly down through a farm, then through a gate, and within minutes we were sitting in the garden of the Swan Inn at Swineford, the sun beating down and all was right with the world.
Mothers Day at The Swan Inn Swineford
It had been a longer hike than anticipated, with an unexpected, almost continuous 700 feet of elevation from the start to Hanging Hill, and much tougher than expected. Just under five miles, but thoroughly worth it, and in the end we were all still friends.
* The battle of Lansdown hill makes for an interesting read. Not that you would necessarily have known it from the information board, which gave the impression that the Royalist forces inflicted a crushing defeat on the Parliamentarians (under the leadership of Sir William Waller). The forces appear to have been pretty evenly matched, with Waller’s troops dug in at the top of the ridge, his left flank at the trig point. A fuller account is provided in the link below, but in a nutshell, it was a long and hard-fought battle over many hours and into the night. With ammunition low, Waller chose to retreat to Bath in the dark of night. With ammunition low but having sustained severe casualties (not least to many of the commanding officers), the Royalist forces gave up the chase and set off to Oxford in disarray. It had been but a pyrrhic victory for the Royalists. The two sides met again for a rematch a week or so later at Devizes, where the Parliamentary forces were soundly beaten after Royalist reinforcements arrived in the nick of time. The losses at Lansdown Hill are speculation but the estimate is that on the Parliamentarian side, 20 troops died, and 60 were wounded. Multiply both those figures by ten to get an idea of the scale of the losses on the Royalist side, not to mention the high casualty rate amongst its senior officers (Wikipedia). It must have been a brutal and bloody affair, with deadly skirmishes taking place between infantry and cavalry in the woods that we had walked down through. Sobering indeed.
After I read the fuller account of the battle, I was able to picture vividly what the calvary and infantry clashes in the woods above Marshfield Lane must have been like. Loud, close and very bloody. This very rarely happens to me at any historic battlefields, where it is impossible to imagine mass slaughter in a vast corn field. I also realised that, other than a superficial understanding of the English Civil War, I really knew nothing about it at all. Given not just the struggle, but also the fundamental principles involved and how it changed the world, within the week I had bought The British Civil War – Trevor Royle. With 900 pages I may come to regret the purchase, but without seeking out the highest point of this unitary authority, my ignorance would remain complete.
Bristol is a hilly city and blessed with many high points that grant excellent views. To the northeast, the Dower House, located metres outside the city boundary in South Gloucestershire, is a striking, sandstone coloured Georgian pile that can’t be missed from the M32. To the southwest, and still close to the M32, the remains of the Purdown anti-aircraft batteries now hide under the soaring BT tower, but have grand views towards the city, and must have been an impressive, albeit salutary sight, when in action during the Blitz. In the city itself, the remarkably well-hidden Cabot tower at Brandon Hill gives some of the most impressive views of the City and its surrounds. And of course there’s the Clifton suspension bridge, and the “Downs” above, to enjoy and feel a sensation of elevation.
So, great, but none of these can claim the high spot. That goes to Cossman Hospital located at the top of Lodge Hill, found appropriately in the Lodge Hill area in the northeast.
On the 28th of March 2025, I had a few minutes to burn before imposing myself on my daughter and her partner J, who conveniently live in Bristol. A couple of hours earlier I had walked to the top of Pilot Hill, the highest spot in Hampshire, and now had little interest in further physical activity. I drove up Lodge Causeway from Fishponds, parked up in Selkirk Road and then took this picture before departing. The impressive clock tower is the highest (man-made) point in the city, and the view from there, and I guess some of the wards or admin offices below, must be pretty good, but from just outside the car park, it’s a moderately interesting, possibly Victorian building.
Rooms with a view (I imagine)
A slightly irritating side issue to my tremendous achievement was that as I stood on Selkirk Road (112 metres) I turned and looked to the east, towards the main road, and houses beyond. A side road continued past the main road and, in my mind, appeared to rise to what appeared to be a higher point. It was certainly industrial in nature and appeared to be fenced off. But there was no more curiosity in me, and I left. Of course, in the end curiosity, and a sense of duty to the topic, led me to double check for any localised height variation. Firstly, don’t bother yet with AI. If you type in Google “the highest point in Bristol” the AI overview will tell you that it is Dundry Hill and has a picture of a mountain that looks remarkably like Cadair Idris, a beautiful peak in northwest Wales (or, as I discovered on a second try, Blackdown Hill depending, I guess, on how the AI is feeling, or what it’s learning!). Don’t worry, I’m lost too. Dundry Hill, as of course we all know, is in North Somerset, and that’s a different county (and if you ask AI Overview for the highest point in North Somerset it will confirm this, doh!). **
At this, the casual reader may say, “I thought this was supposed to be about reaching the top points of counties. Why are you doing Bristol, given that it is in Somerset?” Until I started doing this arguably pointless hobby, I too might have thought the same and indeed would have been certain that in the 1970’s, when I went for a pub crawl around Bristol with my very Zummerzet friend Andy on a Saturday night, that I was indeed in Bristol, Somerset. Not so. Bristol, historically, was split in two by Gloucestershire in the north, and Somerset to the south, with the Avon River being the divide. In 1373 Bristol became its own entity (it is complex), which endured until 1974 when it became part of the County of Avon. That lasted until 1996 when Avon was abolished, and Bristol became a Unitary Authority. So, when being shown the sights of Bristol nightlife in 1977, I was probably in Avon. Anyway, when I initially found what appeared to be a reliable list of British counties, Bristol was included, and in my mind qualified. *
Where was I? Ah, yes, going off piste again (to be fair, it was 1977). So, at the top of Selkirk Road the land appeared to be higher than where I stood. I later checked the ever-reliable British Geological Survey Viewer and it confirmed that the land did indeed rise a further five metres. Annoying, although I’d be back there again soon and could always pop up to Castle Road to take a closer look. Oh, Castle Road, interesting! It seems that at some point there was a stately home, or manor house that was known locally as the “Castle”. That being the case, that the land rises here probably has more to do with human activity than with the natural contours of nature, and to that end I may feel less obliged to carry out another visit. Anyway, if you want to take this activity seriously, and finding the very top of Bristol is that important, walk away from the hospital and further up Selkirk Road.
As an aside, if you wish to find out more about the semantics of what is, or is not a county, I stumbled on this website.
The Association of British Counties, with the mission statement “A society dedicated to celebrating and promoting the 92 historic counties of the United Kingdom and the important part they play in our culture, heritage and geography.”
A brief scan of the text and I immediately departed company with m’learned writer. I guess it had something to do with the smug pomposity of the language that turned me off, and of course the knowledge that all boundaries are in any case artificial constructs, which ebb and flow depending on demographic change, politics, and as we still see, war. Just a little bit of me wondered if the Association might also want to reintroduce imperial measures. Mines a pint.
** I doubt that I will engage much with AI options, though I can’t rule it out, and in time may have no choice. As I write this, a news item reported on the US Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, talking about how AI will be taught in schools, but more than once called it A1 (A One). Four more years of this………..! Help.
Date/s: 1972? 2001? 16th May 2019 and 6th March 2022
Trains, Planes and Cafe Culture – One from the Vaults
Where do you start with Snowdon? Well, Llanberis generally, but other routes are available.
In the autumn of 1978, I was in my last year at a red brick University in the East Midlands, studying Geography. I lived in a small purpose-built room, in a purpose-built block, with nine other, not fit for purpose young male adults, a shared kitchen and bathroom, and the sound of punk and new wave painting the backdrop. In the third year an intake of new students had included a young man who I’ll call Dom. Everyone had hobbies of some sort, predominantly football and drinking as it happened, but Dom was a bit of an exception. Whilst unremarkable in many respects he was a fanatical rock climber. More worryingly he was also the only person still playing Tubular Bells, on repeat.
Often was the time when we’d return after a few pints in the cheapest bars in town and begin to climb the concrete staircase, only to be freaked out by Dom hanging directly over us as he shimmied up the walls in full kit. All outstretched limbs and magnetic rubber soled shoes.
The winter of 1978/9 was one of the coldest in my lifetime. At the end of November, a wickedly cold period of snow, and then brutally low temperatures, embalmed the east of England in ice. A long-standing overflow pipe that wept water from the top floor led to a build-up of solid ice down the side of the block. Dom, never slow to miss an opportunity, laid his hands on a hose which, by running a slow trickle of water down the outside of the building, slowly increased the volume of frozen water to create an ice wall he planned to hone his ice axe skills on. Someone studying engineering eventually intervened, after assessing that if his artificial ice slope was to reach the required thickness for his ice pick, there was every probability of the house collapsing first.
Most weekends Dom would disappear with his friends to practise his art in nature. I don’t think any of us were ever told where he was going, and to be honest I don’t think we particularly cared, but he was always back on Sunday evenings. So, when one Sunday afternoon there was a knock at the front door, and whoever answered it was met by a journalist from the local newspaper and asking if Dom lived at the address, our curiosity was peaked. On being told that he did, but that he was not at home, the journalist was less than forthcoming and advised that we might want to watch the early evening news.
And, sure enough, on the regional early evening news that night, all was revealed. A search had been going on all day for a couple of climbers who had gone missing on a massive cliff below the top of Snowdon. I think we were somewhat concerned.
Some hours later, and late in the evening, Dom suddenly appeared in the kitchen. Consternation all round, but it was water off Dom’s back. What was all the fuss about? The day before he and a mate had made a start on one of the almost vertical 300 metre cliffs rising above one of the small tarns below. At some point in the late afternoon, and a long way up, a rope had failed, and he and the other climber had fallen a long way before being left to dangle on what was left of the rope, some distance above the base of the cliff.
The night had drawn in, and then the realisation that there was no prospect of a rescue in the dark. The agreed solution was for one of them (I can’t remember who) to cut their rope and then climb down without any safety equipment to get help. Somehow or other this all panned out and early the next day the other climber was safely down, and they set off home. When Dom found out that the nations paparazzi had been trying to hunt him down, he was completely perplexed, finished his cup of tea and then went to bed (after a few finger pull ups from the second floor gutter for good measure).
I have no such stories to tell, but I have climbed Snowdon in the more traditional manner, three or four times. My first visit to the top of Snowdon had taken place just six years before Dom’s adventure, on a summer trip in north Wales with family. I would have been 14, and yet to discover the interesting effects of alcohol, or the rarefied atmosphere of a provincial University and its less than bohemian, yet delightfully diverse community. My memories are slim, but one thing is for certain, we didn’t climb up. We took the train, had some snacks in the old cafe and then walked back down. Given that this was the first proper mountain I had been up, I may well have been left with a somewhat distorted understanding of what they offered. A train, a cafe and stunning views. All very Bavarian.
I have what could be a phantom memory of climbing Snowdon many years after being at university, but for the life I can’t place it. I did spend some days in north Wales in early September 2001, and it could have been then. A day or so after, and having returned to London, I was ironing the afternoon away and contemplating the horrors of returning to work the following day. With the tele muted in the background, for no reason I can think of, I glanced up and watched as what appeared to be a plane smashed into what looked like one of the towers of the World Trade Centre. Thinking it was some weird afternoon disaster movie being shown on some dodgy TV channel I paid it no attention and got on with the job at hand. Looking up again some minutes later, it began to occur to me that all was not what it seemed, and I turned the volume up. Once the full enormity of what was happening had sunk in, I stopped ironing. So, it is entirely possible that at that moment, as I urgently collected the kids from their respective schools, any memory of climbing Snowdon a couple of days before was banished forever.
Some years later, and with more freedom now that the kids had become more independent, I started to visit north Wales more often, either staying in Barmouth or Aberystwyth. There was always enough nature to keep me interested in and around these towns. However, in May 2019, I needed a major distraction whilst waiting on the outcome of the final mind bogglingly expensive and tortuous days of negotiations by a solicitor to buy the freehold of my, and my neighbours flat from a rogue freeholder (a distorted legal legacy from our feudal past). I slipped up to Aberystwyth and decided to take the hike. Anything to block out the never-ending flow of increasingly negative emails.
Driving up from Aberystwyth and through Blaenau Ffestiniog I was flabbergasted by the scale of the slate quarrying that had taken place over the centuries. If I hadn’t already had an objective in mind I would have stopped and spent the day exploring the area.
I arrived at Llanberis and parked up. It all felt reasonably familiar to me, hence why I am pretty sure I had climbed it sometime between 1972 and 2019. It didn’t seem to be particularly busy, but there was one minor problem. Over the previous day or two I had developed a slightly debilitating pain in my right leg, between my knee and hip. This wasn’t a new issue and seemed to flare up from time to time, most commonly at precisely the wrong time. A year or two earlier I had set off on a spritely jaunt from Barmouth up the south bank of Afon Mawddach to Penmaenpool, but on the way back down the river, on the road to the north, my leg had seized up so painfully it took me nearly an hour to drag the throbbing knee gristle over the last half mile into town. At the time I genuinely thought my walking days were over, but the body’s ability to recover is a funny thing.
Whilst I wasn’t going to let a bit of late morning leg pain put me off my plans, I was nevertheless just a tad mindful that if I had a repeat of the Barmouth debacle anywhere beyond halfway up the mountain, I might not have the resolve to make it back down. But, no worries, there was always an alternative if such would occur, and I went to make enquiries in the visitors’ centre.
“Oh no dear, I don’t think that could be done, unless of course you book in advance.”
“OK. So, just to be on the safe side, could I buy a ticket back down for later?” I was at the old ticket office at Snowdon Railway Station, and had enquired as to whether, should I become disabled somewhere up the mountain, it might be possible to hop on a returning train.
“Well, you can try of course, but you have to do it online.” That’s the sort of message that instantaneously causes me to go into a state of deep anxiety, along with an instant resentment towards the modern world. Nevertheless, if that was what needed to be done….
“Ok. What’s the website please?”
“Actually luv, you’ll probably be wasting your time. We’re so busy these days that you need to book months in advance.”
Deflated, but grateful for the fact that the heads-up had quashed further unnecessary mobile phone induced internet curiosity and anxiety, I looked around the large shop, cafe and waiting room, and at the swathes of people holding walking sticks, crutches, or propped up by walking frames. It was obvious that the assistant was right. This was no place for the slightly enfeebled young at heart to be seen lurking.
I seemed to instinctively know where to go (which again suggests another visit within modern history). Leaving the station I walked down Rhes Fictoria (needs no translation) and then started on the small road up through trees on the Llanberis Path. Again, it all felt very familiar, not least because I was reminded that the first half kilometre is a complete pig of a climb, so steep I was almost walking on tiptoes. As I rounded a bend, at a pace that if maintained would see me arriving at the summit sometime the following week, a poseur on a mountain bike slowly passed me by. We didn’t exchange greetings, on account that neither of us had the energy.
And there, around the bend, just fifty metres on, was a cafe! I’d only been walking for ten minutes but the call of bun and coffee was too much. By now, in the crawling position, it still took me a while to get there. It was a busy little hub of activity, and there was just a suspicion that many of the customers had set off with good intentions but had surrendered at the first hurdle. I too came close, but that would have been shameful.
So, on I went, continuing up the road until eventually turning left onto the path that headed southeast and gradually up. After a while, and looking towards the east, the sight of the gargantuan Dinorwig Slate quarry, rising hundreds of feet above Llyn Peris, a moraine blocked lake formed after the last ice-age, was breathtaking. Despite the utter devastation inflicted over two-hundred years by the roof hungry world on Snowdon’s neighbouring mountain, what should be an assault on the eyes somehow gets away with it. Not unlike a northern hemisphere version of Machu Picchu it once served a purpose, and now nature is slowly reclaiming the land. **
Continuing up, the slopes rose to the east and slowly obscured the views towards the quarry, but a slight distance down the slope to the right, the narrow gauge vernacular railway track, that shadowed the path for most of the rest of the climb, made itself apparent when one of the trains (that I would be banned from riding on should I stumble and fall) cranked past and up.
The climb was steady, only really problematic in places where it was necessary to stretch the limbs at low step features. The route worked up the valley with increasingly impressive views opening to the south and west. After three or four kilometres, and quite unexpectedly, another refreshment opportunity presented itself at a small snack shack. It hadn’t been in the plan but any excuse. It had turned into a warm day, so sugar, salt and liquid refreshment was becoming essential. In any case, a break to take in the view sitting on my backside, rather than on the hoof, was very welcome.
After this point the angle of ascent began to steepen as the path swung to the east and on a more direct route up the valley slope. As the climb became a harder challenge, the reward was the increasingly pleasing views to the southwest, and the mystical slate blue, occasionally trout brown, waters of Llyn Du’r Arddu, a glacial tarn that sits on a plateau beneath the soaring cliffs that form the north face under the final ascent.
Llyn Du’r Arddu
The path continued up, hugging the slope, with the tarn on permanent display to the west, and then eventually ducked under a small stone bridge supporting the train line. From this point on the main track was to the east of the line, and the view of the tarn now restricted. Slogging on south, and up, I was beginning to get a sense of height. Surrounding peaks were now to be looked down on, rather than up to. Continuing for another mile or so, the well-worn path presented little in the form of interest, although a particular feature of this zone was the extraordinary number of discarded banana skins (some of which may well become fossils in due course and in millions of years will create great confusion to geologists).
At 1000 metres I suddenly broke cover from the bland slope, at a point where several paths met. Directly to the south was the craggy summit, with a line of human ants picking their way up to, and down from, the peak.
You have to imagine the hoards queuing at the top
To the east the land fell away hundreds of feet, worryingly, but spectacularly down to a beautiful tarn. A hazardous looking path zigzagged dramatically down the steep slopes and cliffs, and I thanked myself for not taking this route at the start of the day (it had crossed my mind as I had passed the busy car park at Pen Y Pass but had instead continued to Llanberis). Looking down the plunging cliff face below the peak, I momentarily thought of Dom, and shuddered.
I can see for miles
This was the point which had made the whole experience worth it. Whilst not quite at the top the views in every direction were dreamlike, and I wondered briefly whether there was much point in carrying on. Of course I did, and with the path following the railway line for the rest of the walk I eventually reached the summit station, and the very modern cafe and visitors centre (the old pre-war café now long demolished).
Not far to the café now
Purchasing a coffee and sandwich in a space not dissimilar to your average motorway service station, but with a better view, I went out and sat on some steps, just taking in the vistas. It was a warm afternoon, but despite the altitude the number of flies and wasps was deeply dispiriting. As far as I could tell, such a gathering could only have been exceeded by Clive James’s outdoor dunny at his childhood home at Kogarah in suburban Sydney. A smell, similar to what you get if you have the bad luck of getting a face full of extractor outside a KFC or McDonald’s (and for the sake of any potential litigation, other big fast food brand frying smells are available) hung over the establishment and had clearly attracted every diptera in the Eryri National Park (sorry, I mean Snowdonia – see footnote). And not just flies. Hundreds of gulls swooped, in the hope of a quick snatch and grab, or just wandered around the perimeter picking off discarded rubbish but studiously ignoring the hundreds of discarded banana skins.
Depressed by the scale of the human footprint just below the peak I took a quick look up. So many people were formed into a line winding up the hundred or so extra feet to the top, I rationalised that I’d done it before at some point and instead started my descent. Not long after, and with nothing particular on my mind, an almighty “whooshing” (old Welsh word) noise to my left, and in almost touching distance, the belly of a glider hurtled from below the ridge and then up sharply before disappearing out of sight. The whole thing lasted just a few seconds but I, and a few other witnesses, stood aghast wondering what on earth had just happened, and grateful that any underlying heart conditions hadn’t been accidentally triggered.
Despite my earlier concern about the durability of my right leg, it thankfully held up to the relentless impact stress on the largely stone stepped path. Relieved that I wasn’t going to have to resort to a dying swan act next to the railway track, I dug in and got on with the retreat. Back the way I’d come, and incident free.
For six or seven hours of the walk I’d put any worries about domestic issue to one side, but back at the car the first thing I did was check my emails. Nada!
The following day, the last of my short stay in north Wales, I drove up the northwest coast and circumnavigated the previously unexplored, and delightful Llyn Peninsula. I stopped at Aberdaron, a small village near the peninsula’s end and walked along the beach. There was no Wi-Fi signal of any sort, which was a curse and blessing in equal measure. Back at the village I grabbed a sandwich and cup of tea in a small cafe. The man serving asked what I’d been up to. I mentioned Snowdon. He knew it well, he said, and then explained he’d been up it numerous times, including three or four times on a bike (one time in snow). I should have been impressed I suppose, but I still had a lot on my mind. I asked him if they had Wi-Fi (the great equaliser). They did, and I took my drink and sandwich to a table outside and logged on.
I had been out of signal range for some hours, but I immediately registered a series of text messages from my neighbour pleading for me to read the emails. By now, and racked with anxiety, I opened Outlook, and the inbox was alight with emails. Judging from the jubilation being expressed in my neighbour’s emails, at long last (the whole process we had reached the end of a painful legal process (which had taken 18 long months – don’t do it unless you really must).
The good news was that we had finally gained the freehold. The bad news was that I was now broke. But the good news was that I could now get on and sell the flat, to address the now being broke situation. The bad news was that I would have to sell the flat. Oh well, as I looked out to sea, I realised that there could have been worse places to celebrate and commiserate at the same time. How many times did the lad say he’d cycled up Snowdon? Well, that was the last time I’d be attempting it either on foot, or by train.
The phone pinged again. An email from our solicitor. “Congratulations, please transfer £X%@&ing1000’s of pounds by close of play!” Wails from Wales!
*
And so, it came as a bit of a shock when, in March 2022, and after two long years of lockdowns, I ended up staying with my daughter and her partner in a small cottage in a valley in the middle of a very rural north Wales, somewhere near Cerrigydrudion. It was so remote that at night, if a car entered the valley two miles away its headlights lit the roads and hedgerows like a 1940’s black and white film noir. I expected a knock on the door and two men in beige gabardine coats demanding to see my identity papers at any moment. The shock was that as part of the deal (it being in part a birthday treat), there was an expectation that a climb up Snowdon was required. “But,” I explained, “I vowed I would never go up Snowdon again.” Of course, and quite rightly, my feeble excuse fell quite literally on stony ground, and so on the morning of the 6th March 2022, I was back at the visitors centre in Llanberis. At least, I rationalised as I looked up to the snow covered peak, if my leg gives in this time, I had two young Sherpas to get me back down.
We set off, and of course I’d forgotten again how gut bustingly steep the first half mile was. The route, of course, was the same as before, and before that and that, and despite the gloriously sunny day it was cold. Maybe it was the time of year, or maybe it was a consequence of Covid, but there was no sign of life at the halfway snack shack. Lynn Du’r Arddu was a challenging slate blue. No signs were necessary, but if there had been they would have said “Swim here – If you think you’re hard enough!” I assumed that the guy from the cafe at Aberdaron had already done it, before climbing up the rest of the mountain on his hands.
The snowfield started at around 900 metres. A light dusting at first but gradually increasing in depth where the ground wasn’t fully exposed to the wind. By 1000 metres, and where the path emerged onto the col at Bwlch Glas, for the first time in my life I was high on a mountain in polar conditions. It was cold but the exhilaration of being at that location, there and then, and with my daughter and her partner blocked out any discomfort. I guess that if there had been the slightest of breezes it would have been a different matter, but we were lucky.
Compare and contrast (Spring 2019 above)
As we took photos and gawped at the magnificent views, I noticed my daughter and partner had started up a conversation with a couple standing nearby. It transpired that they were work colleagues from some time back. About the only time I have ever randomly bumped into an old friend was coming out of the tube at Tufnell Park station, so it seemed almost incredible that this was happening at 3000 feet on a mountain in north Wales; in winter. I was introduced to the couple, who were on their way back down after reaching the summit. I rather pathetically mentioned that at 64, and from what I had seen on the trek, I was almost certainly the oldest person on the mountain. But apparently not. They’d come up with one of their dad’s. He was 70. “Right. Where is he now?” I asked, embarrassed and somewhat deflated. “Oh, we left him at the top.” There was no hint of irony or further explanation. I looked towards the frozen summit. Perhaps, I wondered, it was a discrete form of assisted dying? I am sure I’m not alone in having an older relative say something to the effect that “if I ever end up like that just throw me off a cliff.” When it happened to me a couple of years ago, I had to explain that whilst I understood the sentiment, the consequences for me would be life in prison. However, being left at the top of a freezing mountain without walking aids? Hmmmm…. I haven’t had that conversation with my children…yet!
My daughter is waiting for me to say something. It can wait.
After parting company with the couple we carried on, following the line of the railway track, covered in snow and under maintenance. We reached the cafe, which was also closed. Fortunately, we had some bananas. We sat on the same steps I had sat on three years earlier, admiring the surrounding landscape and untroubled by any flies or the smell of hot fat.
After a short break we joined the queue to the peak (resistance was futile), and not long after we attained the summit, took the obligatory photos and headed back down.
Near summit view towards the sea
I’d kept a careful eye on all the other climbers throughout, and at no stage did I see any man who looked remotely 70 years old. Curious?
Don’t leave me…just yet! We need to talk about it.
Despite my initial misgivings, climbing back up Snowdon in such invigorating conditions, and in good company, was wholly worthwhile. But I’ll never do it again! The kids left the next day, and I spent a couple of extra days staying in Barmouth. Someone had recommended taking a look at Cadair Idris, and despite still sore legs I made my way to Minffordd, a short drive from Barmouth.
I could write another thousand words on my day on Cadair Idris, but that’s not the point of this exercise. At 2930 feet, it’s a long way from even being the second highest peak in Gwynedd, but from a purely aesthetic point of view it is a little gem of a mountain. A challenging walk with glorious examples of every glacial feature that physical geographers dream about (think roche moutonnee’s, but not for too long), and because of its solitary location, breath taking views in all directions, Cadair Idris is far more than worthwhile. A big thank you to the person who recommended it, and don’t tell anyone on Instagram.
Cadair Idris. This view is for free
* Anyone who has had the endurance to read this far will almost certainly be concerned, positively or negatively, that I have stuck with the traditional English name, Snowdon, and not the traditional Welsh name Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon). There is an interesting (if you’re into etymology) discussion to be had as to what came first, and indeed what both these words mean. The English Snowdon is pretty straight forward. Don is “hill” and snow is – well pretty obvious. The first documented use of the Old English Snowdon was recorded in the 11th century – so, pretty old. Yr Wyddfa is a bit more ambiguous, and without walking into a linguistic minefield I have no understanding of, it either means a cairn or burial mound, or a high place. The use of Yr Wyddfa as a name for this place is recorded, but some centuries or two after the English version. Regardless, I have stuck with Snowdon on this occasion for the simple reason that the official name change took place late in 2022, some months after my last ascent.
I am 99% certain I will not be climbing it again, but if I do, and need to update this account, Yr Wyddfa it shall be.
** As I was writing up this account a BBC news story popped up about wanton damage being caused by a large rise in people visiting, and recklessly exploring the Dinorwig Slate quarry. Unfortunately, in the process vandalism and damage was being caused to the historically important industrial heritage site, including buildings being set on fire. Arson aside, I’m not entirely sure where I stand on this. Given the centuries of industrial scale brutalisation on the landscape, trying to preserve its legacy in aspic feels somewhat ironic. No culprits were named, but the main driver had been identified. Instagram!
Despite Warwickshire being almost bang central England, when I came to think about it (other than driving through parts of it, mainly on the M6), I had only ever been there twice. Once, for a day trip nearly forty years ago when visiting Stratford upon Avon and Warwick, and once to visit Coventry in my 50th year (by which time the fair City was no longer in the county).
That said, there was one other occasion, and it lasted about a year. I was born in Coventry in late 1957 but had left the city a few months later. In 1957 Coventry was enjoying a relatively short number of years (132 to be precise) back in Warwickshire, after being banished from the county in 1451, and not re-establishing its presence again until 1842. It was dispatched again, to become part of the West Midlands Combined Authority in 1974, where it remains. Looking at a modern map of Warwickshire it looks like a sea cucumber type creature that’s taken a kick in the stomach, with Coventry being the tip of the boot that’s sticking it in.
If you have been keeping up with this irrelevant preamble, you’ll see that by the respective dates, at the time of my birth, Coventry was in Warwickshire. That makes me a son of the county. Who knew? When I was fifty, I thought it was about time I took a diversion on a journey further north and investigate where I’d spent my first few months. By then of course, it was no longer part of Warwickshire (see above!). I arrived at the large estate to the northeast of the city centre and found the road where I knew the flats were located. Except they had gone. Demolished, presumably, as part of an estate regeneration program. From what I could see of what was left, it was going to take a lot more than a regeneration program, or a visit from Michael Heseltine, to breathe any life back into it. I didn’t get out of the car, and drove on with a sense of outrage and shame. *
But this is not about Coventry. It’s about Ebrington Hill, the highest point in Warwickshire, (located on the boundary with Gloucestershire, to the very southwest of the county), how I got there, and then home.
A week before Christmas, and a couple of months since I’d last topped a county (Oxfordshire and White Horse Hill), and I was getting twitchy. I had a family appointment in Bedfordshire on Wednesday afternoon. Normally I would have made the journey and then driven the three hours plus trip back home. But I didn’t much fancy that prospect. I looked at a map. Where could I get to in an hour or so after my visit that didn’t take me too far from home, and gave me an option on a summit the next day?
It didn’t take too long, and the day before I left, I booked a reasonably priced room in an hotel in Royal Leamington Spa, a place I knew with all certainty that I had never been to before. On the day I arrived just before 8pm, and as quick as a flash had made it into town and sequestered the only remaining seat in the Copper Pot inn, just in time for kick off. Tottenham v Manchester United in the League Cup quarter final. I’m determined to avoid football references as much as possible in these accounts, but for 60 minutes I felt as if I was in a dream after Spurs marched into a three-goal lead, and with no hint whatsoever that United were going to be able to lay a glove on the boys from the Lane. And then, inexplicably, our goalie (good, but old, and not first choice) managed to pass the ball directly to an opposition forward, and it was 3-1. Then, just a couple of minutes later, the same goalie dithered on the ball in his own box, and another opposition forward, half his age, nipped in and slipped the ball into the net to make it 3-2, and suddenly Spurs were on the ropes. My little daytrip treat to myself was now beginning to feel like a monstrous mistake. But then, with just two minutes of the ninety left on the clock, Son Heung-min swung the ball directly into the net from a corner and it was 4-2, and we were safe. The United fans behind me at the bar, who had been urging their team on after the two self-inflicted calamities, were mercifully silenced and the United goalie spent the next two minutes running around after the referee claiming he’d been fouled. It was comically embarrassing. At least the Spurs goalie had just shook his head and taken his shots. With five minutes of extra time United made it 4-3, and despite a final nervous moment Spurs had won and were in the semi-finals. I hadn’t been that happy in years, and on the way back to the hotel popped into a nice local pub where the TV was showing an interview with the droll Spurs antipodean manager. I just sat with my beer giggling.
The next morning, and after a hearty breakfast, I went back into town strolling the Georgian streets and the charming riverside park (even in mid-December), scratching my head and wondering why I had never been to Leamington Spa before. By the time it was time to go I had made a mental note that a visit on a warmer day would not be without reward, but also made a note not to bother revisiting the station, unless I was going to be arriving by train. Art-deco is not generally my thing, but I understand that at the time it was a valid art and design form and has occasionally produced significantly important architecture (think Hoover building at Perivale, or the Carreras Cigarette factory at Mornington Crescent). Whoever was responsible for the brutalist art-deco station in Georgian, Royal Leamington Spa (Percy Emerson Culverhouse to be precise), had clearly come from a splinter faction influenced by certain, in vogue at the time, European dictatorships.
You can’t blame WW2 for this one
I set off from outside the hotel just after 10.30am and straight into a traffic jam that refused to release me for the next half an hour. A tad frustrating, but eventually I was just south of Warwick castle and looking at the map to find my way south to my objective. There were several options, all pretty much the same in terms of time, but the route that would take me along Flat Rabbit Road appealed, I guess for the obvious curiosity factor. Somehow, I must have missed the turn for Flat Rabbit Road, because a while later I was turning right at a roundabout and onto the Fosse Way and hadn’t seen a single flat rabbit.
Taking the Fosse Way (the old Roman road from Lincoln to Exeter) had not been in my route plan but after a few minutes, as the virtually straight road rose and took the high ground, and with fine views across the Midlands, I was overcome by a sense of nostalgia. Forty-six years before, and living in Leicester, a housemate in the student digs I lived in offered to take me for a weekend in Bristol, near to where he lived. We set off in his moss-covered classic green Austin Morris 1000 Traveller, and instead of doing the obvious, taking the M1 and then M4, and probably because the engine was ill-equipped to pass muster, we stuck to the Fosse Way for most of the journey. As I drove on southwest, taking in the vastness of the unfolding views, the original journey was coming back to me in spades. My friend Andy was one of those people who just made life worth living. An intelligent bright spirit, great footballer and full of life, and who was so funny you could be in tears of laughter for hours.
Generally, I loathe driving but fittingly my iPod, as if it was sensing the occasion, started chucking out some bangers. The volume went up and the miles passed by with the likes of the Manics and Jimi Hendrix pounding out the soundtrack. Every so often, red and white signage at the side of the road reminded people that it was a High Risk Crash Route, and came with casualty statistics. It made grim reading, and whilst I was doing my best not to get carried away, and sticking to the speed limits despite the motivational music, I could easily see how less disciplined motorists might find it very tempting to put the pedal to the metal on the Fosse Way.
For three or four years after leaving university I kept in touch with Andy, but eventually the letters stopped, and we went on to have our separate lives. There was nothing particularly odd about that in those days. Decades on, and with the ability to connect to anyone on the planet with the touch of a keypad, occasionally I have tried to search him out, but to no avail. I guess, having a Christian name that at the time would have been one of the most common in the country, and a surname that very much is the most popular in the country, my failure to track down the charming man, has perhaps not been unexpected. I miss him and his company. Thanks for showing me the Fosse Way, Mr Smith.
At Halford the road I’d hoped to take to Armscote was closed. With a bit of guesswork, I found another narrow back road that took me into what appeared to be a very exclusive village. I headed west out of the Armscote and some minutes later arrived in the larger village of Ilmington. I parked up on Grump Street, which overlooked a large green, and checked my bearings. I could see from the directions on the phone app that I was near my destination, but for the moment I took a few seconds to look over the green towards the fine solid buildings, and beyond the stone tiled roofs of the village. Without exception, and despite the overcast conditions, every building, old and new, radiated an exquisite orangey, yellow colour that I assumed to be sandstone. (Nevertheless, and overcome by a sense of curiosity, I later looked at the area on the British Geological Survey’s Geology viewer. Much to my surprise I discovered that this was the start of the Cotswolds, and that the building material in the area was Oolitic limestone). On another day I would have parked up and walked through the village and found a way up to the top of the hill. But rain was in the air, the wind was whipping up and it wasn’t another day.
Driving out of the village and heading west, the road suddenly started a steep climb that continued for about a mile. Instinctively I knew I was heading in the right direction, the direction being up. The bright low midwinter sun of the early morning that had illuminated Leamington Spa, was now a distant memory. The road began to flatten out and large muddy fields opened out on either side. The last remaining leaves were being cleared from their parent branches and being flung at the windscreen. Now driving west on Nebsworth Road I knew I would soon arrive at a small road on the right. Moments later, and about a hundred metres on, a small and immaculate vintage sky-blue tractor pulled out of a turning on the right and started towards me. A contented looking man sat on the open seat. From what I could see the tractor was pulling a small trailer with a couple of bales of hay. I hadn’t seen a quaint rustic sight like this in decades, but one thing was for certain, that turning was my road. I could very easily have missed it if the farmer hadn’t chosen that moment to deliver some hay to his flock.
The land that carried this one-track road appeared to be flat. Hardly the stuff of county peaks, but after a quarter of a mile I recognised Lark Stoke transmitter station on the left-hand side. I had read that the highest point was just nearby. Despite the narrow hedged lane, a verge on the left (and just short of the transmitter entrance), allowed enough room to pull over and park up (remarkably I had noticed this tiny detail when I’d checked out the location on Google). I changed into my boots and stepped out into a gale. For some reason I had imagined that at this moment twenty Disney cartoon red breasted robins would descend chirping merrily from the nearby trees and knowingly escort me to my destination. But, for some reason they didn’t, and I was left to my own devices.
Just opposite the transmitter station (a building that looked like it had another more sinister purpose to that advertised) a signed footpath led me between two fields. I tiptoed through muddy puddles for about a hundred metres until I was certain that the land was beginning to dip away, turned my phone camera into the brutal wind, took a single shot (my eyes were streaming so much I couldn’t be arsed to take a second), and beat the retreat back to the car.
Somewhere around here, I think. Ebrington Hill and a seasonal crop?
I had just enough interest in the moment to have a glance around and took a second photo of the wide-open landscape to the west, where hills cropped up here and there and onto the horizon, before surrendering and falling back into the car. I had had my moment on the Birdlip limestone peak of Mount Ebrington. **
Lark Hill Transmitter – Not the right direction to the top
Whilst I wasn’t entirely sure that I had taken the right path (some posts about this location give the misleading impression that the top of Ebrington Hill is along the track past the transmitter station, near a trig point set in a wall), I was pretty certain that I had been there or thereabouts. I may have missed it by an inch, but it was getting on and I needed to get home.
I didn’t bother changing back into my trainers. Turning the car around and heading back south, some distance down the lane a couple with a dog were sauntering in my direction. As I neared them it was obvious that the road wasn’t wide enough to allow continuous safe passage, so I stopped to let them pass. As they neared it suddenly struck me that being in such a remote setting there would be customs to observe, and it would be rude not to say something (although of course I could have just smiled and nodded). They were virtually by the side of the car when I let the window down. The problem with my plan was that, at just the moment they looked down at me, I hadn’t come up with anything to say other than an awkward “hello.” Whatever the impulse was that had led me into this potentially disastrous course of action was now horribly exposed, but they smiled, and I knew I had to say something more. The problem was that the “something more,” which had suddenly popped into my head, was going to sound so insane that initially I couldn’t spit it out. Nonetheless, I could see they were hanging on, as if waiting for a punchline.
“Ehhmm… err.. I err.. hmmmm,” (I had made an appalling start), “was wondering if that err.. field back there is… errrr… the, hmm….,” (I knew they were now worrying for their personal safety), “maybe the hmmm.. highest point in…. ehhmm…err…. Warwickshire?”
It seemed (from my perspective at least) that the tension was broken, and indeed they both smiled a bit more confidently. “Yes, yes,” the woman said, “just down the path a bit and at the hedge opposite the wireless station.” It was a huge affirmation, which of course I hadn’t really needed, but hey!
To my great relief, and almost certainly as a consequence of being spared further embarrassment, I immediately turned into a chirpy cockney type, gave them a big smile, said that that was great and I could now tick it off my list, and then thanked them profusely. They smiled back sympathetically, giving looks that implied they were asked the same question every other day. I figured that the local neighbourhood watch would be notified regardless (and correctly), and with a little wave set off south.
I should really end this narrative around now with a succinct summary, but I still had to get down South, and home, so I’m afraid there is a little bit more to consume.
I headed off in the general direction of Chipping Campden, but would be veering back east at some point and heading for Banbury, the M40 and then the three-and-a-half-hour journey beyond. It was the Friday before Christmas and the radio was alive with warnings about it being the busiest day on the roads all year. Great!! I hadn’t factored that scenario in at the planning stage.
A mile or so from Ebrington Hill, and on a road that headed downhill, four jays emerged out of the surrounding hedges and flew (knowingly perhaps) in front of the car for a couple of hundred metres. I have never seen more than one jay at any one time, so to have four – well perhaps it was the Disney moment I’d hoped for earlier.
The B4035, that headed east, and would get me across the county to Banbury, was picturesque, even in the bleak midwinter. Villages and small towns that were so rural pretty they looked like they had been built with the sole intention of being photographed for Christmas cards and biscuit tins, came and went. I don’t exactly know where the alleged north/south divide starts and finishes (I think it used to be Watford), or even if it has any real meaning, but judging by the apparent affluence on display in this part of Warwickshire, if this really was north the societal characteristics are being well hidden.
Approaching the outskirts of Banbury I stopped driving and sat in a jam for twenty minutes. Forty minutes later I was slowly squeezed out of Banbury and onto the M40. The forecast of road chaos had been accurate, at least in and around the small market town, and with deep foreboding about what would happen at the M25, I started to head south. After a few minutes I recognised the tell-tale embryonic signs of a migraine, an irritating event that comes out of the blue from time to time. That said, on this occasion I had half an idea why. A long day driving the day before, followed by three pints of the local best in Royal Leamington Spa, and then being woken before 6am by the extraction system from the kitchen in the nursing home opposite my room (surprisingly, not advertised in the on-line blurb promoting the rooms benefits), almost certainly played a part. Knowing how things might pan out, a couple of miles on I pulled into Cherwell service station. An hour, and two rejuvenating strong tea’s later, I had recovered. Somehow, I’d missed a bullet. It could have been a lot worse. If it had, I may have had to abandon further travel and book into the on-site hotel. As I sipped on my tea, eye’s half closed and avoiding bright lights, I thought about the hundred or so migraines I have had over the last two decades. About 50% had been of the mild variety (like the one I was having), and about 50% had left me debilitated for hours. Fortunately, I don’t get the serious headaches that can have a major impact on other people’s lives but trying to explain to anyone what my migraines are like is an almost impossible task. As I thought back on the day it occurred to me that the next time someone asks me what one of my bad one’s is like, I would say that I felt like a flat rabbit.
As I went back to the car I checked emails on my mobile phone. There was one from a delivery company saying they were delivering a package that afternoon, and at a time I knew I wasn’t going to be home in time for. Given that I hardly every order anything on-line it was frustrating. I tried to open a link that said I could give further instructions if I wasn’t going to be home (where was that function when I had ordered it?), but there was insufficient signal so that was that.
I carried on south, feeling okay, but increasingly anxious about the delivery and the prospect of it being dumped outside the door in the pouring rain. With the M25 approaching fast I saw a sign to Beaconsfield services. I still had an hour to influence the delivery, and so pulled in and parked up as far from the main building as possible. This time there was a signal and I managed to open the link. The options were limited (like, where was the option to leave it behind the white Grecian style planter with the eucalyptus bush?), so I nominated a favoured neighbour (and apologised in my head at the same moment). After I was as satisfied as I could be that I had completed the task, I looked up. And there it was! In the parking bay opposite, and in the photo below. Wrong colour, and the driver a different gender, but a ghost from the past, nevertheless.
What, I wondered, were the odds?
Whatever all the fuss was about, the anticipated nightmare on the M25 failed to materialise, and I circumnavigated the south of London faster than I had in years. The migraine aside it had been a very satisfactory 48-hours, and I’d connected another bit of the puzzle. On this occasion to Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. The other adjacent counties, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, and, it now seemed, West Midlands Combined Authority, would have to wait until next year (or the next, who knows?).
The following day, browsing as you do, an ad popped up. Big Country (the band) were playing Leamington Spa in April 2025. Hmmm…?
* Just three days after writing this piece a news feed popped up on my phone informing me that, for the moment, no decision was going to be taken to merge Warwickshire with the West Midlands Combined Authority. As if that had ever been a thing! But it was, and it is. I’m going to have to check to see if the West Midlands Combined Authority is on my list and where its highest point lies. This is getting trickier.
**The birdlip limestone at Ebrington hill is the same formation that outcrops at Cleeve Hill in Gloucester, which I had been to two months earlier. Without looking this up I would never have made any connection between these two very differing landscapes. It’s a big county indeed.
To my old friend Andy Smith and the spirit of the Fosse Way.
In the Footsteps of Alfred Watkins – Part 2 – Chalk Art and Car Parks (Part Two)
As I drove carefully along Station Road towards the B4507 at Kingston Winslow, to the east of Swindon, I knew with absolute certainty that I had never been anywhere near this rural delight before. I was returning home after a few days exploring and contemplating Alfred Watkins theories on the possibilities of ley lines in the Hereford and Worcestershire area. Whilst I was left unconvinced, his 100-year-old book “The Old Straight Track” provided a charming account of a bygone ideal. I was now heading towards a point of reference that was oddly missing from his account, the Uffington White Horse (the nearby “castle” being the highest point in Oxfordshire). For once, it was a glorious day.
A narrow road to the south of Woolstone took me up to a busy National Trust car park. At the pay and display machine several confused people stood around trying to figure out the least complicated way to part with their money. My heart sank when it was my turn. The machine refused to give me an option to pay by card (unless I was a member?). Having not quite recovered from a brutally traumatic experience at the National Trust car park at Beacon Hill in West Sussex, it was with a deep sense of foreboding that I called the pay by phone number. The mind-numbingly awful, computerised voice was hideously familiar, and when it asked for my PIN number (you know that number that’s so embedded in your brain that it is instantly memorable every time you use it, once or twice a year), I knew I was going to lose another valuable part of my life to the task. And I did and I’ll say no more.
On the plus side, the cold blast from the north that had dominated the week had subsided, and it was now warm and sunny enough to wear just a T-shirt and light jumper. Bliss. After the frustrating pay by phone debacle, I left the car park through a gate to the east and was immediately on the open chalk down. The hill fort was a few hundred metres up a gentle slope. This was going to be over a tad too quickly.
As I reached the lower ditch a track headed away to the south, and keen to stretch the legs I flanked round the structure, watched a kestrel and then two red kites patrolling the farm fields nearby, and then met up with the Ridgeway path to the south-east. There was no point putting off the exploration of the hill fort any longer. A short walk north and I was at the trig point sited at the eastern point of the massive earthworks.
At the top already..
The trig point stood at the top of the eastern rampart of the deep ditch (the terminology used here is likely dubious). The earthworks on the other side of the ditch seemed to be marginally higher, though surely that was just a trick of the eye. I clambered over and at the top was able to get the full view of the ancient structure. I have no expertise in these areas, but even to my untrained eye, the huge expanse of ground that lay within the single, broadly circular ditch and earthworks, was quite obviously not a defensive structure. Whilst the ditch would have been deeper and the earthworks higher, to describe it as a castle or hill fort is fundamentally misleading, but possibly increases tourist numbers. Even imagining a wooden fenced structure around the perimeter left me in no doubt that trying to defend this huge area would have been a completely pointless exercise.
Keen to guarantee I would stand at the top of the county, and extend the stroll, I decided to walk the full circumference. As I ambled along the rampart, I mused on what its purpose might have been. It reminded me, in size and shape, of a cricket ground. A proto-Oval or Lords perhaps. As there is absolutely no evidence (yet), of cricket being played in the Iron Age I ruled that possibility out, but the idea that it was an arena of some sort persisted. I wasn’t alone in beating the bounds, and as I passed couples and families out enjoying the day, the same observation kept cropping up in conversations. “What an amazing view.” Despite the relative lack of elevation, on a stunning day like this, they weren’t wrong.
On the ramparts looking west towards Swindon
Having completed the full circuit I chose to do what no one else was doing. I left the earthworks and walked in something of a direct line to what I figured was the centre. The ground seemed to rise slightly from east to west which meant that until I got to the approximate centre it wasn’t possible to see the western ramparts. The untidy vegetation had been left to grow, which further ruled out the possibility of cricket being played, at least until the first cut next year. An enormous mushroom emerged from the undergrowth, reminding me that what we buy at the local supermarket is a pale reflection on what you can obtain in the wild. I was tempted to pluck it, but decided to leave it in the ground as I would never get through it.
I headed northeast and towards one of the three or four entrances. A small metal plaque explained a bit more.
Keep off the grass.
Beyond the embankment a sort of path took me to the area above the White Horse. Understandably, it was roped off, but trying to pick out the chalk detail was easier said than done. I think I was able to make out the head and neck, but it would have to wait until a later inspection of the photograph I took to get a better understanding.
Who knows? Dragon hill below right.
Below, a beautiful sweep of land with a dry valley and a flat-topped hill made for an impressive vista, and invited the observer to descend, maybe for a better view of the horse. A path continued above the carving and then gradually descended with another stunning dry valley to the right.
A classy dry valley
The path eventually crossed a narrow road and continued to Dragon Hill, with steep steps leading to the top. Whilst a natural feature, the top has been flattened. The story goes that George (he of the Saint status) killed a dragon here, and that the blood of the dragon poisoned the ground at the northern point, so now no grass grows. That’s one explanation… I guess. I mean, I just about get the dragon thing, but the idea that George ever came to these isles is clearly prosperous. I was drawn to the patch of bare chalk. Like thousands of people every year, and no doubt down the millennia, it’s about the only spot where you can get any sort of view of the White Horse. And perhaps that’s another explanation for the bare patch? But, even at this point the view was limited.
You still have to use your imagination. The bare chalk in the foreground remains a mystery, apparently!
I left the hill slightly disappointed. It was obvious that this exceptional work of art wasn’t going to reveal itself when up close and personal, and that being able to see it in its entirety was probably only possible from the Vale to the north. On the plus side, a chalk ridge, its scarp slope wave-like notches formed in the ice-age, curved away to the west to dramatic effect.
The Manger. I suppose it could be a dragon’s tail. I might be onto something.
Retreating from Dragon Hill, and avoiding puddles of dragon’s blood, I followed the narrow road back towards the top, taking in the views at every opportunity. Two kestrels, unperturbed by my presence, patrolled the field just below me.
Halfway up the hill and looking back, it was just possible to get a more complete view of the horse.
Ah yes, that’s better!
The image is very familiar to most of us, and unquestionably it is a work of art. The sense of motion is palpable. The people who dug it out of the soil were not only deeply artistic, but also observational scientists. It wasn’t until the 1870’s that a photographer (Eadweard Muybridge) was able to demonstrate convincingly how horses moved their legs whilst galloping (and I’m not going to attempt to explain it here), but you only need to look at an image of the White Horse to see that the ancients had already nailed it.
Unless it’s supposed to be a hare?
Back near the ramparts I headed towards a plinth. A circular steel directional plate lay on top. The third toposcope in four days. One of the many arrows pointed northeast towards Muswell Hill at 46 kilometres. I hadn’t realised I was so close to London, and was no less mystified that they had chosen to highlight the home of the Kinks rather than Highgate or Hampstead. Well, it was a mystical place, so I guessed there must have been a reason. *
I drove back down the steep road from the National Trust car park, and onto the B4507. The amount of roadkill here was extraordinary but, to be fair, it was of the highest quality. Mainly pheasants! I heard recently that the entire biomass (total weight) of all game birds reared for the purpose of being shot in Britain is greater than the entire biomass of all our wild birds. I suspect that’s pretty shocking, but I don’t know for sure. Either way, these dead ducks had skilfully managed to avoid death by traditional lead shot. Whether taking a broadside from a Range Rover Defender is a more, or less, dignified way to die is hard to say, but as I rounded a bend in the road I had to brake sharply in the old Ford to avoid terminating a buzzard that was lazily dining off the King’s asphalt table.
A moment or two later one of the seven thousand plus tracks on my iPod kicked in. Given the Muswell Hill reference at the toposcope, I had been chewing over which (of surprisingly many), Kinks tracks could neatly bookend this quintessentially English piece, but with the windows down, instantaneously the song randomly playing on this high, blue-skied late summer’s day, just outside Swindon, was entirely perfectamundo. It wasn’t Elgar, but it was XTC.
* The Muswell Hill indicated at the toposcope lies beyond Oxford, in the middle of nowhere and certainly nowhere near the Clissold Arms, East Finchley.
Footnote on the White Horse
The White Horse at Uffington is unique. But Alfred Watkins failed to mention it in the Old Straight Track. Having re-read his theories (after something of a fifty-year interregnum), it’s now very easy to pull apart most of his examples, not least because the science of archaeology has since been transformed.
Nevertheless, given Alfred was so convinced he was onto something significant, not to present some evidence of ley lines associated with the White Horse seems inconsistent, not least because whilst not on his doorstep, it wasn’t a million miles away either. One of the examples he relies on, more than once, is the Long Man of Wilmington on the north slope of the South Downs, between Eastbourne and Lewes (and many, many more miles from his home). It’s an impressive feature on the landscape and can be seen for miles. Watkins contended that the figure, standing erect and holding a staff in both outstretched hands, was conclusive proof that the pre-Romans were skilled surveyors and that the Long Man evidenced how they would have created the leys.
At the time you certainly wouldn’t have been able to write this thinking off, until along came the pesky archaeologists with their fancy new dating techniques and discovered that it was only a few hundred years old! That was in 2003. Just a few years earlier, and before all this science stuff got in the way, two of Watkins’ apostles, Nigel Pennick and Paul Devereux, published their own updated money maker, Lines on the Landscape. Rather stupidly, at the time being part of a history book club that specialised in slightly off the planet theorising, I bought it. It must have been a lean month subject wise.
In this book the authors go one step further than Watkins. They do indeed reference Uffington, detailing a supposed ley line that passes through (interestingly not the middle) of the nearby hilltop fort. Whilst they mention the White Horse, it’s only noted as being “nearby.” That, though, is very important. On the same page they also illustrate ley lines that pass through the Long Man of Wilmington, and a ley line that passes “near” the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. It is possible that the rather alarming looking Cerne Abbas is somewhat older than the Long Man, but using the same contemporary dating techniques, applied just a handful of years after their claim, it too, at its oldest, is probably Anglo-Saxon. Given what we now know about the age of these landmarks, and without giving Pennick and Devereux much more undue attention, it’s probably time to lay the leys theory to rest. It’s clearly a busted flush.
Yet the Uffington White Horse, an abstract work of art, etched with passion and care into the landscape, is very actually pre-Roman. Since visiting, I have hardly stopped thinking about it. It has been regularly maintained ever since its creation over two thousand years ago, including during the Roman period and the Dark Ages. If it had been left to its own devices for just a couple of decades throughout this time it would have disappeared for good. It has a story still to tell, and I have an ominous feeling I’m about to disappear down a labyrinthine rabbit hole (and my middle name is Alfred too!). My book, The Uffington White Horse, Thoroughbred or Carthorse in the Neolithic Astral Plane, will be published (honestly, it will!).
A couple of weeks earlier, whilst searching for the true top of Hertfordshire, I walked adjacent to a linear section of one of the Grim’s Ditches; iron age earthworks associated with the Chilterns area that still remain a mystery. I discovered that I still owned a fifty-year-old copy of The Old Straight Track, in which the author, Alfred Watkins, claimed, in 1925, to have discovered multiple ancient lines in the landscape. These were called ley lines, based on man-made and natural features, such as burial mounds, churches, standing stones, springs, and other features, which align on the land. I wanted to find out if he had a take on the Grim’s Ditches. He didn’t. I wondered perhaps if this was because they might have undermined his theories, but it’s more likely that he had little knowledge of them, being that most of his research was conducted in the Herefordshire area where he lived, and in particular the Radnor Valley.
Having decided to rule out a late summer getaway to Greece, on the grounds it was going to be too much hassle and inflated prices that didn’t reflect the quality of the accommodation, I decided instead to book a few nights in a studio near Great Malvern, and go seek out some end of season county summits. Given that I was not going to be a million miles from Great Malvern, logic dictated that a walk in the Malvern Hills, and to the top of Worcester (or Worcestershire) Beacon, would make a good start. I packed my bags, threw in my copy of The Old Straight Track, took on a 48-hour grandparenting shift in Bedfordshire, then drove across the Midlands in torrential rain and arrived on Tuesday evening at my digs in the foothills of the Malvern Hills. It was mid-September and unseasonably cold. Wondering if I should have put a bit more effort into the Greek thing, despite the conditions, the late evening view of the hills had me smitten.
After a solid night’s sleep I drove into Great Malvern and parked up just out of the town centre. I was anxious to get on with the walk, and after about 200 metres I realised I was still wearing trainers and not my walking shoes. There’s a difference. As I turned back towards the car park, I also remembered that I hadn’t paid for that either. It’s possibly a getting old thing, but I do need to pay more attention to detail. As it happened, and unlike some other locations I have visited recently, paying at the machine with a card, and without having to type in a load of detail, was a small joy. That said, the 1-hour, 2-hour, 4-hour and 10-hours options (where was 6 and 8?) left me having to select the 10-hour option, just to be on the safe side. At £4 it seemed a fair deal.
Re-shod, I trotted up the high street and soon arrived at the grounds of the Priory. I knew I had been here before, and had done a walk in the hills, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember when, with who, or why? Maybe it would come back to me as they day progressed. (It didn’t).
Given that I had 10-hours on the meter I felt I had nothing to lose by dropping into the church for a closer inspection. In the back of my mind I had a thought that it housed the original, or at least a copy of the Mappa Mundi.
Into the Priory
I stepped inside, avoiding the curious eyes of the volunteers, eager, no doubt, to pounce. I briefly took in the ceiling tiles and the stained-glass windows that an information board informed me had somehow survived the Dissolution. Another sign said that it costs £20 every 15 minutes to maintain the church. In 1541 locals raised £20 to buy the whole thing to replace their old, dilapidated church. There was no sign of the Mappa Mundi. *
I moved towards the centre of the building. As I did so I became aware of a small gathering at the far end, and a person of the church dressed in a gown, giving a service to a group of people. He was wired up and I was able to hear the reading. I had no idea what the message was, but I did pick up on the line “O ye of little faith.” Taking it as a cue I chose to leave and head instead for a higher place.
The vicar (?) had obviously seen me coming and had slipped in what I took to be an ecclesiastic diss. Duly patronised, I left without further exploration and headed up to Bellevue Terrace, the holy cuss still ringing in my ears. I noticed that there was an abundance of greeting card shops, and as I headed north along the A449 another card shop boasted that it had been nominated in the Best Independent Greeting Card Retailer in the Midlands! Who knew?
I had no specific route in mind, but figured if I continued along this road I would be able to walk the ridge from one of its northern entry points. Here, the A449 is the Worcester Road. Occasionally, between the grand Georgian and early Victorian mansions that lined the road to the right, tantalising views opened towards the Vale of Evesham. The people who built and lived in these imposing houses had certainly picked their spot.
After half a mile or so I took a left onto West Malvern Road. The road went up here into the Cowleigh area (I knew it was the Cowleigh area because a sign pointed out that it was the Crowleigh Area), and after another half mile, on the left at North Quarry, a small car park and what was obviously a route to the hills. Starting up the path on the left I spotted a blue plaque on the wall of what appeared to be the last house in town, and dedicated to Alice Betteridge, the last donkey-woman of the Malvern’s. Rather than jumping to improbable conclusions, I figured that perhaps some more context was necessary.
The steep path headed back south, with a sheer drop to the left of what was obviously one of the huge quarries at the north end of these hills, now overgrown. After another half mile or so, the path began to level out, then a sharp right and it began to zigzag up through oak woodland. After twenty minutes or so I was suddenly out of the trees, the ridge opening out to the south, and down to the left Great Malvern and the priory, abbey, church, whatever, and where, no doubt, the faithful were still celebrating the earlier eviction of the heathen intruder.
Heaven’s Above..
I had an option on the path here. Left, or right and back on north. I sat for a while on a stone and took in the view. Nearby, three young men in modern outdoor wear were discussing the view. One appeared to be in charge and was making encouraging noises to the other two about how they were getting a grasp on what they were seeing in front of them and how that translated onto the maps they were holding. And they were beginning to get it. I figured that it must have been part of a mobile phone detox project, and frankly I’m all in favour. I could see a train heading directly towards me along a straight bit of track, and beyond, Worcester. Time to get on.
I should perhaps say something about the weather at this point. It was bright and mainly sunny, which should have been good, but very unusually for this time of year an arctic blast was brewing up and, like Napoleonic troops in column after column, banks of clouds marched relentlessly overhead from north to south. One minute I was in sunshine and down to my T-shirt, the next rapidly re-dressing. Based on the years weather to date, how it hadn’t rained so far remained a mystery.
They came on, in the same old way
Following the path around the northern flank, with the tops of a hundred hills in every direction, a route up to the top of North Hill presented itself. It was clear at this point that I had missed a trick. If I had carried on past the North Quarry car park, I would have been able to start the climb of the granite ridge at its most northern point. Too late now. I pushed straight on up the steep bank, eventually arriving on level ground with Worcester Beacon directly ahead, and the ground rising again to the left and right.
Looking south. Worcester Beacon – the main objective
Without giving it a second thought I went right, and up. At the top I looked over to the east where North Hill was obviously slightly higher. A minor detail, but for a purist it might have been important. The path then descended rapidly to a saddle where I sat for a while and watched a kestrel looking for its lunch. Already the views were of the highest quality. Far to the west I could make out the Brecon Beacons, and the unmistakable conical shape of Sugar Loaf (which my daughter, her partner and I had climbed in early May, and where the idea of scaling county tops had been kindled **).
Having chosen to approach the summit from the west, as I started on the long drag up, the wind, angling in from the north-west began to tell. Layers were going back on, but it mattered little as the views towards Herefordshire, and Wales beyond, just got better and better. The granite ridge of the Malvern Hills runs precisely north/south, and similar but slightly lower ridges on similar alignments could be picked out to the west.
Approaching the summit the wind was beginning to blow a proper hooley. Clumps of grass were being driven flat to the ground and I was beginning to flag. Spotting a cave just above, and needing some respite, I clambered up a bank and entered. It provided little or no extra protection. I took a quick photo and fled. With the broken grey, blue, pink granite beneath my feet, I made the short drag to the top as quickly as I could.
A cold hole
At the summit I might as well have been standing in a wind machine set to max. A circular plinth, erected sometime in the 19th century, and honouring some monarch or other, who I am absolutely certain never visited this spot, marked the top. I stood in the gale for five minutes, watching, through steaming eyes, a group of four middle aged men take innumerable photos of each other. Wishing them to give up the land to allow me a brief second or two at the top, eventually I butted into the party and looked at the large circular toposcope (new word) on the top of the plinth. With my eyes still streaming, and feeling like a gate crasher, I had no time to take in the details except to note that Snowdon was 99 miles away, and in the direction where the wind was thwacking in from. With my hands and whole body shaking I took a photo, figuring I would study it in more detail later. When I checked it later it failed to pass muster, so you’ll have to make do with a couple of panoramas instead.
Having made it to the top I slipped over to the calmer east side of the ridge. Heading south, and with the wind less of a factor, this was walking for the sheer joy of it. The views in every direction were phenomenal. Bit by bit the paths began to descend, and aware that I would soon be losing these astonishing vistas, I sat for a bit above another abandoned quarry. Given the amount of excavation evident, closing these quarries some decades ago was probably for the best, otherwise the chance of there being anything left of the hills now would be remote.
Looking to the south-east, something in the valley below caught my attention. I long, straight line in the landscape! Before leaving the accommodation in the morning, I spent a bit of time mugging up on Alfred’s Watkins understanding of the Malvern Hills area. Surprisingly there wasn’t a lot to go on, although he speculated on a possible ley line starting on a point on the ridge further south which aligning with a cave and a stone below, before disappearing west to an oak tree at Gospel Oak (not Camden’s), and then through two churches and ending at Aconbury Camp (you’ll just have to use your imagination unless you decide to disappear down a rabbit hole). ***
In search of ley’s
The observed long, linear ditch in the landscape, flanked by a line of trees (Watkins advocates strongly about trees and their relevance to ley lines), made me reach for the Ordnance Survey map. Had I discovered the yet to be discovered Malvern Wells/Bredon Hill ley? I immediately located the line on the map, represented by hatched marks. Incredibly, I could track back to the Hills and a starting point where a tumulus was shown on the ridge. Heading further east, beyond the avenue/ditch, the ley precisely crossed with a mediaeval bridge at Upton upon-Severn and ended (as far as I could tell) at the very top of Bredon Hill, some six or seven miles further east. The most extraordinary thing about this ley line was that between Upton upon-Severn and Bredon Hill, it exactly bisected the southbound Strensham service station on the M5 motorway! What otherworldly powers were at work when that happened? With the map flapping away in the wind, and with my mind blown even further, I took one last glance at the linear feature on the map. Huh! I looked again and sure enough I could make out some cryptic writing – dismtd rly. How could I have been so foolish? Or maybe (surely not), when the Great Western Railway built the line almost two hundred years ago, those working on the ground were more in touch with nature and……. (goes on forever).
With these thoughts dancing around like fairies in what was now left of my brain, I wandered on and eventually reached the end of the northern section of the hills at Upper Colwall (essentially there is a northern third, a central section that ends at Little Malvern, and then a southern third that starts at British Camp and tails off a few miles further south beyond Hollybush).
A road crossed my path at the saddle of the hill. I was still in the mood to explore further south, but every step in that direction would mean a longer shift getting back to Great Malvern. A sign indicating a cafe downhill to the west tempted me in that direction. On a lamppost a yellow AA sign directed travellers onwards to the National Collection of Michaelmas Daisies. I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what a Michaelmas daisy might look like, although daisies came to mind. It would either be very nice, or niche, or intriguingly maybe both. I headed on down towards a building that housed the cafe, and with nothing other than an invigorating cup of tea on my mind, reacted almost too slowly when the door of a parked car shot open. Being taken out by a stationary vehicle at this point in the journey would have been a tad disappointing, but somehow my body reacted sufficiently to avoid a painful impact. The perpetrator looked more startled than I felt, apologised profusely, and delightfully an incident of footpath rage was averted.
Reaching the building, still slightly shaken, but grateful that I hadn’t been on a bike, it was disappointing to find the cafe closed. On the flip side, a sign on the window indicated that it hosted the British Society of Dowsers. Now, that was niche! Watkins, whilst not claiming that dowsing assisted him in any way in his search to prove the existence of ley lines, does, in his introduction, indicate an affinity with the ancient craft. It helps form the narrative that humans are intrinsically more in touch with nature and the earth than we understand, and that essentially, we have lost our ability to interact with nature in ways that our ancient ancestors were.
I am not going to suggest that I completely reject that notion. Things do happen, and well, you know! When I was around 15 years old, in the early 1970’s, one afternoon after school a few of us were hanging around on a green on the estate, aimlessly doing what aimless teenagers do. Nothing. A friend, Jim, was arsing around with a Y shaped stick. Shaking his arms around he claimed to have discovered an underground water source, which on closer inspection was a metal cover to a drain owned and managed by the local Water Board. Just at the point when his antics were running out of steam (i.e. everyone had lost interest), his wrists began to gyrate frantically, and the stick pointed in the direction of a manky stray dog that was approaching across the grass. “Leave it out Jim,” someone shouted, at just the moment when the dog, now just feet from him, stopped, cocked a back leg, and did his business. It was proof enough.
With the idea of a refreshment now deeply embedded, I climbed back to the top and followed Old Wyche Road over the saddle and in the direction of the town. Not far on stood The Wyche Inn, so naturally I went in, bought a cola and a bag of crisps and sat in the warming sun. Refreshed, I set off north on the road back into town. More grand houses lined the right side of the road, and more old quarries kept appearing to the left. I hadn’t particularly relished the idea of the last leg, knowing that it must have been at least a couple or miles or more, but in what seemed to be a blink, I was at the outskirts of the town and with just a short distance to go. I looked between two large houses and across the Vale of Evesham. Whilst the sun still shone, a monster storm was tipping millions of buckets of water into the Severn valley. At such moments, and given the location, a touch of Elgar dancing in the air from one of the grand Edwardian windows might have been appropriate, but as I knew no Elgar, and all the windows were firmly closed it remained an enigma and the moment was missed. Alert to the danger I quickened my step, slid down an alley just as the edge of the storm arrived, and in the nick of time found dry sanctuary under the arch of a church door. The downpour was over within a couple of minutes. No dowsing was required.
Two hours on and I was walking across Castlemorton Common towards a local inn. I stopped and looked back towards the Malvern Hills. I’ve never been there, but something about the view reminded me of an African savanna.
Castlemorton Common – AKA The Worcester Veldt
In his quest to prove the existence of ley lines, Watkins frequently encounters rustic “locals” enjoying a pint of warm beer at country inns. In these moments they recount to him stories that he tentatively claims endorses his understanding of a nearby feature, such as some standing stones. Almost always the narrative begins with something like, “Of course, they’s do says around these ‘ere parts tha’ when a red moon rises over the Blattered Elm, the three Plastered Knights of Old Pishup do rise from the earth, climb up the walls of Cwm O’rbard Castle and there do take an ancient brew from the larst well of Uncertain Origin.” Underestimate at your peril this type of verbal history. Watkins, keen to latch onto any old tale (sorry, fact), certainly didn’t.
On the drive back from the hills I had stopped at the inn to check if it was open, and more importantly, doing food. As I approached the front door it opened and out stepped a middle-aged man holding a pint of the local ale, wearing agricultural clothing, with long curly hair and beard, a ruddy complexion and a rollie between his left earlobe and sideburns. I entered the pub, which clearly hadn’t changed one bit in decades, and was told that they would be serving food after six, and that was fine by me.
As I approached the inn on foot, just after six, I was certain, and excited by the prospect, that if I stayed there for an hour or two it would only be a matter of time before one of the old locals (possibly even my man from earlier), in true Watkins style, would enlighten me on a local myth or legend. I entered at just the moment my man was leaving for the night. The pub was now half full, and everyone, builders, buyers, businessmen and women alike, were gazing intently at their mobile phones.
After a satisfactory pint of Best and a hearty meal, it was time to head home. As I approached the door the woman behind the bar wished me goodnight, and then, as an afterthought added, “Oh, and sir, do mind the old stone on your way out.”
*
* Seems the Mappa Mundi is in Hereford Cathedral. Two days later I took a train to Hereford, found it to be a pleasing town, and spent an hour in the excellent cathedral library, where the Mappa Mundi can also be found hanging, more or less, intact.
Hereford is bottom left, just next to Crete
** Sugar Loaf is the highest peak in Monmouthshire. But Chwarel y Fan is the highest point, which means that sometime in the future I will need to revisit Monmouthshire. Mind you, worse things can happen.
Sugar Loaf in May – Not the highest point in Monmouthshire!!!
*** Two days after the walk I had time to climb up to Herefordshire Beacon (British Camp), at the start of the southern section of the Malvern Hills. Not surprisingly it’s located in Herefordshire, and despite being quite high, is not the highest point in that county so I can’t claim it. But I would have kicked myself if I had not chosen to do it. The most spectacular Iron Age hill structure I have ever been to. As it was late in the afternoon, and with the sun setting, the views were mind bending.
Beat that!
With a bit of time on my hands I walked south, and with Watkins alignments still troubling my imagination, I eventually located Clutters Cave (AKA Giants Cave). The area below the cave was heavily overgrown, with two green woodpeckers flitting between the trees. I had no desire to go rooting in the brambles for what he believed to be a sacrificial stone that formed part of the ley line.
Alfred Watkins mate, being sacrificed a hundred years ago. These days it’s called sunbathing
I entered the cave and was immediately struck by a ghostly black handprint on the back wall. Clearly evidence of neolithic cave art, and I was surprised that Watkins hadn’t noticed or mentioned it back in 1924. Or maybe it was a Banksy? Either way, and whatever the explanation, I looked out from the cave, and with the dipping sun blushing the Welsh borderlands, I could easily see how it was possible to hang a mystery around the location, and speculate on a time when our ancestors navigated astral planes rooted to points, natural and manmade, on the landscape.
It’s all in the mind, or is it?
A mile or so to the west, below the ridge, lies Eastnor Castle and park. Except it’s not a castle at all. It was built whilst Napoleon was meeting his match in Belgium. As there is no mention in any literature or works of art of Clutter’s Cave before this time, it seems pretty likely that it was dug out to form an estate folly. Sorry Alfred, but not all the leys align after all.
When I decided to start visiting the highest points in each county, one of the reasons was to find places I had never been to before, and unless otherwise motivated, was extremely unlikely ever to do so and, with some luck, come across the unexpected.
I live in East Sussex but spent most of my life in and around central and outer London. I often used to travel out, and know many towns, cities and the wilder areas of the north, Wales, Scotland and East Anglia, but despite its proximity, with the exception of the coastal zone, West Sussex has remained largely unexplored.
Early August and the weather had been improving. I texted a couple of friends to see if they were up for a night or two’s camping the following week. Unexpectedly, almost immediately after sending the text the weather looked like it was going downhill again. Along with commitments, and cold feet (literally by all accounts), they couldn’t make it, and I put the idea out of my mind.
Friday came, and I looked again at the weather ahead. Hmmm…. seemed to be suggesting that out of nowhere something of a heatwave was in the air. Within an hour I’d booked a campsite near Midhurst and within striking distance of Blackdown Hill, for the Sunday and Monday night.
I arrived at the campsite mid-afternoon on the Sunday. The site was very basic, but the day was hot, and the situation pitch perfect. I planned on doing Blackdown Hill the following day, so in the meantime, with the South Downs just a mile or so to the south, there was, I hoped, enough time to get Beacon Hill (242 metres) at Harting Down then getting back for supper in the nearby pub.
I drove the three or four miles to the National Trust owned car park, located at the top of an interesting winding road that came up from the valley below. I had already driven through two or three good looking villages and was beginning to get a feel for the area. It was going to be a satisfactory evening.
I parked up and could see the chalk path leading away to the northeast. Before I took it on, I checked the parking restrictions. The charge of £3 applied at all times. I didn’t have a problem with that and had even had the presence of mind of bringing some petty cash to use in just such circumstances. There was no machine, just a sign with a phone number to ring to pay the charge. Some years earlier I had through necessity, mastered pay by phone, when with no options available, and an absolute need to park in a rain drenched street in north London, I spent twenty minutes negotiating the endless auto requests for numbers, letters and hash-tags.
After dropping the credit card three times, entering the wrong numbers and being cut off twice, and by now soaked through to the skin, I had eventually logged my car to the system and paid. We’ve all been through this, so you know what I’m saying. Once is quite enough!
I rang the phone number, which looked familiar, but sadly it wasn’t the more widely known pay by phone service provider which I was familiar with (think famous drummer). A monotone automated voice that tried to sound like a human female proceeded to offer up a range of options based on whether, or not, I already had an account. As I had no idea if I already had an account, and because now I had forgotten all the presented opinions, I had to hang up and start again. Eventually I decided that I didn’t have an account and pressed the relevant key. Silence. “An account has been identified with this phone. Enter your PIN number to proceed.”
This was the moment when the first indication of the life force leaving my body expressed itself with a resigned sigh. “PIN number? FF’s,” I mumbled, aware that other humans were occasionally returning to their vehicles. I forgot what to press if I had forgotten my PIN number, so I terminated the call for a second time and rang back. The day was still hot, there was very little cover, and I was beginning to think I’d made a bad decision.
Ringing back, I went through the same routine and eventually got to the key moment and pressed a button to say I needed a new PIN number. Instantaneously I was informed that a new number had been sent to me by text. I know that most people under the age of sixty can multitask on their mobile phones, and once upon a time I figured I was quite good at using new technology, but those days are long gone, and just the thought of trying to access text messages without accidentally terminating the call had me in a mild frenzy. Somehow, I managed the first step, found the text and the six digit temporary code, whilst at the same time listening to the automaton reminding me several times to enter the number. “Give us a chance,” I exclaimed, as if it was paying attention. I got back to the phone call and entered the first three digits but having forgotten the rest I had to navigate back to the text. Finally, having entered the full six digits, the monotone told me that I now had to enter a new personal number. I entered a number with a fifty percent forgettability factor. Once I had done this, I then had to start the entire process again from the point where I was now going to use my existing account. Somehow, I managed to remember the six digits I had just created and was in.
“Now enter your vehicle registration.” I suspected this was coming but had thought perhaps, given I had an existing account, it might have remembered this detail. A long, convoluted and instantly forgettable message followed which referenced the hash key several times. “Enter the first character of your registration number using the keypad.” Oh Lord, don’t ask me these questions!
I found the key for the letter C. “You have entered 2. 4 2 confirm with the hash key. 4 A press 1. 4 B press 2. 4 C press 3. 4 2 press 4.” What the f..k? I had no idea what these instructions meant and was now walking impatiently in circles. OK. So, it wants me to press a number. By process of elimination, I worked out that I needed to press 3. “You have entered the letter C. Press the has key to confirm.” Done. “So far your registration is C.”
“Yes,” I said, “It’s sodding C.” “If this is correct press the hash key.” I pressed the hash key.
“Now enter the second character of your registration from the keypad.” Having just about got my head around what I needed to do I did as I was told. Thankfully it was another letter, so I managed to move on swiftly (or as swiftly as the system allowed me to) to the next character, which was a number. But no, I had forgotten the essential update. “So far, your registration is C F. If that is correct press the hash key.” #lorks!
“Now enter the third character of your registration from the keypad.” The next character was of course number four. I pressed 4. “4 G press 1, 4 H press 2, 4 I press 3, 4 4 press 4.” My jaw dropped, I kicked some dirt, and issued forth an oath. 4 4F’sakes, what?
After some minutes had passed, during which the sun had dipped a few degrees further to the west, I had completed my task. “You have entered C..F..1..5..R..T..D. If this is correct, press the hash key.”
And of course, it wasn’t correct. Somehow the 4 had gone west, being replaced by a random 5. I was sorely tempted to just press the hash key and bugger off to Beacon Hill. But a nagging doubt. I figured it was probably around that time of day when the parking wardens pounced on late afternoon visitors who, like me, thought they could get away with it. But where was the option if it was wrong? Not there by all accounts. With a deep intake of breath and another kick of the dirt, I terminated the call and rang again, confident that despite the fact it was going to take another ten minutes, I now knew what I needed to do. At least I could still remember the PIN.
Time continued to ebb away, but eventually I got there and pressed the hash key to confirm the registration number. “You have entered C..F..1..4..R..T..D. Using the keypad, enter the location of the vehicle and then press the hash key.” I knew this bit, and very quickly entered the six-digit location printed on the sign. “Now, enter the 16-digit number on the back of your payment card etc etc.” Yup, I knew this bit too, and because I wasn’t standing in a gale force wind, soaked through to the sink, I managed this bit effortlessly.
“Enter the number of minutes you wish this session to last.” I’d forgotten this bit. It was a fixed tariff of £3 so randomly I entered 90. “Your session will cost three pounds. If you wish to proceed, press the hash key.” By now my wish to proceed was in serious doubt. I was aware that I needed to get back to the pub at some point before they stopped selling food. Given that it was a Sunday evening I rather doubted that it would be much past 7.30, and it was already half past five. I pressed the hash key.
“The session for your truck, registration C..F..1..4..R..T..D, parked at location 6..0..1..5..0..3 has started.”
“My truck?” I said it out loud several times, along with words that rhymed, and in front of a couple who, perhaps understandably, jumped into their car and made a hasty getaway. I’d had enough. The idea of going through the whole procedure again in the hope that I might be lucky enough to press the correct key establishing that my little Ford was a car and not a truck, was just too much to contemplate. I needed a bloody good walk.
I set off along the track that led to my known destination. This was intended to be a scouting expedition. I would get to the top of Beacon Hill, and beyond, somewhere to the north, I would be able to see Blackdown Hill. Like the mountaineer who sits for several hours drinking cold beer in a Schloss studying the route they intend to use the next day as they scamper up the north face of the Eiger, I would quietly contemplate the contours and ridges that would need to be traversed if I was to make a safe and successful ascent of the sandstone massive.
The walk along the chalk ridge was straightforward, and the views increasingly impressive as the land rose. Until, that is, it stopped being straightforward. Having strolled over a low summit I could make out Beacon Hill ahead. It wasn’t far, except to get there, the path dropped steeply down into a massive dry valley. It wasn’t too clear how far the path dropped as the route was surrounded by low hawthorn and brambles. No problemo! I started down. A couple of young women dressed in sporting gear approached slowly in the opposite direction. They were doing well but breathing heavily and covered in sweat. Despite the omen I continued, eventually reaching the bottom after a few minutes. The path had dropped the entire slope of the valley and now depressingly continued straight back up to Beacon Hill.
There was no point in dithering, so I engaged the lowest gear and started the long trudge up. There are times when I genuinely hate walking chalk ridges, because too often, and without any obvious explanation other than the topography, the paths make you do this rollercoaster thing. On a hot day it is no fun. And by the time I eventually staggered to the top I was pretty vacant too. The short push up to the top had registered 250ft on my app, and there was no shade.
But! What a view.
Our English Coast 2024
To the south, and maybe some twenty miles away, the sea. Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight clearly visible to the southwest, and large ships at anchor in the Solent. No sign though of either of the arguably (by me and others more in the know) wholly pointless aircraft carriers that will achieve nothing of any value, but whose cost eliminates any chance of us having a half decent defence force.
Views extended east and west for miles along the chalk ridge, but much to my disappointment, any view of Blackdown Hill was obscured by the only copse of trees in the entire area. I sat down by the trig point (nearly 800ft) and a short while later a couple joined me. We exchanged pleasantries and agreed on the excellence of the location. Before they carried on, the woman said she had heard there had been a big decline in butterflies this year, and clearly identifying me as an expert, demanded to know if I knew why. Without missing a beat, I explained that it had been a very wet Spring and early summer and that had put everything back. I said that I had noticed the huge decline in butterflies in my garden this year. I think she was happy with my answer, and they bade me farewell. I don’t know if it was true, but it was along the right lines. I had been momentarily tempted to add that, of course, the underlying issue was global warming, but the truth was it was a lovely hot and sunny Sunday evening, so why bring down the mood.
Half an hour later, and after another steep climb, this time up the west slope of the dry valley, I was back at the car park, and by seven back at the campsite and then at the pub. They served food till 8.30pm, on a Sunday night. The garden was full of customers, and with an exceptional view back towards the Downs, the low sun blushing the slopes, it was no surprise.
Beer Garden/Garden Beer
I chose to eat in. It was cooler and there was no-one else there. Customers came and went from the bar. A group came in and one of the older men seemed to have spent the day monitoring radio communications to and from the harbour master in Portsmouth. At some point in the afternoon the Prince of Wales aircraft carrier (see above) had entered the harbour to dock, no doubt after having had some essential repairs carried out, again. This had required the closure of the harbour at short notice and had come as a surprise to the Captain of a Brittany Ferries ferry, who demanded to know why he and his 133 passengers were being denied access to the harbour. The story did have some amusing elements to it, but it seemed that after two hours, and whilst other boats and ships had been allowed to enter the harbour, the Captain of the Brittany Ferries ferry was apoplectic that he and his 133 passengers (I’m guessing mostly Brits) were the last allowed in. This produced a few guffaws from the man’s group of friends, but somehow the jingoistic undertow to the story left me a bit flat. At least, in my view, the ferry had some sort of purpose. Other than being anything other than a massive inconvenience, I fundamentally fail to understand what purpose either of the “royal” carriers serve.
*
Day two. Baking by 10am. Whilst Beacon Hill was a fair height it wasn’t the highest point in West Sussex. I had looked at the map and figured that the drive to a marked car park at Blackdown Hill would take about twenty minutes. I set off and decided to grab a coffee and a bite in Midhurst. A genuinely ancient town sadly overwhelmed by endless traffic moving slowly up and down the high street. I was of course part of the problem.
I headed off on the road north towards Fernhurst, where I had factored in a right turn into deep country and onto the car park. At Fernhurst I made the turn and drove along luxurious lanes. At the junction with Highstead Lane the road south was closed for works. No worries, I was heading left, and north. All I had to do was keep going in this direction and I would soon be at my destination.
At a Y junction, with a small green, I pulled up behind a couple of stationary cars. It took a minute to work out that the road I needed to be on was closed due to “shifting” road works. Several large resurfacing vehicles were parked haphazardly and men in high viz jackets wandered around, seemingly aimlessly. A guy on a vintage motorbike at the front of the queue seemed to be trying to elicit information from two of the operatives. They didn’t give any indication that they had any intention to engage with him. Another car pulled up behind me. I wasn’t up for an argument, which seemed to be all that the motorcyclist was achieving, but the older woman who got out of the car behind was able to establish that the road would be closed for a while and that we needed to drive across the green and towards Lurgashall where, she was assured, there were diversion signs.
After driving over the green I soon arrived at Lurgashall, a very pleasant looking village with a pub on a large green. There was no diversion sign. I parked up and checked directions on the phone. All it showed me was to go back the way I had come. Obviously, Google maps hadn’t been informed of the shifting road closure. I went into the pub and asked if anyone knew how to get to Blackdown Hill. The people who knew only knew the route I had already come. I got back to the car and determined that I would turn left onto Blind Lane. Perhaps that should have been a bit of a giveaway. Just before I left, the older woman who had spoken with the guys back at the roadworks pulled up next to me. She had got to Lurgashall before me and had turned right, been taken around the lanes again and was now giving up. She had been trying to get to Blackdown Hill to meet her daughter but hadn’t a clue either, so her daughter was going to come to her. I wished her good luck and considered that her daughter would probably need it.
I don’t want to talk about the next hour because, two weeks on, I’m still experiencing PTSD. Suffice to say it was a distinctly miserable experience in which the occasional diversion signs may or may not have had any relevance but certainly misled, and Google maps was as useful as the Mappa Mundi. Quite how I managed it, and it can only have been on instinct rather than navigational aids, I eventually found myself driving south through verdant forest along Tennyson’s Lane. Suddenly to my left a small car park appeared. I knew it wasn’t the place I wanted to be, which was a mile or so further south, but I’d had more than enough of the pantomime drive and pulled in.
It was over thirty degrees Celsius but under the high canopy it felt cooler. A wide path headed south away from the car park, and without giving it any further thought, concluded that it was the way to go. I was immediately enchanted and after a couple of minutes on the hoof I had forgotten the anxiety of the previous 90 minutes.
A fine white sandy path led me gently up through woods of oak and mixed conifers. After a short while occasional views opened to the southeast and the High Weald. Breaking out of the woods the landscape changed to sumptuous heathland, criss-crossed by footpaths. There was no need to check on directions. I continued to head south, past a large pond with dark peaty black water. Beyond, the path edged down a bit and then along an escarpment which dipped away steeply, and I guessed down to the car park I had originally intended to get to. I was just slightly relieved that on such a hot day I hadn’t had to climb up to this point from there.
Close to the Edge
A few minutes later I was back on heathland, and then a thin line of tall conifers suggested I was now close to the highest point.
It was just a short distance before the path started to go down again and towards the Temple of the Winds, which I had assumed was the highest point (it wasn’t). I could hear children laughing and a dog barking just below. At the foot of the path an area opened out and I had reached my destination, clearly marked by a concrete plinth. I gravitated towards it and stopped. A small terrier type dog scampered up to me, barking furiously and just a foot away from my exposed right ankle. Having been bitten just under the eye by a similar creature when I was around eight years old, I was naturally cautious. The owner, clearly the mother of the two children enjoying their freedom, sat indifferently on the nearby bench. I was resigned to the fact that the anticipated quiet contemplative moment at the top was now illusory, but other than standing stock still had no response to the ankle menace.
“What should I do?” I pleaded, not wishing to offend, nor do the obvious, which would have involved my right foot and a high flying canine. The woman rose and started approaching, calling ineffectually to the dog to back off.
“Sorry, he’s a terribly yappy little dog,” she quipped. I was tempted to agree but you can never quite tell how dog owners will react to understated sarcasm.
After the dog was eventually under some sort of control I meandered over to the edge of the clearing and took in the impressive views towards the South Downs and beyond. It was a glorious day.
South towards the Downs
It was time to move on. Whilst the spot implied that it was the highest point, I noticed that the land rose up through some trees to the west. I picked my way through the woods and eventually concluded that if I wasn’t actually at the highest point, there was nothing nearby to indicate anything higher. I carried on through trees and then back onto open heathland where a bench presented itself and I sat for a bit and took in the enticing views west. If I was to carry on with the project, to climb to the highest points in each county, I was now going to have to take on some longer journeys, and at least ten of them were somewhere in the general direction of my line of sight.
West and towards other peaks
It was time to head back. I noticed a small track leading through the gorse and heather heading north. Walking slowly, I picked my way along the path. I felt like a child, in a mysterious environment where everything I looked at was new. Would I find anything of interest? A snake or a lizard perhaps? I didn’t but did come across a small pond where a red dragonfly zigzagged around close to the surface.
Eventually I reached a wider path that led east and back to a place I recognised from the walk up and a larger pool I had seen earlier. Just at the same moment the woman with the two children and the “yappy little dog” (not my words you’ll recall) passed by and because I was keen to avoid any further confrontation, I decided to sit by the pool for a while to allow a bit of distance.
The sun shone through the tree canopy and gently dappled the dark pool. Every so often something or other broke the surface and after a while my eyes were adjusted enough to work out that the pond was teeming with newts, some venturing just below where I sat. It was time to test the capabilities of the phone camera. Every time I pointed in a particular direction, the water would break just out of shot. I could see that they rose almost vertically and when their mouth hit the surface, they turned on their backs, revealing their golden bellies before quickly disappearing again. I once walked along a tiny stream next to a field by a housing estate just to the south of Manchester on a sunny evening, when suddenly, in a small pool at a bend in the stream, a huge rainbow trout flipped over and revealed its effervescent golden majesty. The mere fact that a trout of any size could even exist in such a small pool was stunning enough, but that it was so big was nothing short of a miracle. I have never seen anything like it since, but something in the way the newts presented themselves in a similar, albeit a significantly diminished way, was still a thrill. I wasted about ten minutes, slightly mesmerised, trying to capture one of these moments but in the end had to settle for a couple of shots that if anything at all proved their existence.
The evidence
I got up. I’d had enough excitement for one day, surely? I headed back along the path I had come up. ** Another much smaller pond appeared on my left, with an emerald-coloured dragonfly on patrol. Maybe the camera could do better here. I crouched, and each time the dragonfly approached after doing its round I took a snap, having no idea if I was getting anything useful. On at least the tenth approach I noticed a reflected movement on the surface of the pond. The shape of a huge bird that, at first, I thought was a heron. I looked up, and very slowly, disappearing towards the west and the distant tree line, was what I could only conclude to be an eagle. It could have been a buzzard, but it was far too big and slow, and it certainly wasn’t a heron or a kite. Some white-tailed eagles have been established in the south, but the idea that this was one of them seemed unrealistic. But, hey! I should have just taken a shot at the surface of the pond at the moment I noticed the movement in the sky. It might have caught the reflection. Never mind.
I carried on back across the heath, still enchanted by the terrain and the views. It felt like an environment where highwaymen may once have earned their living, but aware too that most of the area had been a private estate since the dark ages, which probably ruled that scenario out. Just before I reached the car park, I noticed a concrete structure, with a metal plaque and a coin slot. The plaque read “Please put car park charge and other donations in this collection box – Emptied Daily.” How quaint I thought, before slipping a couple of quid through the slot. Paid in a second.
It took thirty minutes to get back to the campsite. The countryside in this area is grade A plus. I passed through small villages and then back through Midhurst, where a Chinook helicopter rocked over the steeple. Back at the campsite I shivered through a much-needed bucket shower. The Chinook reappeared and impersonated a dragonfly, making several sweeps to the north, back over the campsite and then over to the Downs. It was hard to ignore the fact that a lot of dosh circulates in these parts, and if you needed any evidence of that, as far as I could tell almost every pub in every town and the smallest of villages, had survived austerity, Covid and recessions, and fortunately for me on those two amazing days were not only open Sunday’s and Monday’s but also sold food till late, both nights. At the pub that evening I watched as the Chinook either picked up or deposited troops on the ridge of the Downs. Perhaps the exercise involved transporting our entire army from one part of West Sussex to another. No worries though. We’ve got two massive vanity projects back in the harbour and the captain of the Brittany Ferries ferry is probably still waiting to get in.
Painting by numbers
With the exotic countryside and proximity to the boating coast, it seemed obvious why this was such a desirable area to live, and also why the small number of other walkers I had come across left me with the impression that for people living locally there is no great desire to advertise it. Realistically I may not get many other opportunities to spend a bit of time here, but if I do, I’m pretty sure I won’t regret it.
* I later checked out Beacon Hill in a Wild Guide to London and the South East. A very short mention, which referenced an Iron Age fort that I had completely missed. It was the same walk I had taken and merely stated “This is a tough walk with a number of steep climbs.” Stating the obvious perhaps but maybe I should have read it before I left home. It failed to mention factoring in an additional 30 minutes to pay for your stay.
** After returning home, and on the tenth attempt to establish the exact location of the summit, I concluded that it would have been deep in the woods, about 50 metres to the west of the path between the two ponds. So, I seem to have missed it by a small margin of error but given that most of the area is something of a plateau and roughly the same height, I’m not going back just to prove a point.
El Colmado 57 