Month: April 2017

 

6th June 2015
Paul drops me in Whitchurch ready for my adventure in the Doward. Today I am not so worried about if I can walk from A to B but if I can make enough time to walk around thus most ancient tree clad mound that stands out in the landscape like an emerald in the clasp of a watery sinuous necklet adorning the Herefordshire landscape. As ever in these borderlands the boundaries keep shifting, first Wales, then England, now Wales again, now England. It illustrates well one of the challenges of being on the edge.
The Doward has been inhabited since ancient times. Hardly surprising, it commands an enviable view over river and mountains and valleys for miles around. In times long last this would have accorded a measure of safety not to be dismissed. It takes some time to reach the first layer of its height. I amble, I have found that this slowest of speeds is the most efficient for long distance walking, the steepest of climbs made infinitely possible by the step by mindful step process. Besides it is a warm and sunny day, cloudless, and bees are busy in the hedgerows.
As I climb cars pass me on the circular lane that follows the hill round linking the homes of the wealthy who have made their homes here. They are off to work, maybe dropping off children at school as they go. I sense their impatience, you can’t really make much speedy progress in a lane like this especially when there is a walker on it. There are few passing places and you cannot see far ahead. Walking is by far the best method of transport here.
I am struck by the incongruity of the situation. Here are those with the money to buy a home on this exclusive hill, yet they are leaving it to do many of the things necessary to their livestyle. I on the other hand am as free as a bird, for the duration of this pilgrimage at least, to wander at my leisure, composing my latest works as I go, free to take advantage of this ancient mounds treasures on a hot blue sky mid week day.
It takes no little effort to follow my large scale OS map here where so much is packed into the contour lines of two and a half inches of ancient woodland and ancient settlement remains. I wish that I could ask Ordinance Survey to whip up a map of just this area for me to make use of right now. Inching along with my finger quarter centimetre stretches I manage after a couple of false leads to get myself through Little Doward and into the ancient woodlands that are common land.
Here I have already tasted my old friend anxiety. What if , in their fear of intruders, they keep fierce dogs, possessive of their territory? There are private keep out signs everywhere. I wonder what the fear is here. I have encountered this so often, this fear of strangers. It makes me feel like a villain, as if I am doing something wrong by passing their gates. It takes away my ability to remain the present. I am taken hostage by my fear.
I follow the woodland tracks, iniitially trying to stick to them but in the end I have to let go of my perrenial desire to control everything to keep me safe and keep the dreaded anxiety from arising. It turns out to be fairly easy to find my way to the flat top of Dowards hill. I gain the plain and my breath catches, there on my right, are three of the most magnificent trees I have ever seen, and there have been plenty on this journey through glorious wild Wales . two are beech and a third is oak. Their age I cannot guess at but their majesty and beauty are worth the long ascent to their heights.
It is sunny up here after the shady woods and I start off looking about, still cautious about losing my way. I haven’t seen a soul and know how these places can be easy to confuse. I want to sit in the sun and enjoy a second breakfast but a shady trail beckons me and though my anxiety clamours I follow it. My intuition is right, this is the way to the fort. Here is the viewpoint marked on my map. I climb up to it and there a little removed from me are some white cattle. Heart in mouth I clamber quickly down. I have been afraid of cows since my last storywalk. Not that they are fuercesome monsters, but simply big and curious, and I am slight and not so firm on my feet.
I continue along the trail till it opens out into what must have been the first, a wide flat circular plain with stupendous views over to the mountains across the valley. There are cows over to my left and I don’t linger. I have seen the place, but my fear won’t let me be present. I head off back to the three trees.
I sit in the oak’s several trunks understanding from whence humankind got the idea for chairs. I recline in my wooden throne and eat a hurried second breakfast.

I have spied several white cow hairs on a broken off branch at the front of the oak. Clearly a favourite scratching post.
I curse my anxiety that stands between me and my presence, too in its grip to let go and feel it through to its release.
I get up to go and follow the track back through the woods, noticing the cow pats all through the woods and understand that the herd are brought up here to graze each day. They certainly keep the grass maneagable on the fort’s ancient ground.
I laugh at myself. For sure Merlin would have had greater things than a herd of white cattle to concern himself with. I find a small twig that reminds me if my staff that I so sadly left behind. It has a pleasing vee that I can grip like I did my staff. I keep it as talismen to hold when I am scared. Gift from this place, a little broken but with some of the energy that my powerful staff had.

Once down on the lanes again it is easy going to my next point of call. I am looking now for King Arthur’s cave. I am sure a more intrepid explorer could have found it from the fort but I have learnt to accept now that one of my weaknesses is fear of being in a situation where I cannot call for help.
As I approach the Biblins campsite I spot a path branching off right with an information board. It is the path to king Arthur’s cave come to me without trying. I walk down the track. I do not know what to expect. There has been no picture and a cave can be many things to different people.
Several times my heart beats fast and I gape at the caves I find in the rocks to my left. They are quartz rock with softer limestone the information board has informed me and the combination over time is certainlya recipe for great caves.
Each cave is larger than the last, possible to enter, though here we go again, fear rises. I am afraid to go into these dark holes in the rock.
At the bottom of the track where the woods start up again is the best cave. There are two side by side . the larger goes in some way and has naturally formed pillars beyond which I do not venture but it is plain to see one could make dwelling out of such a place.

I am both exhilarated by this discovery of such magnificent caves that I never knew existed in my country and slightly fashioned of my fear. I am beginning to notice how fear is not an emotion I welcome and that this maybe because I am gripped by irrational fears that surge where there is no actual danger. I feel like the fearful soldier always at the back of Dads Army .
I am soon on my way again following the lanes looking for the track that will take me down to the ferry to cross to Symonds Yat east and my way onwards. I know that footpaths seldom stay where they are marked on maps, particularly at this time of the year so I plan on sticking to the lanes till i reach the track that willcut out a couple of milesof road but the tracks that lead off it are very enticing, old sunken green lanes.out of one emerges a man. I am standing dithering as I am wont to do when trying to make a decision on the next stretch.
Are you lost?
He asks and when I say no he says he often is around here never findingthe the same way twice. We exchange pleasantries and both go on our way. At the next green lane I cannot resist,it is only short,will cut off a corner and is just beautiful. I walk down it. Of course the inevitable happens, it doesn’t look like it does on the map an now here are several paths and I don’t know which is mine. I hazard a guess and walk on soon completely lost but not altogether worried, wherever I am its only a mile or so to the main lane. After a few minutes on what I think is a lane I find a nature reserve and see I have been going in a circle on a track. The track leading away from it has the same name as the track the man came out of. I follow it…and emerge out of the same green lane he had several minutes before. I laugh at the joke life has played on me.
Now I am almost at the place where the track I need should be. More private signs almost out me off the scent till I realise that they are directed at car drivers and that the small print says except walkers and there is the footpath sign. Relieved I follow it but it still doesn’t feel like a track and skirts by someone’s house. Dogs bark. Not again. It is at this point that I begin to feel tired of the barriers I am finding and ignore the fear and keep walking. At the bottom is a small parking area. Out rush two terriers yapping closely followed by their garrassed lady owner.
Sorry, she says, they keep getting out
But they are obviously friendly and simply curious.
I check with my rescuer about the way and find that I am now at the start if the track I need. She apologises again for the dogs but I say thank you, they have presented me with a guide just when I needed one.
I am finally almost there. It is well past lunchtime and I have been walking, in a roundabout direction, for 5 hours now. It is surely time for lunch. There is one more pleasure to add to my morning of treasures and fears; the hand pulled ancient role ferry that is still working. As I get to rivers edge and see the Wye for the first time in the day the flat elongated boat makes its way to me carrying two passengers. Its driver pulls it along by means of a thick rope stretched across the water.
It is quickly with me, the previous passengers disembark and I board.
We cross to the ancient Saracens inn. Its full of people having lunch in the sun. We are with them in a minute. I find a table overlooking the water and keep writing. I spend a leisurely two hours writing and realise how well I write, how easy it is, to write under these sorts of circumstances.
It us mud afternoon when I sally forth following the road to Goodrich that skirts copper hill. It us a lively pastoral stroll till we hit the main road at the top. After more than half a day in the wilds it is tricky to decide to walk thus. Then I spot a footpath. I am sure it won’t be going the way the map says. It is planted with a crop if seeding rape but it is better than cars for now.
It does indeed take me to GoodRich although not quite the route it should and I visit the church and check my map. There seems little choice but the road took I can hit the back lanes into Ross on Wye after a couple of miles. I try it. I get to the bridge by means of a little bit of pedestrian walkway help. The local council clearly know the road is a hazard but the tiny path ends at the end of the bridge and there the traffic flies by.
I know its impossible. I return to the village. There is one more bus tonight. In the village shop I begin to tell my tale. The shop assistant is delighted.
Sorry for the rant, she says after spending quite some minutes telling of the perils of said road. She lives at the other end of the village. I am glad I have not tried it. The local council have been asked over and over to please put in a pavement. There is one from the next village all the way into Ross.
I am now content to sit in the sun and read of Merlin and wait for the last bus. Alarm rattles my composure when it is late but along it trundles with a very helpful driver who reiterates the hazards if the Goodrich stretch of main road, and sets me down safely by the church in Ross with directions to the bridge over which I must cross to find my home for the night.
He and I are concerned about the dual carriageway that stands between the bridge and the farm where I will spend the night. I try every footpath along the way wondering if there must surely be a way under the road. I don’t find one.
When I gain the mighty roaring monster it is not the terror I have imagined. There are places to cross first the nearside carriageway then the far, and gaps in the traffic sufficient to allow safe crossing.
Benhall farm. I have arrived. It is 7 o’clock and I undress and slip on the cosy toweling robe provided and start to sort out my things, catch up on emails, and eat the most delicious shortbread I have ever tasted, home baked for guests. By 10 I am asleep.
It has been a good day. The fear that accompanied me min e alone, carried with me wherever I go. It is a good lesson. It is not the situation that we find ourselves in that us wrong, it is our inner demons that will make it hell if we let them.
Demons that are wraiths from another time, appearing to protect us, then clinging on, reluctant to relinquish their role to keep us safe they remain to haunt us ever after, unless we confront them and question their purpose. How like humans they behave; clutching roles as if their very identity depended on it whilst a wealth of potential shapes wait to be explored. What do my anxiety ridden wraiths hide beneath their guise of grey gauzelike veils? Inherited from parents whose childhoods were not filled with confident guardians …how many generations old these inherited ghouls?
Animals in the wild freeze when in danger, they shake and tremble themselves free when the danger is past. How much do we humankind carry that is old, undigested fear? How much of the boundaries to healthy happy society are simply old ghosts of undigested terror with no foundation in the present?
Today is a new day. Always.

9th June 2015

As I sit here gazing out of my window in fellow author Looby Macnamara’s spare room at clear blue skies and the lime green of early summer foliage in the tree across the way, soaking up early morning silence, it is hard to feel the inner turmoil of yesterday’s walk.
It started out well enough, catching up with my blog, but soon went downhill with the arrival of breakfast my B&B host brought in for me. Though she had insisted several times that I wrote a list from the breakfast menu she had left in my room, as well as the dinner menu which she did not mention, suggesting a pub two miles away, and leave it at the top of the stairs, what she brought was rather a hotch potch of items, including two slices of fried bread, which never eat, of different shapes, looking for all the world like leftovers, one of them looking like it had been have eaten and chewed already, baked beans that had been over cooked and dried out, two hard lumps of black pudding, that were mishappen and looked like bits you’d throw to the dogs, and several rashers of bacon she’d tried to cook to my liking but that were rock hard as they were more like bits of gammon. I tried to eat from my plate but it was impossible, veritably the worst breakfast I have been served. In the window a peeling sticker denotes the establishment AA one star. Upstairs on the landing is a certificate that proudly announces AA four stars.
That there has been a decline is obvious. I eat the dish of blueberries provided and leave to pack. I have to call and rouse the dogs to pay my bill. There is an elderly lady with my host as I count the notes into her hand. She does not speak but stares. When I ha e given my host the last coin she says
Leave it there
And abruptly tips it onto the dresser. I hand her my poem, the thank you I am giving to each host for giving me their hospitality she looks at the paper saying very nice
Then as if another part of her psyche is taking over, tips that too on the dresser and turns to retreat to behind her door. As I turn to leave she says
Stay safe
And I go. I wonder what has happened in the life of this kindly spirited lady that she has become so fuddled and a bizarre mixture of sanity and not quite on track. I wonder about the absent husband who should come out of hospital today and wish them well although I cannot recommend that others stay in this B&B where when I stood on something hard on my bedroom rug it turned out to dried out dog faeces.
I walk back into the garden where I had such hopes, two male peacocks strut but do not display. The three affectionate goats are waiting by the fence. I spend a pleasant few minutes scratching their heads as they stick them through their fence. Their soft noses snuffle against my hand and I feel for sure they are treated kindly. A tall proud llama struts over as I am feeding them handfuls of lush green grass from my side of the fence. Obviously a male he keeps the goats and twhree other llamas away from the source of food claiming it all for him. I tire of this and walk on, feeling bad that the female llamas got no treat from the wrong side of the fence.
I think of the patriarchal society we live in and how we perpetuate it through learnt habits, becoming our own oppressors judging ourselves and others, and so maintaining an unhealthy out of balanced system.
I wonder at the llama’s behaviour. Would he have pushed the females out of the way if they weren’t call in captivity or is this the way of things at a certain level of development? I do not know but I leave with an irrational dissatisfaction of the masculine species and trundle off to Caplers camp, the next in a series of iron age forts I am following northwards. The place is full of keep out signs. Only the southeasterly edge can be attained. I feel the seething anger at this ownership of our shared heritage that brews beneath the surface. John Clairesque despair and a longing for a sense of trust to be shared amongst all.
I walk back to the village to see the church. I have no idea what to expect but as I turn the corner and it comes into view I am in awe, the partly thatched edifice is quite simply stunning. A jewel amongst buildings it sits in perfect symmetry with the landscape, would that every building did.
It is a church built at the start of the last century as part of the arts and crafts movement and has William Morris tapestries inside as well as a collection of embroidered altar cloths that were donated by an anon ymous lady of all the wild flowers along with a hand written book of the uses of all the plants another hand written copy of which can still be seen and read in the church.
A Stitch in Time is a church publication of this act of generosity with prints of the exquisite embroidered flowers with the words in print to raise funds to maintain this gem for further generations.
It is a delight to see wild flowers venerated in this way in a church and a delight to be in a church built honouring the sacred geometry of the land as this one has been. Our society would feel quite different if all structures were built in this way.
I leave Brockhampton pleased I have spent time here, in spite of the disappointing bed and breakfast experience.
I walk west to the next village, Hoarwithy. It is time for an early lunch at the New Harp inn. I meet a man looking at the menu too. He says the pub has recently changed hands. It used to be wonderful then became terrible as these things are wont to do but now maybe it is OK again. I am hungry and decide to try.
The menu declares nation famed chefs but sadly these two men, one grotesquely fat and the other painfully thin have gained more inflated egos than culinary skills. The battered fish chips and peas is of perfectly edible quality and well presented but fairly tasteless and the pleasure of sitting in a country inn is a!most complete untarnished by the radio station blaring out pop music and a DJs puffed up self importance and the frequent appearance of the obnoxious fat chef as he bullies his staff and struts around his clearly newly defined territory like a peacock. The skinny chef has already put in an appearance to boast that the crab cakes I have ordered are off because he hasn’t made them yet and might be on later in the day if he can be bothered.
Well, they won’t last long then. A diet of too many TV cookery shows will not stand chefs in good stead when they head out to try and shine in country villages where a more discerning taste may well expect the ambience to be if equal import to the quality of the food.
I spot a bed and breakfast, the Mill, across the way and think that might well be a better choice of overnight stay in these parts, though whether the pub will survive with its comic book chefs is another matter.
Onwards I walk. I find it hard to stay present. I am with my thoughts and dissatisfaction seems to be the order of the day. By mid afternoon I am needing respite from myself as much as anything, cross at any I care to think about.I resolve to sit in the pub in the next village and get cosy in an easy chair for an hour. I need to find a sense of kindness for myself. The pub is closed down in Little Birchs, fairly recently by the look of it. I sit acrossfrom its closed doors on the grassy verge pondering the map. I don’t have far to go now but do a go the long way round the village or head straight for kings thorn?
A man comes by, pauses, asks if I need assistance with directions. I say not but he turns again and asks if I k now the area. Then he tells me of Higgins well and the church. I take the long way round and visit the clearly ancient well and wonder how it got that name. The nearby church is St Marys. Its doors are open and I sit, finally taking solace. I cry tears of grief for my dead father. There hasn’t somehow been space for that in the three years since he left. I feel better and set out once more.
It doesn’t take !ong now and I am soon at my destination but I have no address and Looby isn’t home when I ring. I sit in the village pub and am well cared for by the young landlady who helpfully thinks of places I might stay if for some reason I cannot contact my host. I ask to plug in my phone and when I do a message comes in.Looby has my message and now I have the address.
She comes to the pub with her daughter to meet me and a minute later I am home for the night.
After supper it is bedtime stories with seven year old Teya who creates virtually the whole tale herself. Then hearing from 15 year old Shanti, a most well informed young lady. Looby is the author of People and Permaculture and another shorter more accessible guide written as an introduction to this most practical , effective and earth friendly method of gardening. Shanti wouldmake a fabulous publicist and I wish I had such easy access to such a smart young mind.
We pore over maps and I see where I will be staying in a couple of days, at Applewood permaculture site. Shanti is excited. They have been to a plant sale today and along with the blueberries that Looby had procured and rosemary and lavanda and bay, much as I would have chosen, the girls have bought flowers. Shanti plans to adorn her little caravan , where I will get to spend the night, with pots of the flowers she has chosen.
Looby shows me the day’s plants. She shows me too the perrenial kale. From only three plants there is full and lush bed of edible greens for the whole year. I learn about Japanese wine fruit, small tight blackberry fruits that is growing well in the back garden and experiments to propagate it.
We finish our evening learning if the horrors happening in Baltimore. Shanti keeps up with the news on the internet. It feels like a brood of unruly children have been allowed to take over, not just the state but the country and most of the world,bullying and intimidating anything other than their small world of beliefs. It is disempowering to learn if the scale of the things that are still so far out of balance.
Yet what more can we do but take the next step forward, and the next, towards the society we can be proud to be a part of? What is the next step towards racial acceptance for those who have been taught prejudice?
At bedtime Shanti gives a gift. She teaches me how to cut and paste my work into Facebook.

There are other projects afoot; a funder to pay for a really good translator tool so we can all

The map is clear, the land doubles back on itself and the lane is fairly straight forward

It is a simple act of kindness, a fitting way to end my day. I lay in the bath for an hour, simply sitting, simply being, no hurry to get anywhere at all. Today I have learnt that kindness begins with taking good care of yourself first. We can only offer others what we are capable of offering to ourselves.

7-8 June 2015
I am in the fair people sized city of Hereford, largely unchanged, in the centre, my host tells me, from the tenth century. I am staying with my friend Perry Walker and his lovely partner Marie Claire in a mediaeval merchant’s house nestling by the side of the old bridge into the city.
I read this morning the exquisite ‘Stitch in Time’ herbal I have brought from Brockhampton. It is a veritable wonder and mine of information saved from 1902 when its handwritten collection of notes on 60 wild flowers medicinal and other practical uses were given to the church with the embroidered altar cloths and prayer book covers.
I learn of making cloth from nettle and am reminded of the conversation over dinner last night and an old French folk tale of a maiden who rescued her 7 brothers from enchantment from having been turned into swans by making them garments of nettle cloth. I have a vague memory of such a tale too, perhaps from Grimm when one brother’s arm remains a wing for the cloth was not quite enough. We have talked of Roman soldiers rubbing the leaves into their skin to improve circulation and keep them warm and now I read they brought the seeds over with them, so valued a plant it was for so many purposes.
With the theme of inner transition strong on this journey I am thrilled at the end of the book to find the following stanzas from a prayer;
…in your kingdom of heaven
We know little children are there
And Jesus said thieves and harlots
Would be found in that land so fair

For the kingdom of heaven’s within you
Here on this beautiful earth
If only our souls would awaken
To present celestial birth

The anonymous writer goes on to add that she’s known it in the mystery of a flower. A wise woman indeed, and perhaps remaining anonymous for having imparted knowledge and wisdom that once over would have had cast in the role of witch.
She tells me too, this long dead guide of mine, that borage, an old favourite herb of mine, that I planted in a mother in laws garden where it proceeded to take over other less useful, more ornamental flowers, brings courage, and that the Greeks and Romans took it in wine to increase the flow of adrenalin and produce fearlessness; an apt flower to take as symbol for the warriors way.
All along the way though it is the beautiful bugle with its flowers of violet and blue bells that has accompanied me and this I am told by this precious herbal is known to cure the diseases of Saturn being closely allied with Venus. Culpeper understood well the correspondences between planetary action and life upon earth. Saturn is the great grey bearded teacher of the planets and Venus the beguiling maiden of love; here beautifully side by side then the Merlin and the Nimue of legend. Bugle embodying the truth that love softens every harsh heart, that slow steady learning of truths brings one finally to that great and only truth, that we are all interconnected by the energy we call love.
Culpeper tells us it must be taken inwardly (in a drink )and outwardly (as an ointment) if we are wise enough to recognise its virtues and love it.
Here in the fair city of Hereford it is easy to feel love. The perfect symmetry of the architecture is pleasing to the heart and the magnificence of it’s central cathedral must have touched every pilgrim’s heart that once passed before it.
Together with my hosts we walk to the castle green centre by the river where once stood one of the proudest castles in the land. The townsfolk took its stone away for building and now its might is spread throughout the city, a good metaphor for perhaps exactly how a people claim back their power from a structure that seems invincible and once held them in thrall. Take it to pieces one block at a time and put each to use amongst other things you find to make it serve you better.
We here tell tales of the future, of the past and present too, with my friend of old in these parts, Anita Sancha, our good company of four being all who choose to be indoors this fine hot June evening. We sit in the window overlooking the river and Anita animates the space with bird song and fun. On the window ledge sit pigeons cone to join our gathering.
Small though it is the feeling of well being and company well met fill us with pleasure and the tales come on and on as diverse as tales of the gallantry showmen who would travel the country and the Victorian magic lantern shows. Anita once travelled the land on a canal narrow boat putting on shows our great great grandparents would have seen. She spent seven years travelling slowly one place to the next.
We hear too of the Amandola housing co op, an eco development in nearby Kingston’s actively seeking members. Watch this space for a link to their website.
Spring greens is a local eco festival that gas been going for a few years now, one of the delights to come from the rebirth of the original transition Hereford into HITA: the Hereford in Transition Alliance, a wonderful organic collective of all the different eco groups and projects to come out of transition as well as all the other kindred organisations working towards the same ends.

I tell my tales back from 2010 as well as back from 2050 and the others add their visions. One is of the continuing spread of the virtual reality that some teenagers are so engrossed in and another expects groups to be more and more defined with their own in- language but then as these two viewpoints are considered the role of the internet in helping diverse groups to find out and understand about each other is brought in. I wish I had brought my game The Quest to 2030 with me as I find the structure and story held nature of this to release the imagination beyond what can be seen from considering only the present. Still the beginnings have been created, perhaps groups that are allowed their own identity and retain healthy curiousity in the others is a good way to honour diversity. Perhaps the virtual worlds can allow people to experiment with possible futures and learn from them. I wonder how far we can imagine having this degree of technology in a power down society.
Over a late supper talk turns to the politics of our day and it is fascinating to hear a French perspective on what is happening in Britain now. Seen through the eyes of another nationality with its particular experiences to shed light on the situation is useful and enlightening. I wonder what it would take to change a political system without revolution and of course come back to the theme of this walk. The way forward is not to look upon the block as an impediment but rather flow around it like a river smooths off rocks as it goes and consider that the solutions come from within the block itself. In the individuals within it having a change of heart, an opening of heart, and it the compassionate way that accomplishes this.
Perry shows me his news from 2027. There are 4 spoof newspapers, exceptionally well produced. They contain a mixture of positive and not so positive articles. It will be interesting to read them again in 2027.
I am fed the most delicious suppers during my two night stay in this lovely place, Perry’s delicious moussaka inspired chickpea dish and then at Anita’s place in Breinton joined by Susana as we were the last time I walked this way we eat Indonesian style steamed veg with coconut sauce.we have such a long way since the days when British cooking was the insipid boiled mush that seemed to develop in the post war years. I eat with relish, my walk to Hereford over the lanes from Much Dewchurch was accomplished on chocolate wafer bars as I was eager to make time to walk to the hill fort of Dinedor rather than look for lunch.
I was supremely rewarded by this effort. It is easily the most accessible of all the ones my journey has taken me through. It is also flat on top and full of ancient trees as the others, and flooded with warm sunshine. I share it with a group of guides out on a walk and a colony of wasps that live in the roots of an uprooted tree I sit in. The queen wasp is larger than her workers and typical yellow and black banded. The workers are exquisite. They gave fluorescent turquoise heads, fluorescent green tails and dark earth red splotches on their slim bodies. I remember that the wasp is one of the symbols for warrior archetype of the feminine.
I am struck on this walk by the nature if my direction. I live between seeking out long straight roads and lanes and circuitous routes that take me to places that draw me. In conversation with Susana she points out the similarity to masculine and feminine energies. The focused goal orientated and the slower explorative inclusive dance blending together across the landscape as I weave the warriors way like knots along a rope, like beads on a necklace, like chakras along a spine. I have not planned these hill forts but yet they turn up at regular intervals, just as if Merlin were settlement hopping just as I am.
I have more confirmation that the warriors way is real though I am inventing it step by step when I visit the cathedral after a most wondrous pizza at the Rocket with my kindred spirits here in this city of well being.
I go to see the Mappa Mundi, an ancient mediaeval map of the world . I don’t go directly into the exhibition rooms though because I am caught by the splendour of the cathedral and need to sit in reverence. I can feel deep living peace both inside and out.
When I go through to meet the map I am thrilled by its guide who clearly loves her work and after pointing out various features, the Wye is on it, clearly It was made locally, the red sea the Nile, and Jerusalem painted at the centre. It was a teaching map, it taught that spirituality is at the centre of everything. It also taught the extent of the known at that time. Europe is the biggest quadrant of the four depicted in the circular illuminated map on calf skin that is more than 700 years old. My own love of maps for their precise marking out of what is actually there is challenged somewhat by this pictorial representation of the once known world yet it is also magnificent with its drawings and careful annotations of the creatures that dwelled in the various parts, no distinction made between mythological and real, calling into question things we assume are true. What is true anyway, and what merely perception?
The map was apparently one of the treasures shown to pilgrims and here the beginnings of something I had not known begin to coalesce in my mind. It would seem that more than Merlin has walked this way. Perry has told me of the frescoes painted on the walls of the Black Lion pub, sadly not in the public areas, painted by monk pilgrims as they slept there, next door to where I have slept in Perry and Marie Claire’s mediaeval merchant house. The frescoes apparently depict very earthly scenes far removed from the sanctity of images like the tree tapestries in the cathedral created by John Piper in 1903.
Hereford was once a place of pilgrimage. They came to receive healing from St Thomas whose tomb lies in the northern corner of the cathedral. Thomas was bishop of the cathedral in medieval times and excommunicated. The pictures displayed there seem to suggest he was preaching out of doors . He travelled to Italy to be pardoned by the pope . he died in Italy but at his shrine in Hereford miracles began to happen.
The tomb of St Thomas is surrounded by 14 warriors. I am told this is unusual for a bishop to need to be thus guarded and that maybe he had some association with the knights templar though this is not the orthodox view.
The present dean has had the tomb brought back to a semblance if it’s original splendour, though the stonework itself is worn and the warriors faceless now and his Stone effigy much worn and crumbled but brand new red and blue kneeling cushions woven with golden thread are around it and above it a canopy of blue and red with golden stars.
Beside the tomb one can write a prayer and light a candle and I realise as I write mine, for the honouring of diversity, that I have become a pilgrim in the true sense of the world. All else fails away. I am given into the hands of a force greater than I and the way I tread has been trod before. I feel my place in the world like never before. I notice I don’t feel apologetic for existing anymore. Confidence grows as does my love of the open road .
I dally in the cathedral soaking in the sense of peace and reverence for what has gone before. Then I do my shortest walk so far, just two miles to breinton, home of anita, where I stayed on my !ast storywalk and was so taken with the garage turned greenhouse. Now it is a beautiful wood clad conservatory sporting three fruiting peach trees.
We chop veg for supper and then Susana arrives. I feel like I am with old friends though we have only done this once before. Susana tells me about gender reconciliation an organisation working with universities to address gender related imbalances in society. There is a related book; Divine Duality. Thoroughly with its feet in the real world addressing real life issues; rape, violence, abuse, the book is also fed by a strong understanding if our essential nature and the alchemy that occurs when masculine and femininine are balanced, on the inside of each of us so that we no longer project our shadow onto others.
Susana has also brought along the first chapters of the book she is writing for children which as well as being an exciting magical adventure is also teaching awareness of the issues we face today. Anita asks if I will read it aloud and curls up on the sofa whilst Susana sits beside me. I read the tale, it is immediately a story that grips and soon we are in world if twins Esme and Reuben and the pony that tunrs into Pegasus and teaches them how to make their imagination bring things into reality.
We sit , as people of old would have sat, entertaining one another. The story is so readable that the characters come to life through my voice and I feel in the story. Tifa the terrier barks to be let in, she spends most of her time ratting in the big garden, and leaps onto my lap to give me a big kiss. She then snuggles up with Anita and joins our cosy soiree.
Later Anita shows me old BBC documentaries made about her when she was part of the travelling magic lantern canal boat show. She brought up her children aboard the narrow boat which stopped in a different town each day.
I am thrilled by seeing how Anitas skill in operating victorian magic lantern cameras and slides developed into her skill as an animator which first attracted my attention.
I have enjoyed witnessing skill in the arts in this fair city. Marie Claire has pointed out the animals which are carved into the walls of the museum. They are almost animate with their features so well carved, and as for the cathedrals majestic walls, filled with relics from the past, show just how skilled our ancestors were.
My stay in Hereford has been one of integration. My arrival in the city via the old brdge reminded me with a jolt that it was here I consummated a relationship with a now lost lover and too where I walked on my first story walk. This city begins my short overlap with the 2010 transition tales walk.
Time worked its magic and gazing across at Left Bank, which Perry explains went into a period of dereliction, and is now risen phoenix like rather like the new incarnation of transition Hereford, I know that my heart has healed and I am eager to begin a new chapter. This fine old city where my half Welsh grandfather loved to be has become a place of significance for me too. In the chained library where the ancient tomes kept by the cathedral have been kept for several hundred years I have a deep longing for the life of contemplation and study and wonder if this is a memory of a past life or of one to come. Certainly in this life I am eager to start to include it more, perhaps in the place of still quiet I would like to found there can be a library such as the one I saw in the convent at tyr mawr, which can point the way to a new way of spiritual life where celibacy is not required. Susana has said that it didn’t always used to be the way we feel we have always known it. I gaze at the cathedral floor where effigys of couples are laid out in bronze above their long dead bones and wonder if there ever was a period in our western history where the tantric knowledge of the power of union of opposites was accepted.
In the library exhibition I see the the volume where King John decreed Forest Law which removed the rights of all but he and his henchmen from using its resources. I wonder at this act of treason against the people and at how it is perpetuated to this day. It is a good reminder that just because someone holds a position of power doesn’t mean they are right or should be followed.
In the end the only way of doing good in the world is to do as the hippies always said; follow your bliss. I feel that my time spent in Hereford has been doing exactly that.