StoryWeaving

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.

9th June
The walking simply flows all day long without a cow or a territorial dog or an impatient car driver in sight. I find quiet back lanes all the way west on my journey to Dorstone.
I am pleasantly surprised. I had felt anxious about the early part of the journey where there was a stretch of main road and a stretch of footpath across farmland but the road is pavemented and when I reach the footpath I meet a farmer in his garden and am able to check there are no cows in the field and that the way is clearly marked. He reassures me it is and details the way to go, adding;
You have to be assertive about your power, its the way of nature, the way of farming.
I am interested at the nature of advice I am receiving from the male guides I meet. They respond to my admissions of fear with gentle challenges to stand in my power and as I walk my sense of a right to be here is increasing.
People in these parts are good hearted. A woman in a car at the main road edge stops to check if I am on the wye valley walk, eager to give me directions. I am in Bridge Sollers having come down off the Roman road that leads west to cross the river.
I explain, as I have to many now, that though in a sense I am following the course of the Wye, I am not particularly following the marked walkway but rather my penchant for village hopping and set off again past the church at the start of the next lane. I am about to walk away n by when a statue at its corner beckons me in. I hesitate, its a longer walk today, 14miles with some steep hills to climb, but the statue gets the better of me. He may be called St Andrew but he is for sure modelled on Merlin, complete with oaken staff and he stares out in a gesture of vulnerable acquisence for what is.
The church porch looks ancient with oaken nails holding together oaken panels and roof arches and in the corner a yew with massive girth stands besides her more slender two daughters. My next village is Preston on Wye. I have noticed it on maps close since the beginning of planning for this trip for no particular reason. I go into the village to find the pub. It is lunchtime and I am ready for both a sit down and food.
It is called the Yew Tree and there I am given a warm welcome. Roy is an ex sailor complete with golden earring. He tells me the tales of this place whilst Nicole brings out delicious food made by Johan.
This is a town full of scruffy houses and kind people
He says and proceeds to tell me that when his wife died three years ago on the day of the funeral the pub changed hands and changed his life. The landlady and her staff took him under their wing and he has eaten his lunch there ever since. They even consult him when they change the menu to add some of his favourites.
I’m their chief food taster
He says and he and Nicole talk about the great live music nights they have and of how weddings and funerals are held in the marquees on the green outside. The food is excellent and half the price I have eaten anywhere on this journey. I recall the fat chef and the skinny chef who boasted their average food was gourmet as I eat the best minted pea soup I have ever tasted for a price I haven’t paid for soup in several years.
This is a pub I can recommend wholeheartedly. They are an intrinsic part of the community playing their part fully and welcoming and interested in passing travellers. Relief courses through my veins. It is still alive then, the spirit of hospitality that is the raison d’etre of inns, though many nowadays would struggle to truly understand this.
Roy wants to tell me a story once he hears what I am doing. When his wife was dying he met a woman who was a lay preacher at the hospital who helped to make things more comfortable for them. One day she saw them at home and saw a photo if Roy’s children. She said they must be related for the likeness. It turned out that they were distant cousins and gave traced their family back to the 1609s and are now in touch with relations in Australia too.
When my wife died God gave me a new family
Says Roy who was orphaned young and sent from London to Devon in the war as a refugee.
When I take my leave of the Yew Tree Roy stands up to shake my hand and give me the onward blessing of these parts
Stay safe
And I look at this old man who has made my stay memorable. I stare in amazement, close to he looks almost my age…
I’m 85
He says. Its meeting people like you that keeps me young. Clearly an open mind and a receptive attitude is what keeps us young. Roy has told me of the Canadian who walked through for charity and wrote to Roy to let him know how much money he’d raised. I think of how well placed this inn and its incumbent welcomer is to receive pilgrims of all sorts and delight that I have chosen this route. I resolve to write to Roy too and make sure I have the pubs details before I leave. Nicole tells me she is having six weeks off to go to Pennsylvania to work on a summer camp where children can receive counselling. She is going to teach them to cook. She says the landlady is keeping her job for her and we both agree this is how it should be.
As she hands over the pubs card she says we do accommodation too, in the bunk house, about £10 a night Roy it is. If ever there was a pilgrims pub this is one!
Johan comes out if the kitchen as his shift does to an end and I am readying myself to leave, our final discussion is on tattoos, all but me have them and I tell of the dragon I always intended but never did. I muse as I leave on our ancestors who would hav e tattooed their skin and how times change in terms of what is the norm. I find it somewhat refreshing to be the odd one out for not having a tattoo.
The friendly trio have told me the best way to Dorstone is through Moccas but I have penchant to visit Peter Church and follow the back lanes onwards. I spy on the map there is a well and I want to see it. I find the lane and search a little but soon give up wondering if the curved stones at the bottom of the lane over a brook might be it. I am just starting to walk on when a couple call me back
Are you looking for the well?
They direct me over a style and across a field and behind a shed.
When I get there I see the well is owned and managed by the waterboard. I look through the barbed wire topped fence, then I look again and I am under the fence in an instant. There in the mossy bank is an ancient holy head carved from stone a bearded green man, St peter no doubt, but without a doubt this is Merlin too.
I clamber down to the issuing stream to drink from the well that still supplies peter church with its water as it runs fresh, rainwater from the mountains.
The waterboard info sign explains that it has recently reinstated the head where it is supposed to be having been cemented into a wall for years but of course originally was the drinking fountains spout. It goes on to say that though it was known in christian times it was clearly of much older pagan origins and that these holy heads were everywhere where a holy well was found.
As I walk on I feel truly blessed at the synchronisities that are creating this walk of mine as I walk by ancient relic acre ancient re!ic without plan or design but a determination to follow my nose along the map and follow my bliss rather than marked tourist ways.
The climb up Stockly hill to gain this place is steep and goes on for a mile or more. This was the Anita had recommended over our shared garden breakfast of soaked chia seeds and fresh fruit walnut toast and tahini. It is perfect, it means I do t have the final steep climb I have been warned about in Dorstone. I am already up high. Anita’s Peruvian grain has served me well. It was given to the warriors who would run over mountaibs to keep them going being rich in nutrients, a super food.
I am now on the final stretch and arrived at Dorstone village hall, past the pub and Dorstones front room – its excellent community centre, in plenty of time for tonights event – its a fundraiser for Nepal that Looby’s partner Chris is putting on. Its a slide show of images from Nepal and the Himilayan Permaculture centre he founded there in the 80s after having originally gone out there as a VSO volunteer.
As the audience settles itself I meet the kindly couple who made sure I didn’t miss St peters head well. I feel amongst friends at this event of international import high in the hills of the Welsh – English borderlands.
The ensuing talk has my total attention the whole time, a very unusual experience for me. Within five minutes talking heads have usually sent me off into a reverie if my own whilst they ramble on. Not so with Chris Evans. If you want to truly appreciate understand permaculturec as a design system, and of how it works to create sustainable resilient communities able to produce their own food and build , and, as it turns out, earthquake proof buildings then look out for one of his events or come to Applewood his Dorstone Permaculture centre for a course run by him and Looby and you will not be disappointed.
Chris began creating perma culture design centres in Nepal and the slides we see of the work that has been done are truly inspiring.
At the end of the talk, when locals begin to ask questions about Permaculture locally I get to meet Flora, who has just started working to raise awareness of how important it is to spend time with the dead and dying and not to let their bodies be taken without at least a three day wake. We share experiences. I talk of the wake of a lovely friend and communard at bowden housecommunity where I used to live and how healing that was for me not having had the opportunity to do that with my own father when he died in a hospital bed. Flora talks of the death of her husband in kenya and of how their five year old daughter was able to say
That body was just a house for daddy’s soul, wasn’t it?
I recall later my good friend Lisa Anderson telling of how it was to sit and play music and sing to a dying then dead woman and her family. It feels good that we are beginning to remember how important the dying process is, every bit as important as the being born process.
Looby and I walk out of Dorstone and up to Applewood. She is only the second person to walk with me on the warriors way. We climb the hill slowly admiring the sunset as dusk begins to fall.
If you want to learn more about Permaculture you can get Looby’s books here:
www.spiralsofabundance.com

Today for the first time I notice I am tired as I wake up at my usual 5.3o am to begin writing. I sleep another hour. My legs are tired. Yet the sun is shining and I am on a journey. This is part of it. I consider taking a bus for a few miles, an act of kindness to my self, and perhaps I will. I allow myself not to know till its time to set out.
Today is market day in the ancient town of Hay on Wye. I arrived yesterday after an easy walk of 8 or so miles from Dorstone via Arthur’s Stone. I had set out from Applewood Permaculture Centre late morning after a lovely time spent helping to create new veggie beds as part of Working Wednesday, a volunteer day.
The previous night I had been the guest of Shanti, Centre owner Looby Macnamara’s daughter, in her little green caravan. Looby provided me with a hot waterbottle and I snuggled down in the tiny haven on a meadow in the silence of Dorstone hill. I am less than a mile from Arthur’s stone, as the crow flies, site of prehistoric ritual.
In the morning I awaken early but it is too cold yet to write, wall to wall blue skies haven’t heated up the day yet, the sun is still below the horizon line. After another hour it is shining through the window and I can see my solar charger is being filled with energy.
Once my blog is written I go outside to join Chris and Ben who have already started work. Chris is scything an area outside the garden enclosure, it’s protected by a wooden deer fence. I tell him much I en joyed his talk on bringing per a culture to Nepal in the 80s. The talk was a fund raiser for the earthquake survivors. Contact the Himalayan Permaculture centre if you would like to contribute.
Next I meet Ben and we enjoy a chat about walking and consciousness and about raising children the natural way. He and his partner have three young children and do not want to see them cooped up inside all day in big classes.
Then Looby is with us and we learn of the first job of the day. We are to remove the tape and large staples from huge flattened cardboard boxes they have been collecting for a while. These are to be laid flat on the newly scythed area ready to be covered in manure and fresh compost ready to plant the next layer of garden, going around in a bigger circle the central enclosure.
I sit in the meadow and set to work on the tape whilst Ben goes for the wheelbarrow. The staples are hard to remove and I go in search of a tool to help me. The claw hammer is to clumsy, the secateurs blade too delicate and could get damaged, then I find the bean planter. Looby tells me this marvellous piece of equipment came from Tools for Self Reliance, near Abergavenney. They save and restore old tools and have some made for them copying tools made in Tanzania. They are simply wonderful, sturdy, strong, easy to use and really effective. Looby displays her root pulleruper and demo Strate’s pulling up a dock root and all in one go.
The beanpuller is like a small diamond d shaped trowel with a strong thin pointy end and is perfect for taking out the copper staples. As I drop them into the plant pot bin so they won’t end up on the grass to injure bare footed children I wonder what could be made out of them.
I am joined by Looby and Ben’s partner Noda in the tape and staple removing work whilst Chris helps Ben to shovel wheelbarrows of muck onto the cardboard that is gradually getting put into place. It is a delight to watch the new beds gradually appear due to our shared effort of reusing so called waste products. I dislike that term, there is no such thing as waste except for when it is used in the phrase
Wasted opportunity
As far as I am concerned. Its all down to the level of our creativity. The more we throw away the less we are using our imaginations.
The work is fun. We women talk as we do it. We talk of transition education, about home education and something called collaborative education which Ben and Nora are considering for their children where a collective of like minded parents get together to home educate.
Nodas son is currently asleep on her back as she works. We talk too of the Hedge, her new publication to share stories poems and articles about the new story. There is a real thread starting to form now in these past few months of women who talk to me about producing or who are thinking of doing so, positive journalism.
It is exciting and a real development towards an empowered society when women begin to take up this baton. The Hedge is produced to raise money for important things that either need protecting or supporting. Issue one proceeds went to help support the move to protect camp hill centres from being taken over and changed from their incredible residential work with the mentally instable. Issue two is raising money to support the Nepalese earthquake survivors.
We realise I could contribute to this little magazine and I promise to hunt it out in Hay. After our new beds are made we stop for cups of fresh peppermint tea and then I take my leave if this inspiring little group.
Ben and Noda’s son is now fast asleep in the meadow under blankets. It brings tears to my eyes to see him in this natural state rather than sitting in a row in a square box listening to some adult telling him how the world is rather than letting him ex perience how the world is.
I walk on to Arthur’s stone. It is about a mile by the lanes. When I arrive a couple are there taking pictures. They soon move on then it is my turn to enjoy the stones. I bump into them later in a book shop in Hay and they tell me how they had picnicked there before I arrived. I smile
That’s what I did when you’d left
Another couple did it before us they reply. It is very satisfying to know we all had our bit of peace up there in the prehistoric remains of a once earth mound with a tunnel leading to an inner chamber which us up and n high overlooking the distant hills. The sun up there is hot and for a few minutes I can strip down to my vest and let the sun penetrate my skin and replenish me. We need this energy in the darker months. Now is our opportunity to s tore it in our bodies.

Soon i am on my way to Hay again. It is easy quiet back lane walking all the way there on a lane that runs south of the mainroad …the old way into town. I get puzzled at exactky tge same crossraods as i did five years ago on my first storywalk. The lane looks like it is to crumble into jyst a track and makes me think i have misread my map. It is right though and strange to realise i am walking in my footsteps now.
I am soon to n Cusop and go the long way round to finally go and visit the church and castle site that I missed seeing last time. Transition Hay didn’t reply to any of my emails and I wonder what happened to them all. It is nice though to be here under my own autonomy and visit different things. The castle site us just that ,a raised grassy plateau but the church, now dedicated to St Mary but once dedicated to the welsh saint of the rain, Cewydd,has a round churchyard. The church information informs that this was once a pagan site later built on by the Normans it was they who rededicated the church. The current church us dar heavy and feels like it is acting like a block to the spirit if the place though it is clear the locals are working hard to change that. The main stain glass window is a millennium window commissioned from a female artist and shows a rather beautiful Lilly type design in very pleasing purple greens and yellows.
The yew outside is over 2000 years old and has helped to date the site as pre christian.
The unusual round churchyard reminds me if the recurring theme of my walk that is full if straight Roman lines and circular ancient ways. In Breinton Susana has told of the table round, which was offered to the cathedral who wouldn’t take it and then to all saints a very progressive seeming church with a cafe functioning in its main area. The vicar accepted it but the congregation was in uproar, they couldn’t have this pagan symbol in their midst. Susana has given me the number of its keeper to find out where it now resides. It seems so sad and yet so true to form that is is ever the common folk who reject the coming of change more than anyone else. Taught so well by their oppressors they uphold behaviours and belief systems way beyond their period of power maintaining its hold when it need no longer bind.
When the lords of alien cultures subjugated the indigenous peoples of this our island they brought straight lines law and order as if these were good and the circular patterns of life that mimicked nature bad. With it went our freedom to be here as the full humans we came here to be. With it we lost our connection to the reality if the natural order to which we are an integral part. A round table represents equality in difference just as in the skies the planets rotate and revolve one no better than the other in their qualities and their challenging aspects.
Imprisoned by centuries of subjugation we uphold their values even when they hurt us and long after their masters are gone. The key to change us the releasing of these false laws from the inside. When we no longer believe them they will relinquish their power over us.
Anita has told me I should meet Sid in Builth Wells. She points me to his website
Facts about faith

Where I read with a huge settling relief that All faiths were founded upon the truths of Astronomy and the ancients knowledge of it that was so sophisticated that they were able to develop a complete science based upon it, the knowledge of which is passed down to us in Astrology.interesting how we have been taught to believe it’s mumbo jumbo. Interesting how the very basis for all thought has been debased and left to be dismissed.
I begin to see that the Merlin archetype I am walking with, exploring, that I have suspected represents an old god, a weather god, a father god, a wielder of old powers, is no doubt a planetary archetype and one that plays out strongly in my own psyche and visible in a strong position in my birth chart. Saturn. Facts about Faith relates this planet to amuch maligned character; Satan.
Who is Satan but the old green god, the God of the woodlands, the God that recognised the forces of nature, the goatlike character with a fish tail, capricorn, the seriousness till we are fullgrown and understand our true place in the world, then the playfulness that is our our true nature, the one who tried to stop just one god god from reigning supreme, Jupiter, the God on whom our grey bearded man on a
cloud image is derived, the God of thunder, the one who took woman as a wife then cheated on her, the one who was jealous of all other gods. The one who son like usurped the father, just as Saturn usurped Chronus before him. Time moving on, change.
Who followed on from Merlin in the myth but Nimue, the goddess of spring surely, following on from Saturn’s wintery role, Brigit, the feminine taking her power once more, as she begins to do now, in our times, awakening as if from a long sleep. The God the Jews took as the lord of all gods, emcompassing all gods, was just another manifestation of Jupiter. A truly encompassing divinity would include all the archetypal figures not just one aspect and extol it above the rest .
In Hay I look for a place to stay, food to eat, and a rest. First I buy a copy of the Hedge, yet another symbol of the awakening feminine energy that has been missing in all of us, man and woman alike, for far too long.
Its been a good day, spent in the company of men and women on the land with children, embodying both their masculine and their feminine aspects seamlessly. Both honouring the qualities of both. Noda lies her child down to sleep on a jacket in the meadow in the warm sun. Ben comes along and gently lays a blanket over his sleeping son. The golden headed boy sleeps in innocence as safe as only one in the hands of nature can be.
Noda speaks of her publishing company, Ben of his music. Both promote the goodness in the others work, their contributuon in the world. Both work the land of others, selflessly, for pleasure and to be of service. They have their own land too. When they need support to be sure their friends will be there to support them.
Simple, effective, as near to god like as we can be. To do gods work we must embody the qualities of a full pantheon of archetypes.