Eve of Pilgrimage
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.
Martin Büber
Martin Büber
Thursday 17th May
Beckenham – Basingstoke – Avebury – Windmill Hill
It’s one of those gorgeously bright mid-May mid-mornings – with a hint of summer in the edilbly blue sky – and I’m sitting on the back of my brother’s mid-life Harley, as we rumble out of Beckenham and down to the M25. The sun is beaming directly into my goggled eyes, and eve-of-pilgrimage excitement is percolating through my hobo veins and brain. It’s ages since me and my brother rode together – we did a ten-day trip through Spain and Morocco not long after mum died – and I’d forgotten just what a buzz it is to be on a bike. I’m feeling that quintessential motor-biking brew of both vulnerable and powerful, and seasonal and elemental, and ever so slightly two-wheels-smug. My brother has a special nod for every oncoming bike. No wonder there’s such camaraderie among bikers – the world feels so much more alive from a bike seat than a car seat, especially if you’re wearing an open face helmet.
Place names roll on by, forming a sort of poetry in motion within my pillion mind...
Beckenham, West Wickham,
Addington, Forest Dale,
Selsdon, Sanderstead,
Harnsey Green...
We drop down from the London plateau, snaking down a surprisingly rural back route, serenaded by a thousand fertile shades of green, weaving through pockets of warm air and seams of cold air, occasionally ambushed by wafts of hawthorn’s sweet and spunky scent. Then we join the never-ending story of the M25 and head west, carefully cruising between the second and third lanes whenever the four-wheeled traffic coagulates. My brother is a well-seasoned and confident rider – many moons ago was a motorbike cop – and I feel safe and younger brotherly tucked in behind his older brotherly wings.
As we cruise along the London Orbital, I remember the time he let me ride his first proper road bike – a brand new Yamaha RD250LC. I told mum and dad that I was going out for a cycle ride, but ditched my bike at the bottom of hill, and he came along five minutes later with a spare helmet. We rode down to the local disused airfield, which still possessed a relatively intact runway, and he let me take his precious bike for a solo spin. I remember hurtling along the middle of the runway, pushing the needle nearer and nearer the hundred mark, and just as I reached my first ever ton, my jacket sleeves ballooned with an equal and opposite hundred-mile-per-hour torrent of air which temporarily lifted my bum off the seat. Good job I was already holding on for dear life. Even though we led strangely separate lives as teenagers – I went to boarding school and he went to state school – every now and then he took some time out and played the older brother card in spades.
We stop off at Cobham Services for a ciggie break, and I realise that, despite months of meticulous planning, this ditzy pilgrim has forgotten to pack his waterproofs. And I’ve also forgotten to pack my faithful fold-up shit-pit-digging trowel. So we swing by one of those warehouse camping stores on the outskirts of Basingstoke, pick up a light raincoat and a new trowel, and then head up to Marlborough – with its oh-so-familiar chin-up public schoolboys – and onto the A4, which once upon a time was a Roman road ferrying well-oiled Romans and hairy locals to the hot springs of Solis Minerva, and then to the boondocks beyond.
Ah, you can feel Avebury approaching, even when you’re several miles off – a bit like when you feel the presence of the sea miles before you actually catch your first glimpse. You can keep fenced-off and ticketed Stonehenge for the tourists – free-for-all Avebury is the jewel in the crown of ancient Britain. In my ancient British hobo books.
There are two superb ways to approach Avebury – either down off the ancient Ridgeway on old-fashioned, pre-historic foot, or along the West Kennet Avenue on the back of a Harley Road King. We overtake a woman on a mobility scooter who’s hurtling along at an impressive rate of knots, and then for half a mile we sail alongside the avenue of paired ceremonial stones which stretch way back in time, four thousand years or more. I can feel my nerves tingling with anticipatory electric charge, and then there she blows! The southern entrance to the largest megalithic stone circle in the world.
We feed onto the A4361 and pass through the outer henge that encircles the stone circle that once encircled two inner stone circles, which themselves once encircled both feminine and masculine sarsen centre-pieces. Circles within circles within circles.
Avebury is so big, and has such a laissez-faire and sacrilegious history, that the A4361 runs slap-bang through its megalithic middle, crossing over – and temporarily subsuming – the village High Street. Imagine the A28 running through the middle of Canterbury cathedral and splitting its altar in two. And then bulldoze another road through both transepts, just to add to the desecration.
But, weirdly, this ignominious quarterising also adds to the charming anarchy of the place. And you get the feeling that, if not for these quirks of fate, Avebury too might well have been fenced off and ticketed and neutralised by one of Ratchet Man’s well-meaning committees.
We coast into the car park of the Red Lion, which lies at the intersection of the two iconoclastic roads, and which proudly proclaims itself to be “the only pub in the world inside a stone circle.” That’s a pretty good USP. Although the Glastonbury Festival stone circle on a festive Saturday night could lay down a temporary claim to the crown.
I go inside to order lunch and a couple of pints, and when I return to our bench outside my brother’s already in conversation with one of the locals. Turns out she’s the woman we passed whizzing along on that mobility scooter. Ex-RAF officer, adventurer, and well-versed raconteur, she keeps us suitably entertained. She even gives me her address and says I’m always welcome to stay upon my return, and I promise to send her some postcards from along my pilgrim way.
Then it’s time for my brother to head back to London for a business appointment – some of us around here have got proper work to do – and, suddenly, I’m all on my own, sitting outside the Red Lion, expectant rucksack and bulging daysack by my side, watching brazen jays purloining errant chips, cars and lorries and buses grumbling by, five mothers with five babies in five buggies strolling between some of the inner stones. A very peachy mid-May day indeed – pleasantly unhinged from normality and the rule of tick tock time.
Avebury has always been the obvious place from which to start my pilgrimage. And this is where I’m going to return to, however many weeks or months hence. I’m guessing I’ll be done by autumn equinox at the very latest.
Place names roll on by, forming a sort of poetry in motion within my pillion mind...
Beckenham, West Wickham,
Addington, Forest Dale,
Selsdon, Sanderstead,
Harnsey Green...
We drop down from the London plateau, snaking down a surprisingly rural back route, serenaded by a thousand fertile shades of green, weaving through pockets of warm air and seams of cold air, occasionally ambushed by wafts of hawthorn’s sweet and spunky scent. Then we join the never-ending story of the M25 and head west, carefully cruising between the second and third lanes whenever the four-wheeled traffic coagulates. My brother is a well-seasoned and confident rider – many moons ago was a motorbike cop – and I feel safe and younger brotherly tucked in behind his older brotherly wings.
As we cruise along the London Orbital, I remember the time he let me ride his first proper road bike – a brand new Yamaha RD250LC. I told mum and dad that I was going out for a cycle ride, but ditched my bike at the bottom of hill, and he came along five minutes later with a spare helmet. We rode down to the local disused airfield, which still possessed a relatively intact runway, and he let me take his precious bike for a solo spin. I remember hurtling along the middle of the runway, pushing the needle nearer and nearer the hundred mark, and just as I reached my first ever ton, my jacket sleeves ballooned with an equal and opposite hundred-mile-per-hour torrent of air which temporarily lifted my bum off the seat. Good job I was already holding on for dear life. Even though we led strangely separate lives as teenagers – I went to boarding school and he went to state school – every now and then he took some time out and played the older brother card in spades.
We stop off at Cobham Services for a ciggie break, and I realise that, despite months of meticulous planning, this ditzy pilgrim has forgotten to pack his waterproofs. And I’ve also forgotten to pack my faithful fold-up shit-pit-digging trowel. So we swing by one of those warehouse camping stores on the outskirts of Basingstoke, pick up a light raincoat and a new trowel, and then head up to Marlborough – with its oh-so-familiar chin-up public schoolboys – and onto the A4, which once upon a time was a Roman road ferrying well-oiled Romans and hairy locals to the hot springs of Solis Minerva, and then to the boondocks beyond.
Ah, you can feel Avebury approaching, even when you’re several miles off – a bit like when you feel the presence of the sea miles before you actually catch your first glimpse. You can keep fenced-off and ticketed Stonehenge for the tourists – free-for-all Avebury is the jewel in the crown of ancient Britain. In my ancient British hobo books.
There are two superb ways to approach Avebury – either down off the ancient Ridgeway on old-fashioned, pre-historic foot, or along the West Kennet Avenue on the back of a Harley Road King. We overtake a woman on a mobility scooter who’s hurtling along at an impressive rate of knots, and then for half a mile we sail alongside the avenue of paired ceremonial stones which stretch way back in time, four thousand years or more. I can feel my nerves tingling with anticipatory electric charge, and then there she blows! The southern entrance to the largest megalithic stone circle in the world.
We feed onto the A4361 and pass through the outer henge that encircles the stone circle that once encircled two inner stone circles, which themselves once encircled both feminine and masculine sarsen centre-pieces. Circles within circles within circles.
Avebury is so big, and has such a laissez-faire and sacrilegious history, that the A4361 runs slap-bang through its megalithic middle, crossing over – and temporarily subsuming – the village High Street. Imagine the A28 running through the middle of Canterbury cathedral and splitting its altar in two. And then bulldoze another road through both transepts, just to add to the desecration.
But, weirdly, this ignominious quarterising also adds to the charming anarchy of the place. And you get the feeling that, if not for these quirks of fate, Avebury too might well have been fenced off and ticketed and neutralised by one of Ratchet Man’s well-meaning committees.
We coast into the car park of the Red Lion, which lies at the intersection of the two iconoclastic roads, and which proudly proclaims itself to be “the only pub in the world inside a stone circle.” That’s a pretty good USP. Although the Glastonbury Festival stone circle on a festive Saturday night could lay down a temporary claim to the crown.
I go inside to order lunch and a couple of pints, and when I return to our bench outside my brother’s already in conversation with one of the locals. Turns out she’s the woman we passed whizzing along on that mobility scooter. Ex-RAF officer, adventurer, and well-versed raconteur, she keeps us suitably entertained. She even gives me her address and says I’m always welcome to stay upon my return, and I promise to send her some postcards from along my pilgrim way.
Then it’s time for my brother to head back to London for a business appointment – some of us around here have got proper work to do – and, suddenly, I’m all on my own, sitting outside the Red Lion, expectant rucksack and bulging daysack by my side, watching brazen jays purloining errant chips, cars and lorries and buses grumbling by, five mothers with five babies in five buggies strolling between some of the inner stones. A very peachy mid-May day indeed – pleasantly unhinged from normality and the rule of tick tock time.
Avebury has always been the obvious place from which to start my pilgrimage. And this is where I’m going to return to, however many weeks or months hence. I’m guessing I’ll be done by autumn equinox at the very latest.
Officially – in my DIY pilgrimage technical manual, anyway – this pilgrimage doesn’t begin until tomorrow. I guess this means that today is a sort of acclimatisation day – getting used to the new altitude, topping up my attitude, testing out my brakes and kit, limbering up my thumb and so on.
I drink up, cross the road, ditch my rucksack in the middle of a giant nettle patch, and treat myself to a slow motion pre-pilgrimage bimble around the stones, beginning in the south-east “quadrant” and working my way widdershins.
When does a pilgrimage actually begin? When you first think of going on a pilgrimage? When you close the door of your home behind you? When you join a recognised pilgrimage route? When you say your first pilgrimage prayer?
I imagine those pilgrims of medieval times. I’m guessing quite a few of them were reasonably well-off – think of the Canterbury Tales crew all travelling by horse – but there must have been a few proper peasants too. It might well have been the only time in your whole peasant life when you got away from your village and all its pressure and all its gossip and all its graft. In which case, the sense of adventure would probably have kicked in as soon as you crossed the parish bounds.
“Thanks be to yow, Oh Lord, my pilgrimage hath nowe bygun,” says the pious pilgrim out loud, so that the angels can record his piety.
“Thanks be to fuck I am away from that suffocating shithole,” whispers his impish shadow.
The south-east quadrant of Avebury is home to what was – once upon a possible pagan time – that masculine inner circle, in the centre of which now stands a weird modern concrete construction indicating where a massive obelisk once stood, itself once surrounded by twenty-nine adoring stones. Alas, the original obelisk was toppled and broken up for house-building sometime during the eighteenth century – the rude and ancient phallus finally domesticated, relegated to chimney stacks and occasional filthy dreams.
It’s worth saying that Avebury’s current form owes a lot to two very devoted men: the Reverend William Stukeley, of the early eighteenth century, and Alexander Keiller, of the mid-twentieth. It’s reckoned that villagers first began dismantling the stone circle way back in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries – I’m guessing for both superstitious and practical reasons. So, when Stukeley first visited, there was a well-established village straddling the circle, and many of the stones had been pulled down and buried, or broken up for building work. With a fine Anglican sense of order, he set about recording the positions of the remaining stones, and filling in some of the gaps with his imagination, eventually publishing his drawings and musings in a classic book called “Abury.” That’s how we know that there used to be a mighty obelisk here – and that’s also how we know where many of the stones originally once stood.
Of course, Avebury has a way of inveigling its magic into even well-ordered Anglican stock, and as Stukeley became more and more obsessed with his own version of outer-mythical and inner-mystical Druidism, his drawings became more and more magical in their interpretation. The engraving of his “Great Stone Serpent” hypothesis, in which two lengthy ceremonial avenues form a snake’s body which passes through the henge’s southern and western entrances, is an imaginative joy to behold. And who knows how much he really knew? For a long time his vision of a western avenue – the Beckhampton Avenue – was dismissed as Druidic-Anglican fantasy, but at the turn of the millennium excavations revealed rows of holes that would have held the very stones he’d pictured.
However accurate Stukeley’s drawings, they proved invaluable when Alexander Keiller – of the marmalade millions – rocked up two centuries later and started buying up the village, whilst uncovering buried stones and re-erecting them in their – hopefully – original positions. Alas, his restorative work was cut short by the Second World War, by which time he’d managed to upright a good fifty of the hefty blighters. Well, I suspect the unsung workers did the unsung digging and hefting, whilst Keiller got – and still gets – the jammy glory. Ever was thus.
Still, fair play to these two characters. Without them both, Avebury wouldn’t be half the megalithic beast it is today.
Myth, fact, conjecture, fantasy, iconoclasm, resurrection, superstition, worship, order, anarchy, archaeology, witchery, wizardry, druidry, Anglicanism, hedonism, tourism – and a couple of hundred well-fed and well-mannered neo-pagan sheep – all seem to comingle within Avebury’s chalky bounds in a very polite, English, higgledy-piggledy, mystical-mythical manner.
By the notorious “Devil’s Chair” I ascend the henge’s massive chalk bank and follow the path to the eastern gate, where a party of beech trees invites me to linger amid their exposed and tangled roots. Some say Tolkien and C.S. Lewis occasionally lingered here too, and, for sure, there’s something ruggedly fey and Tolkienesque about the place. Clouttie ribbons and assorted prayers and messages dangle from dozens of branches.
I once slept out under these beech trees, amid their fabled roots, in search of fabled dreams. It was far less romantic than it sounds – have you ever tried curling your body around exposed and knobbly roots, wrapped up in a sleeping bag? It was probably the most uncomfortable night of my life. So many of my romantic notions fail to live up to my romantic expectations, and I’m sure that this pilgrimage – and therefore this pilgrim – will get a few reality checks along the way.
I wonder how much sleeping out under stars I’m going to be doing? I even thought about buying a bivvy bag, but I’ve never bivvied before and there’s probably an art to it, and now’s probably not the time to learn. I guess that on warm, dry nights I can try sleeping out, and see how it goes. But fundamentally I’m an “English man’s tent is his castle” kinda guy. I feel stupidly at home in my tent.
I descend the chalky bank in order to proceed to the north-east quadrant, crossing over quiet little Green Street, which also goes by the name of Herepath – being the ancient track that leads up to the Ridgeway, which might well be Britain’s most ancient road.
I re-enter the circle, climb back up to the top of the bank, and resume my circumferential bimble. Some say the henge’s bank was once twice this height, and the inner ditch twice the depth. And the banks wouldn’t have been covered in this sheep-nibbled turf neither – they would have been brand, spanking, bright, chalky white. Imagine all this in its original ceremonial splendour, beaming with megalithic magnificence.
Alas, Keiller and his crew never got round to excavating this particular quadrant, so there are hardly any standing stones – but once I’ve clocked up another ninety chalky degrees along the top of the bank, I drop back into the centre and visit Avebury’s megalithic queenpin: the Cove.
Originally three large stones placed at right angles to form an open receptacle, surrounded by a circle of twenty-seven other stones, and aligned to receive the penetrating rays of the summer solstice sun, the Cove now consists of only two stones, one of which is reckoned to weigh a good hundred tons. This beast might even have been Avebury’s original sarsen feature. I spread eagle myself against the stone’s vertical face, and take a few long, deep breaths. If there’s a quietly beating heart at the centre of Avebury, this could well be the best place to feel its pulse.
Despite containing far more resurrected stones than the other two quadrants, the north-west and south-west quadrants don’t quite feel as raw and alive. But there were never meant to be four separate quadrants – nature don’t do right angles – and it’s well worth circumnavigating the whole henge, just for that circular sense of satisfaction. And, in my case, to also earn the excuse for another pint.
When I originally shared my plan to do a hitch-hiking pilgrimage around sacred places of the British Isles, my good friend Arch paused for a few seconds, and then added, “And pubs!” And we both got goose bumps, which sealed the matter. After all: no mud, no lotus. And I am rather partial to pubs and beer and whisky. So, sacred places and public houses it was, and sacred places and public houses it shall be.
It’s easy to criticise the Red Lion, but it does a good job of being a busy country pub at the heart of a popular tourist spot. Most other pubs would have buckled into characterlessness by now. It’s fun to wander round looking at all the pictures on the walls – including framed copies of some of Stukeley’s famed engravings – and the southern bar still retains a village pub snugness. And during winter months, when the fire is blazing, it’s a fine place to mosey away a couple of lazy, chatty hours, whilst your boots dry out and your bones warm up. And outside too – whenever the sun is doing its sunny-enough thing – is always an entertaining place to sit and linger. Especially on pagan high days and holy days, when motley pagan crews and psychedelically-infused undergraduate philosophy students converge for alcohol-fuelled debriefings, punctuated by occasional outbursts of heathen song.
The Red Lion is also rumoured to have several resident ghosts, including a ghostly horse-drawn carriage which is sometimes heard clattering along the outside cobbles, destined for who knows where and when.
I grab myself a pint of Avebury Well Water, find myself a place to sit, and begin to write up my pilgrimage journal. I’ve upgraded to the twenty-first century and bought myself this fold-up keyboard thing that bluetooths to my phone, so I open it up and get a-typing, whilst quietly wondering if I look like a vaguely cool and up-to-date middle-aged adventurer. I’ve also got a good ol’ notebook and pen, so I have both digital and analogue writing options at my disposal.
I’ve barely typed in five sentences when a man at the adjacent table strikes up a conversation – about hitch-hiking and living off-grid and wood burners and festies and people we know in common. I tell him a little bit about my recent breakdown, but I feel vulnerable and English-awkward, so don’t go into any detail. Also, calling it a recent breakdown ain’t necessarily true – for all I know, the gods and goddesses of dissolution aren’t done with me yet.
Before I know it, a chatty hour and a half has passed, and the sun has disappeared over the edge of the world, and I suddenly feel properly tired. And I’ve still got to find my way to Windmill Hill, which is probably a mile or so north-west. When we part, Martin gives me his card and invites me to swing by whenever I’m in his neck of the Devon woods. Two invitations in one day. Strangers can be really kind to strangers.
I drink up, cross the road, ditch my rucksack in the middle of a giant nettle patch, and treat myself to a slow motion pre-pilgrimage bimble around the stones, beginning in the south-east “quadrant” and working my way widdershins.
When does a pilgrimage actually begin? When you first think of going on a pilgrimage? When you close the door of your home behind you? When you join a recognised pilgrimage route? When you say your first pilgrimage prayer?
I imagine those pilgrims of medieval times. I’m guessing quite a few of them were reasonably well-off – think of the Canterbury Tales crew all travelling by horse – but there must have been a few proper peasants too. It might well have been the only time in your whole peasant life when you got away from your village and all its pressure and all its gossip and all its graft. In which case, the sense of adventure would probably have kicked in as soon as you crossed the parish bounds.
“Thanks be to yow, Oh Lord, my pilgrimage hath nowe bygun,” says the pious pilgrim out loud, so that the angels can record his piety.
“Thanks be to fuck I am away from that suffocating shithole,” whispers his impish shadow.
The south-east quadrant of Avebury is home to what was – once upon a possible pagan time – that masculine inner circle, in the centre of which now stands a weird modern concrete construction indicating where a massive obelisk once stood, itself once surrounded by twenty-nine adoring stones. Alas, the original obelisk was toppled and broken up for house-building sometime during the eighteenth century – the rude and ancient phallus finally domesticated, relegated to chimney stacks and occasional filthy dreams.
It’s worth saying that Avebury’s current form owes a lot to two very devoted men: the Reverend William Stukeley, of the early eighteenth century, and Alexander Keiller, of the mid-twentieth. It’s reckoned that villagers first began dismantling the stone circle way back in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries – I’m guessing for both superstitious and practical reasons. So, when Stukeley first visited, there was a well-established village straddling the circle, and many of the stones had been pulled down and buried, or broken up for building work. With a fine Anglican sense of order, he set about recording the positions of the remaining stones, and filling in some of the gaps with his imagination, eventually publishing his drawings and musings in a classic book called “Abury.” That’s how we know that there used to be a mighty obelisk here – and that’s also how we know where many of the stones originally once stood.
Of course, Avebury has a way of inveigling its magic into even well-ordered Anglican stock, and as Stukeley became more and more obsessed with his own version of outer-mythical and inner-mystical Druidism, his drawings became more and more magical in their interpretation. The engraving of his “Great Stone Serpent” hypothesis, in which two lengthy ceremonial avenues form a snake’s body which passes through the henge’s southern and western entrances, is an imaginative joy to behold. And who knows how much he really knew? For a long time his vision of a western avenue – the Beckhampton Avenue – was dismissed as Druidic-Anglican fantasy, but at the turn of the millennium excavations revealed rows of holes that would have held the very stones he’d pictured.
However accurate Stukeley’s drawings, they proved invaluable when Alexander Keiller – of the marmalade millions – rocked up two centuries later and started buying up the village, whilst uncovering buried stones and re-erecting them in their – hopefully – original positions. Alas, his restorative work was cut short by the Second World War, by which time he’d managed to upright a good fifty of the hefty blighters. Well, I suspect the unsung workers did the unsung digging and hefting, whilst Keiller got – and still gets – the jammy glory. Ever was thus.
Still, fair play to these two characters. Without them both, Avebury wouldn’t be half the megalithic beast it is today.
Myth, fact, conjecture, fantasy, iconoclasm, resurrection, superstition, worship, order, anarchy, archaeology, witchery, wizardry, druidry, Anglicanism, hedonism, tourism – and a couple of hundred well-fed and well-mannered neo-pagan sheep – all seem to comingle within Avebury’s chalky bounds in a very polite, English, higgledy-piggledy, mystical-mythical manner.
By the notorious “Devil’s Chair” I ascend the henge’s massive chalk bank and follow the path to the eastern gate, where a party of beech trees invites me to linger amid their exposed and tangled roots. Some say Tolkien and C.S. Lewis occasionally lingered here too, and, for sure, there’s something ruggedly fey and Tolkienesque about the place. Clouttie ribbons and assorted prayers and messages dangle from dozens of branches.
I once slept out under these beech trees, amid their fabled roots, in search of fabled dreams. It was far less romantic than it sounds – have you ever tried curling your body around exposed and knobbly roots, wrapped up in a sleeping bag? It was probably the most uncomfortable night of my life. So many of my romantic notions fail to live up to my romantic expectations, and I’m sure that this pilgrimage – and therefore this pilgrim – will get a few reality checks along the way.
I wonder how much sleeping out under stars I’m going to be doing? I even thought about buying a bivvy bag, but I’ve never bivvied before and there’s probably an art to it, and now’s probably not the time to learn. I guess that on warm, dry nights I can try sleeping out, and see how it goes. But fundamentally I’m an “English man’s tent is his castle” kinda guy. I feel stupidly at home in my tent.
I descend the chalky bank in order to proceed to the north-east quadrant, crossing over quiet little Green Street, which also goes by the name of Herepath – being the ancient track that leads up to the Ridgeway, which might well be Britain’s most ancient road.
I re-enter the circle, climb back up to the top of the bank, and resume my circumferential bimble. Some say the henge’s bank was once twice this height, and the inner ditch twice the depth. And the banks wouldn’t have been covered in this sheep-nibbled turf neither – they would have been brand, spanking, bright, chalky white. Imagine all this in its original ceremonial splendour, beaming with megalithic magnificence.
Alas, Keiller and his crew never got round to excavating this particular quadrant, so there are hardly any standing stones – but once I’ve clocked up another ninety chalky degrees along the top of the bank, I drop back into the centre and visit Avebury’s megalithic queenpin: the Cove.
Originally three large stones placed at right angles to form an open receptacle, surrounded by a circle of twenty-seven other stones, and aligned to receive the penetrating rays of the summer solstice sun, the Cove now consists of only two stones, one of which is reckoned to weigh a good hundred tons. This beast might even have been Avebury’s original sarsen feature. I spread eagle myself against the stone’s vertical face, and take a few long, deep breaths. If there’s a quietly beating heart at the centre of Avebury, this could well be the best place to feel its pulse.
Despite containing far more resurrected stones than the other two quadrants, the north-west and south-west quadrants don’t quite feel as raw and alive. But there were never meant to be four separate quadrants – nature don’t do right angles – and it’s well worth circumnavigating the whole henge, just for that circular sense of satisfaction. And, in my case, to also earn the excuse for another pint.
When I originally shared my plan to do a hitch-hiking pilgrimage around sacred places of the British Isles, my good friend Arch paused for a few seconds, and then added, “And pubs!” And we both got goose bumps, which sealed the matter. After all: no mud, no lotus. And I am rather partial to pubs and beer and whisky. So, sacred places and public houses it was, and sacred places and public houses it shall be.
It’s easy to criticise the Red Lion, but it does a good job of being a busy country pub at the heart of a popular tourist spot. Most other pubs would have buckled into characterlessness by now. It’s fun to wander round looking at all the pictures on the walls – including framed copies of some of Stukeley’s famed engravings – and the southern bar still retains a village pub snugness. And during winter months, when the fire is blazing, it’s a fine place to mosey away a couple of lazy, chatty hours, whilst your boots dry out and your bones warm up. And outside too – whenever the sun is doing its sunny-enough thing – is always an entertaining place to sit and linger. Especially on pagan high days and holy days, when motley pagan crews and psychedelically-infused undergraduate philosophy students converge for alcohol-fuelled debriefings, punctuated by occasional outbursts of heathen song.
The Red Lion is also rumoured to have several resident ghosts, including a ghostly horse-drawn carriage which is sometimes heard clattering along the outside cobbles, destined for who knows where and when.
I grab myself a pint of Avebury Well Water, find myself a place to sit, and begin to write up my pilgrimage journal. I’ve upgraded to the twenty-first century and bought myself this fold-up keyboard thing that bluetooths to my phone, so I open it up and get a-typing, whilst quietly wondering if I look like a vaguely cool and up-to-date middle-aged adventurer. I’ve also got a good ol’ notebook and pen, so I have both digital and analogue writing options at my disposal.
I’ve barely typed in five sentences when a man at the adjacent table strikes up a conversation – about hitch-hiking and living off-grid and wood burners and festies and people we know in common. I tell him a little bit about my recent breakdown, but I feel vulnerable and English-awkward, so don’t go into any detail. Also, calling it a recent breakdown ain’t necessarily true – for all I know, the gods and goddesses of dissolution aren’t done with me yet.
Before I know it, a chatty hour and a half has passed, and the sun has disappeared over the edge of the world, and I suddenly feel properly tired. And I’ve still got to find my way to Windmill Hill, which is probably a mile or so north-west. When we part, Martin gives me his card and invites me to swing by whenever I’m in his neck of the Devon woods. Two invitations in one day. Strangers can be really kind to strangers.
It’s slightly disorientating entering a pub by daylight and then exiting it in the dark. A bit like going to a matinee at the cinema during the winter. Maybe I’m just out of practice? Fortunately, once I leave the village, there’s a well-signed footpath to Windmill Hill. I follow the signs and path by the light of the starlit gloaming, and find myself walking through dusky dark meadows of thousands upon thousands of buttercups and dandelion clocks fit to burst. And then slowly she rises upon the horizon, a gentle swelling of a hill, with three visible mounds on top, and a Venus-tipped crescent moon setting above her.
Ah, my trusty tent: the Vaude Taurus. I bought it ten years ago for another big hitch, and it has served me very well. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve clocked up a couple of hundred nights in it – which works out at about a quid a night. Weighing in at 1.8kg, it’s not the lightest tent on the camping block, but you can squeeze two in, it’s good enough for festivals – providing you’re not expecting any athletic nookie – and, if pegged properly, it can survive quite a fierce night. Plus, I really dig its shape – it’s a bit of a sexy geodesic woodlouse kind of shape, if you can picture such a thing. And it goes up pretty quickly – in a couple of minutes if you really know what you’re doing. I know you’re not supposed to love material objects, but I am very fond of this tent. And putting it up never fails to give me an almost childish thrill. Not that we did any camping when we were kids. Mum and dad were not the camping types, although I do remember dad once attempting the Pennine Way with one of his mates, and returning weathered and defeated and stubbly.
I had intended to align the entrance of the tent with the east, with the fantasy of watching tomorrow’s sunrise from the comfort of my own bed, but when I push in the last peg and step back to admire my work, I realise it’s pitched plumb north to south. Oh well. I unzip the outer and the inner, lug in my two sacks, unfurl my mat, roll out my sleeping bag, inflate my inflatable pillow, and then step outside to say goodnight. Overhead, the Plough is already furrowing the night, and in the east another bright planet is rising. Jupiter, perhaps? I don’t know. I’m rubbish with stars and planets.
I find myself freestyling an end of day prayer of gratitude out loud: for my brother’s love and for motorcycling delight; for the hedgerow blossoms and for the blooming trees; for the bloke in the camping shop who served me; for the entertaining ex-RAF woman; for the laid-back sheep and the chip-thief jays; for all the ancestors who built Avebury; for William Stukeley and Alexander Keiller; for beer and pubs; for that bloke Martin; for Windmill Hill; for all my ancestors; for my tent and for the stars and for the day and days ahead. It feels really good to express gratitude out loud and outside, especially under the star-pricked canopy of the heavens. The moistening night air seems to amplify the metaphysical feedback loop. Ah, I feel pleasantly tired and pleasantly blessed, which sure ain’t a bad way to end any day. Tomorrow the pilgrimage begins.
I climb into my pilgrim tent, zip up both its doors, caterpillar down into my faithful sleeping bag, and soon disappear into Windmill hilltop sleeping bag slumber...
At the time of the night prayer
by Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi
At the time of the night prayer, as the sun slides down,
the route the senses walk on closes, the route to the invisible opens.
The angel of sleep then gathers and drives along the spirits;
just as the mountain keeper gathers his sheep on a slope.
And what amazing sights he offers to the descending sheep!
Cities with sparkling streets, hyacinth gardens, emerald pastures.
The spirit sees astounding beings, turtles turned to men,
men turned to angels, when sleep erases the banal.
I think one could say the spirit goes back to its old home;
it no longer remembers where it lives, and loses its fatigue.
It carries around in life so many griefs and loads
and trembles under their weight; they are going, all is well.
(translated by Robert Bly)
Ah, my trusty tent: the Vaude Taurus. I bought it ten years ago for another big hitch, and it has served me very well. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve clocked up a couple of hundred nights in it – which works out at about a quid a night. Weighing in at 1.8kg, it’s not the lightest tent on the camping block, but you can squeeze two in, it’s good enough for festivals – providing you’re not expecting any athletic nookie – and, if pegged properly, it can survive quite a fierce night. Plus, I really dig its shape – it’s a bit of a sexy geodesic woodlouse kind of shape, if you can picture such a thing. And it goes up pretty quickly – in a couple of minutes if you really know what you’re doing. I know you’re not supposed to love material objects, but I am very fond of this tent. And putting it up never fails to give me an almost childish thrill. Not that we did any camping when we were kids. Mum and dad were not the camping types, although I do remember dad once attempting the Pennine Way with one of his mates, and returning weathered and defeated and stubbly.
I had intended to align the entrance of the tent with the east, with the fantasy of watching tomorrow’s sunrise from the comfort of my own bed, but when I push in the last peg and step back to admire my work, I realise it’s pitched plumb north to south. Oh well. I unzip the outer and the inner, lug in my two sacks, unfurl my mat, roll out my sleeping bag, inflate my inflatable pillow, and then step outside to say goodnight. Overhead, the Plough is already furrowing the night, and in the east another bright planet is rising. Jupiter, perhaps? I don’t know. I’m rubbish with stars and planets.
I find myself freestyling an end of day prayer of gratitude out loud: for my brother’s love and for motorcycling delight; for the hedgerow blossoms and for the blooming trees; for the bloke in the camping shop who served me; for the entertaining ex-RAF woman; for the laid-back sheep and the chip-thief jays; for all the ancestors who built Avebury; for William Stukeley and Alexander Keiller; for beer and pubs; for that bloke Martin; for Windmill Hill; for all my ancestors; for my tent and for the stars and for the day and days ahead. It feels really good to express gratitude out loud and outside, especially under the star-pricked canopy of the heavens. The moistening night air seems to amplify the metaphysical feedback loop. Ah, I feel pleasantly tired and pleasantly blessed, which sure ain’t a bad way to end any day. Tomorrow the pilgrimage begins.
I climb into my pilgrim tent, zip up both its doors, caterpillar down into my faithful sleeping bag, and soon disappear into Windmill hilltop sleeping bag slumber...
At the time of the night prayer
by Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi
At the time of the night prayer, as the sun slides down,
the route the senses walk on closes, the route to the invisible opens.
The angel of sleep then gathers and drives along the spirits;
just as the mountain keeper gathers his sheep on a slope.
And what amazing sights he offers to the descending sheep!
Cities with sparkling streets, hyacinth gardens, emerald pastures.
The spirit sees astounding beings, turtles turned to men,
men turned to angels, when sleep erases the banal.
I think one could say the spirit goes back to its old home;
it no longer remembers where it lives, and loses its fatigue.
It carries around in life so many griefs and loads
and trembles under their weight; they are going, all is well.
(translated by Robert Bly)