StoryWeaving

Today I have uploaded all the blogs from my facebook page The Warriors’ Way – A Journey to the Heart onto my blog here so that you can follow the story of my walk across Wales all in one place…Enjoy!

The Pilgrimage Begins – 31st May 2015
We live in changing times; the great turning as Joanna Macy calls it, transition times, a time when some of us are living the story we have been accustomed to since birth, the prevailing story our recent ancestors believed and passed down to us in their genes and their beliefs, and others are challenging that story, in their own lives and in what they tell their children. Of course many of us are living the paradox of both as we struggle to envision a future based on quite different principles whilst still needing to survive in a system that has certain expectations of us.
It can feel as if we have arrived in a time that has never been and of course in some senses that is true; we have never yet inhabited a planet where our species has used so much of the resources it finds around it that we have seriously impacted on the wellbeing of many other species including many of our own kind. At the same time,however, we are simply reliving a very familiar story; that of the dominant culture being challenged by another. Our history books are full of such turning points. It seems to be how humans evolve.
Today I left my peaceful Devon village, with my cat trying hard to walk with me, till my resourceful cat sitter tempted her back with biscuits, for a new foray into the world I live in. First stop Totnes, where the market was in full swing. Under the butterwalk two stalls set up side by side proclaimed very different messages yet both clearly manifestations of a new story emerging.
In recent times this area of our ancient market town has become known as a bit of a speakers corner albeit in a quiet understated way. Today a stall calling for the end of austerity stood beside one that was looking to the future in a rather less confrontational way; it was folk from the most recent transition initiative to have seeded in the area; a move to grow and process our own oats in the south hams. The transition team were offering free homemade flapjacks and crowd funding to purchase processing machinery for the town.
Across the road Dr Bike was in his usual pitch beside an ailing bicycle already set upside down ready for transition co founder Ben Brangwyn to work his magic on.Dr Bike can be found on the Saturday market most weeks repairing bikes in exchange for hugs, cakes and other such feel good exchanges.
Good tales to carry with me from Devon to Wales, where I am about to begin a month long storywalk.
Tonight I am in Caerleon, legendary court of king Arthur, though its actually an iron age hill fort closer to Caerwent where I am headed tomorrow that is more likely to have been the stronghold of the Briton’s king.

Without doubt though, Caerleon was a Roman fortress town. The magnificent amphitheatre is testimony to that, along with an impressive immaculately cared for museum filled to the brim with Roman artefacts uncovered in digs in the town from fine glassware to a stone coffin complete with its skeleton and burial goods.
I didn’t get much if a feel for Arthur’s presence here, even in the very well preserved amphitheatre that legend says was originally his round table but that may have been because of the teenage group who were chilling on its banks with their ghetto blaster pounding out rap of the kind that would feel appropriate in downtown Manhattan.
An elderly man with his newspaper shook his head and left his quiet seat on the outer edge and left.
School boys in soccer kits played tag and a couple of pairs of lovers sat in sheltered alcoves amongst the old stonework whilst I walked in the arena trying to feel the raw emotions that must have been present in this most barbaric of entertainment arenas.
Nothing. Carefully manicured grass and neat display boards.
The Briton’s and the Romans coexisted here once. How must that change of times have felt? Later the Angles overran the isle and the Britons were left to their Welsh and Cornish strongholds.
In the Hanbury arms I eat an early evening meal as the locals watch the cup final. They speak Welsh amongst themselves and I remember that I am in another country now. I am one of those Angles. I think of my great grandmother who was Welsh. Did she speak this language? Did she have to learn English when she crossed the border to work as housekeeper in a big house? I wonder how difficult it would be for me to to write in this our native language.
Tennyson sat in the hanbury Arms overlooking the river as I did this evening. He wrote of king arthur. I have a similar quest but it is Merlin whom I seek. I find him in an impressive sculpture of oak in an otherwise rather garish sculpture garden, its art rather subsumed by the quantity of pieces and the new age crystal shop that inevitably follows Arthurian legend about britain.
Why do I seek Merlin? Well I may be able to answer that question better at the end of this pilgrimage that will end on Bardsey island at the end of the month. Suffice to say for now that in this old story new story time in which we are living one of the themes that keeps reemerging for me is that if how important it is that we examine our roots before we choose how to live.
I suspect that the Arthurian legends, that body of story that so stirs us century after century, is likely to contain all that remains of the old teaching stories of our aboriginal peoples. That contained deep within its motifs are essential truths ..not so much for how we live in the world as how we manage our inner lives …and that now more than ever we have need of that wisdom.
Merlin has been a constant in my life. The grey bearded elder, Tolkien’s Gandalf, Rowling’s Dumbledore, exerts such a benign presence in our lives that the essence of that archetypal image has inspired poets and storytellers for time immemorial. What does he really represent? This is one of the questions I am carrying with me as I traverse these lands where the Briton’s took their culture when the Angles spread ever westwards.
Merlin carried with him when he journeyed this way that I will walk, this that I have christened the warriors way, the 13 treasures of Britain. You may think you don’t know this legend but the adventures of the hobbits and of Harry Potter are full of its symbology. Merlin took these treasures to the house of glass on Bardsey island. Why, and what did they represent? I hope to discover this as I walk. Was this last walk of his after he had fallen in love be with the maiden Nimue who patriarchal myths tell us took away his power?
Walk with me then on this journey of discovery, and discover with me what were these ancient teaching tales were telling us. What is the essential wisdom of the Britons that we lost sight of as the story of the invaders gradually became mainstream and what went before relegated to myth and faery tale?

June 2015 Day 1
Leaving the Great House, the charming old Welsh long house where I’d spent the night in a room overlooking the river Usk far from the madding crowds of Newport, I was struck by the rightness of the huge wooden sculpture carved from oak tree roots at the end of the road from whence my warriors way commenced. It was a giant head entitled ‘warrior’. It looked calm, stoic, aligned with purpose.
I was thrilled the BnB I had chosen, part through chance, part through liking the look of the old stone building was within yards of the start of the Usk valley way, where my journey was to start.
As I set out through woodland following the Usk at my left I mused on my first impressions of the country so similar yet not to my own. The people reminded me of my native Lancashire, friendly and helpful, easy to smile. I’d noticed as I’d walked through Newport the previous day how some of the young women openly stared at me, an uncomfortable phenomenon that took me back to my childhood so that I forgot for a moment that I am now a mature woman of 50. On reflection my sense of not being quite right, not quite fitting in, seemed to be because my stature is so very different from the curvaceous, voluptuous nature of those that stared. I so wished to look like them, I realise now they probably wanted to look like me!
My musings on people types, these women have their counterparts in men who are broad and stocky, led me to wonder if the different races that came to inhabit these isles are still visible in our body types. My maternal grandfather had this stocky build. My grandmother came from Irish stock and she was delicate, birdlike.
I am soon pulled from my reverie by my arrival at the first golf course of this journey. I know them of old from my storywalk around England in 2010. Their neatly shorn greens make a mockery of maps and they contain fiercely shot missiles of the small white variety. This one was hosting an Open and was full of people, most of whom were not local enough to give me directions. Even the stewards were so intent in directing the new arrivals that their replies to my questions were short and sent me off route over and over. After what felt like an interminable amount of time wondering around in what felt suspiciously like circles I finally hit the road but as I walked I began to feel something was wrong…was I going the right way? I couldn’t follow my map because I didn’t know exactly where I was. For a moment I enjoyed thinking about that. How often do we follow other people’s frameworks for life without knowing where on that framework we ourselves stand. If you don’t know where you are to start with you might end up anywhere…unless,wont is to happen to me, a guide, a knight, turns up out of the blue. Today he rode a large quiet impressive looking motorbike. My gentlemanly courtier checked where I was going, told me I was the right road, but going the wrong way! How often I wonder in life do we do such a thing?
I turn about and stride firmly trying to make up for lost time. I don’t feel comfortable until I am beyond the golf resort and clearly further east than when I set out. I have spent my first hour walking around in circles. I feel cross and resolve to stick to the roads for the rest of the day. Privately owned land cannot always be trusted to have maintained public footpaths the way they are depicted on maps.
Now the way becomes straightforward and surprisingly pleasurable. After a little way I notice two things; B roads in these parts are quiet and the A road has a pavement protected from the roadway by a wide grassy verge., and the once Roman road the Usk valley way followed is beneath these main roads I now follow. I have walked out of Caerleon with its amphitheatre and picked up the straight Roman road just as those soldiers would have done. The walk feels so easy I wonder if the road itself is drawing me, used as it must have been to thousands of foot passengers.
The road to Caerwent has other foot passengers too, a gentlemanly young man of African descent on his way to work and a very sprightly elderly lady walk its way with ease. I am delighted. A place where walking is seen as so normal the pavement continues mile after mile.
Then I find Penhow castle. I’ve been looking out for it. I know it as soon as I see it. Its tree topped green hillside covered in ancient boulders calls me as if it is my home. I cross the road but see that it is private property. I follow the public right of way around its edges. Round the back I see that a castle has been added onto over the years and made into a home. It stands next to an old chapel to John the baptist. I try to go inside to taste its peace. It is locked. I sit in its porch and eat my lunch with a view of the churchyard yew.
As I leave, grateful I have had a little shelter and place to sit and eat, I am planning to stop at the next pub to relieve myself when I am amazed by a green portaloo right next to the porch. Almost as if life is providing for all of my needs. I return to the road passing the ancient boulders once more. I know that the current building with its castle walls was not the original building to stand on this site. I know it deep within myself. This was once a place dedicated to the feminine. A place of healing. A little way on I come to an old inn, recently refurbished, called the Rock and Fountain and I have my confirmation. Here was a place of healing waters. I know deep inside that I can trust my inner knowing to tell me what is beneath the things that are visible to the eye.
Now I leave the Roman road to veer off left to follow the lanes for the main purpose of today’s walk; I am headed north east to Llanmelin hill fort, some sources say that it is here that king arthur held court rather than in the Roman fortressed town. It is the site of an iron age hillfort. I reach it by village hopping, my favourite way to travel. Little yellow C roads I know are little more than lanes and quite delicious to follow and the settlements found along the way often full of surprises.
I am not wrong; the lanes are as quiet as my home Devon ones, and the locked chapel at Penhow is more than made up for by the beautiful church of St Mary beneath the woods in the village of the same name; Llanvair Discoed. It is a lovely grey stone chapel similar in appearance to Penhow chapel and inside full of deep peace. There is a remembrance tree and I shed a few tears for my father who loved country lanes too and write a card to hang onto the tree.it feels good to have a little private space in which to honour the love we shared.
Would that all churches would remember that one of their functions has always been a place of sanctuary and to regard that above fear of theft.
I walk on and skirt the wooded mound that was king Arthur’s stronghold. It feels majestic, full of oaks. It is a place of masculinity different in feel to the mound of Penhow. I follow the lane round to the entrance and walk a while on a trail through woodland, climbing gently all the while till it gives in a gate into a well grown meadowlandfull of humps.at first I don’t know where to look than my eyes adjust and I head for the circular enclosure to my right. I sit on the grassy edge looking in. I see at once how similar it must have been to Landmatters.
I am struck by circular patterns; the amphitheatre with its 8 entrances which inevitably had me thinking of the seasons and the 8 points of the year our ancestors observed and now this enclosure, and the roundhouses of Landmatters. When we are left to create naturally it is in circles that we build.
Now I am nearly home for the night. I return through the woods the sunlight dappling the trees and earth.it has a feel of faery land. I feel the first stirrings of the magic that being alone in nature always brings.
I haven’t seen a soul for several hours. The land becomes mine,my experience,my adventure.
Now I reach Shire newton my home for the night. I have booked in at the hunstmans. My map shows four pubs. It is the last I find. The Sunday lunch for dinner I order is fit for a king with six types of fresh vegetables accompanying. In the morning, the best cooked breakfast I have ever eaten away from home. I have been really honest about exactly what I want. A good lesson.
It’s raining outside.it was full moon last night. The weather always turns then. Pay attention next full moon.