Sweaty Pilgrim
being an account of
a hitch-hiking pilgrimage
around sacred places
& public houses
of the British Isles
Stephen Hancock
v 5.0
August 2023
a hitch-hiking pilgrimage
around sacred places
& public houses
of the British Isles
Stephen Hancock
v 5.0
August 2023
PIG & INK
MMXXIII
MMXXIII
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Several summers ago I undertook a ten-week hitching and camping pilgrimage around the British Isles - visiting both holy places and public houses. After several attempts at writing it up, and with a quarter of a million words on the creative compost heap, I have finally found a narrative structure and writing voice I'm happy with. Here is a taster.
Oh yeah, I’ll probably be using the verb “bimble” quite a lot. But this will be rectified at a later date. Occasionally there’s method in my madness.
Enjoy.
September 2023
P.S. If you want to support me on my current writing pilgrimage, then please consider advance purchasing a copy of the book: https://www.pigandink.com/village-funding.html
P.S. If you want to support me on my current writing pilgrimage, then please consider advance purchasing a copy of the book: https://www.pigandink.com/village-funding.html
The cure for anything is salt water:
sweat, tears or the sea.
Isak Dinesen
(Isak Dinesen was one of the pen names of Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke)
No mud, no lotus
Everyone knows we need to have mud for lotuses to grow.
The mud doesn’t smell so good, but the lotus flower smells very good.
If you don’t have mud, the lotus won’t manifest.
You can’t grow lotus flowers on marble.
Without mud, there can be no lotus.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering
•
At the foot of a waterfall
on the Cape Peninsular
I told Archie of my plans
to go on a hitch-hiking pilgrimage
around some of Britain’s
sacred sites and holy places
Archie paused for a moment
and then simply added:
“And pubs!”
We both grinned in agreement
and a cool misty waterfall breeze
passed between us
and through us
and on its merry way
And then Archie proceeded to climb the waterfall
(because that’s the sort of thing that Archie does)
•
And thus the seed for this journey was planted:
A hitch-hiking pilgrimage
around sacred places
and public houses
of the British Isles
•
The sacred and the profane
The temple and the pub
Beer and spirits and Spirit
The lotus and the mud
Everyone knows we need to have mud for lotuses to grow.
The mud doesn’t smell so good, but the lotus flower smells very good.
If you don’t have mud, the lotus won’t manifest.
You can’t grow lotus flowers on marble.
Without mud, there can be no lotus.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering
•
At the foot of a waterfall
on the Cape Peninsular
I told Archie of my plans
to go on a hitch-hiking pilgrimage
around some of Britain’s
sacred sites and holy places
Archie paused for a moment
and then simply added:
“And pubs!”
We both grinned in agreement
and a cool misty waterfall breeze
passed between us
and through us
and on its merry way
And then Archie proceeded to climb the waterfall
(because that’s the sort of thing that Archie does)
•
And thus the seed for this journey was planted:
A hitch-hiking pilgrimage
around sacred places
and public houses
of the British Isles
•
The sacred and the profane
The temple and the pub
Beer and spirits and Spirit
The lotus and the mud
May
All journeys have secret destinations
of which the traveller is unaware.
Martin Büber
Thursday 17th May
•
Beckenham – Avebury – Windmill Hill
All journeys have secret destinations
of which the traveller is unaware.
Martin Büber
Thursday 17th May
•
Beckenham – Avebury – Windmill Hill
It’s one of those exquisitely fresh and sunny May mid-mornings – with more than a hint of summer in the edible blue sky – and I’m sitting on the back of my brother’s mid-life Harley as we rumble through the streets of Beckenham, bound south for the never-ending charms of the M25. The sun’s beaming directly into my be-goggled eyes, and I can feel eve-of-pilgrimage excitement percolating through my hobo veins and brain. It’s several years since I was last on the back of this beast of a bike – we did a ten-day road trip together through Spain and Morocco not long after mum died – and I’d forgotten what a joy it is to be flying along on two wheels rather than scuttling about on four. Such a delicious brew of freedom and vulnerability and power. Such an elemental, multi-sensory, free-wheeling form of joy.
My brother has a special little nod of camaraderie reserved for any fellow biker. It’s like being part of a revolutionary underground movement that somehow manages to travel through enemy territory in broad daylight.
Places 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 suburbs, snaking along a surprisingly rural back route, serenaded by May’s symphony of jubilant green, travelling through seams of warm air and pockets of cold air, occasionally ambushed by wafts of hawthorn’s sweet and spunky scent. My brother’s 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.
And as we circumnavigate the ouroboric London Orbital I find myself daydreaming about our teenage years together, and that time he let sixteen-year-old me take his brand new two-fifty for my first ever solo motorbike-spin. I told mum and dad that I was going out for a cycle ride, but ditched my bike at the bottom of the hill, and along he came a few minutes later, spare helmet on his arm, and we rode down to the old disused airfield base which still possessed a relatively intact wartime runway.
My brother has a special little nod of camaraderie reserved for any fellow biker. It’s like being part of a revolutionary underground movement that somehow manages to travel through enemy territory in broad daylight.
Places 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 suburbs, snaking along a surprisingly rural back route, serenaded by May’s symphony of jubilant green, travelling through seams of warm air and pockets of cold air, occasionally ambushed by wafts of hawthorn’s sweet and spunky scent. My brother’s 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.
And as we circumnavigate the ouroboric London Orbital I find myself daydreaming about our teenage years together, and that time he let sixteen-year-old me take his brand new two-fifty for my first ever solo motorbike-spin. I told mum and dad that I was going out for a cycle ride, but ditched my bike at the bottom of the hill, and along he came a few minutes later, spare helmet on his arm, and we rode down to the old disused airfield base which still possessed a relatively intact wartime runway.
I remember hurtling
down the middle of the runway
pushing the needle
nearer and nearer
the magic
hundred
mark
and
just as I reached my first ever teenage ton
my jacket sleeves suddenly ballooned
with an equal and opposite
hundred-miles-per-hour reaction
bloating me into the Michelin Man
and temporarily lifting my arse
off the seat
Thank God I was already holding on for dear life…
down the middle of the runway
pushing the needle
nearer and nearer
the magic
hundred
mark
and
just as I reached my first ever teenage ton
my jacket sleeves suddenly ballooned
with an equal and opposite
hundred-miles-per-hour reaction
bloating me into the Michelin Man
and temporarily lifting my arse
off the seat
Thank God I was already holding on for dear life…
Me and my brother led bizarrely parallel lives as teenagers: he went to state school, I went to boarding school; he was a bit of a rebel, I was a bit of a swot; then I became an anarchist-pacifist and he became a cop. But every now and then he’d take some time out to play the older brother card in spades. Just like he’s doing today.
Along arterial motorways and vascular A-roads we ride, occasionally passing through fecund tunnels of over-arching trees, then through the capillaries of Marlborough town – with its oh-so-familiar public schoolboys and their oh-so-familiar privileged public schoolboy stride.
We turn right onto the West Kennet Avenue, pass between two guardian stones, overtake a woman on a mobility scooter who’s hurtling along at an impressive rate of knots, and then for a few hundred yards we sail alongside the ancient ceremonial avenue of paired standing stones. Ah! You can sense Avebury approaching before you reach it, just like you can sense the sea just over the rise before you actually glimpse it. And then there she blows! The southern entrance to possibly the largest megalithic stone circle in the whole wide world.
We pass through the giant bank and over the inner ditch of Avebury’s outer henge, which encircles the large stone circle that once encircled two inner stone circles, which themselves once encircled – so the old man in the old Antiques Shop once told me – a megalithic phallus and a megalithic vulva. Penetrating circles within circles within circles, we coast into the car park of the Red Lion which proudly – and quite rightly – proclaims itself to be “the only pub in the world inside a stone circle.”
Having dis-goggled and un-helmeted and stretched my pillion limbs, I go inside the handsomely-thatched pub to order some beer and lunch.
•
When I re-emerge, pints in hands, my brother’s already chatting with the woman we passed riding her mobility scooter like the wind. Ex-RAF officer, adventurer, and well-versed raconteur, she keeps us suitably entertained as we dawdle our way through both beer and grub. Before she leaves, she gives me her address and says I’m always welcome to stay upon my return. I promise to send her the occasional postcard from along my pilgrim way.
Then my brother kits up, mounts his steed, and thunders off the premises and back to London for a business meeting – some of us have proper work to do, oh carefree wandering poet – and suddenly I’m all alone. Sitting outside the Red Lion in the middle of Avebury, in the middle of ancient Britain, in the middle of a very peachy day indeed, bulging pilgrim rucksack and pilgrim daypack by my side.
Two brazen jackdaws are purloining leftover chips from leftover plates, cars and lorries and buses and motorbikes are grumbling by, and just the other side of the busy road five mothers with five babies in five buggies are strolling towards one of the larger inner stones, in the shade of which several plump neo-pagan ewes and lambs are happily asnooze.
Along arterial motorways and vascular A-roads we ride, occasionally passing through fecund tunnels of over-arching trees, then through the capillaries of Marlborough town – with its oh-so-familiar public schoolboys and their oh-so-familiar privileged public schoolboy stride.
We turn right onto the West Kennet Avenue, pass between two guardian stones, overtake a woman on a mobility scooter who’s hurtling along at an impressive rate of knots, and then for a few hundred yards we sail alongside the ancient ceremonial avenue of paired standing stones. Ah! You can sense Avebury approaching before you reach it, just like you can sense the sea just over the rise before you actually glimpse it. And then there she blows! The southern entrance to possibly the largest megalithic stone circle in the whole wide world.
We pass through the giant bank and over the inner ditch of Avebury’s outer henge, which encircles the large stone circle that once encircled two inner stone circles, which themselves once encircled – so the old man in the old Antiques Shop once told me – a megalithic phallus and a megalithic vulva. Penetrating circles within circles within circles, we coast into the car park of the Red Lion which proudly – and quite rightly – proclaims itself to be “the only pub in the world inside a stone circle.”
Having dis-goggled and un-helmeted and stretched my pillion limbs, I go inside the handsomely-thatched pub to order some beer and lunch.
•
When I re-emerge, pints in hands, my brother’s already chatting with the woman we passed riding her mobility scooter like the wind. Ex-RAF officer, adventurer, and well-versed raconteur, she keeps us suitably entertained as we dawdle our way through both beer and grub. Before she leaves, she gives me her address and says I’m always welcome to stay upon my return. I promise to send her the occasional postcard from along my pilgrim way.
Then my brother kits up, mounts his steed, and thunders off the premises and back to London for a business meeting – some of us have proper work to do, oh carefree wandering poet – and suddenly I’m all alone. Sitting outside the Red Lion in the middle of Avebury, in the middle of ancient Britain, in the middle of a very peachy day indeed, bulging pilgrim rucksack and pilgrim daypack by my side.
Two brazen jackdaws are purloining leftover chips from leftover plates, cars and lorries and buses and motorbikes are grumbling by, and just the other side of the busy road five mothers with five babies in five buggies are strolling towards one of the larger inner stones, in the shade of which several plump neo-pagan ewes and lambs are happily asnooze.
Ah
something about Avebury feels refreshingly unhinged
from the ticking cogs and tightly coiled springs
of Greenwich Mean Time
Welcome, oh pilgrim
to a far more patient and
generous time zone:
Megalithic Stone Time
attuned to the sun and the moon and the stars
and the land and the seasons and the centuries
rather than bound to the seconds
and the minutes and the hours
something about Avebury feels refreshingly unhinged
from the ticking cogs and tightly coiled springs
of Greenwich Mean Time
Welcome, oh pilgrim
to a far more patient and
generous time zone:
Megalithic Stone Time
attuned to the sun and the moon and the stars
and the land and the seasons and the centuries
rather than bound to the seconds
and the minutes and the hours
I reckon it’s going to take a few days, though, for me to properly unplug from the tick-tock-tail-chasing-hurly-burly of civilisation, and to reinstall my old hobo operating system. It’s been quite a while since I was last on the road. I hitched to Berlin last summer, and to the Hebrides the summer before that, but that’s about it. One hitch a year. My hitching thumb definitely feels the rustiest it’s ever felt.
Technically – in my DIY pilgrim books, anyway – this pilgrimage doesn’t begin until tomorrow. So this is base camp time. Time to acclimatise. Test my out my kit. Prepare my heart and soul. Tomorrow we begin the ascent.
•
Well, if you’re going to come along on this journey with me, then I might as well get this out in the open now rather than later: despite thirty-five years of hitching and travelling and camping, I am still utterly shite at packing anywhere near light.
Herewith the evidence...
Technically – in my DIY pilgrim books, anyway – this pilgrimage doesn’t begin until tomorrow. So this is base camp time. Time to acclimatise. Test my out my kit. Prepare my heart and soul. Tomorrow we begin the ascent.
•
Well, if you’re going to come along on this journey with me, then I might as well get this out in the open now rather than later: despite thirty-five years of hitching and travelling and camping, I am still utterly shite at packing anywhere near light.
Herewith the evidence...
Packed into my beloved Osprey rucksack:
Vaude Taurus Ultralite tent
two-season sleeping bag & silk sleeping bag liner
Thermarest
waterproof stuff sack
inflatable pillow
light raincoat
waterproof trousers
light fleece jacket
one flannel shirt
one smart shirt
three T-shirts
pair of shorts
four pairs of boxer shorts
three handkerchiefs
three pairs of socks
swimming trunks
sawn-off pyjama bottoms
one pink fluorescent tabard
sleeping beanie
mozzie hat & light cotton gloves
towel & kikoi
tea towel & pillow case
gas stove & two light pans
plastic fork-knife & small wooden spoon
Opinel knife
insulated metal cup
two one-and-a-half-litre water bottles (currently empty)
fold-up shit-pit-digging trowel
one well-travelled frisbee
Packed into my beloved daypack:
The Map of Possibilities
a virgin journal
small first aid kit
small sewing kit
bog roll
hip flask of single malt
head torch
travelling umbrella
A cotton bag containing:
recent food purchases
plastic container full of DIY hobo muesli
a supply of herbal tea bags
small plastic bottle of olive oil
A bureaucratic pouch containing:
the “Soul Food” poetry collection by Bloodaxe Books
print-outs of poems friends sent me for the journey
passport
An electrical bag containing:
camera charger, phone charger & headphones
A wash bag containing:
toothbrush, toothpaste, small bottle of shampoo
nail scissors, antiseptic cream
plastic tick remover
bottles of lavender, tea-tree & rose
A pencil case containing:
fountain pen & bottle of purple ink
spare marker pen, spare roller ball pen, pencil
small roll of gaffer tape, four purple plastic pegs
book of stamps, silver darning needle
plastic bottle opener & corkscrew
little Swiss Army knife (complete with tweezers)
Packed into my beloved bum bag:
phone
camera
wallet
address book
little notebook
roller ball pen & marker pen
baccie, hash, lighter & skins
compass
one copper hare (called Mellangel)
Not forgetting:
the clothes & boots I’m sitting down in
and last
but by no means least:
the ever-faithful
and ever-forgiving
sun-faded-blue-straw donkey hat
that currently bedecks my balding bonce
Vaude Taurus Ultralite tent
two-season sleeping bag & silk sleeping bag liner
Thermarest
waterproof stuff sack
inflatable pillow
light raincoat
waterproof trousers
light fleece jacket
one flannel shirt
one smart shirt
three T-shirts
pair of shorts
four pairs of boxer shorts
three handkerchiefs
three pairs of socks
swimming trunks
sawn-off pyjama bottoms
one pink fluorescent tabard
sleeping beanie
mozzie hat & light cotton gloves
towel & kikoi
tea towel & pillow case
gas stove & two light pans
plastic fork-knife & small wooden spoon
Opinel knife
insulated metal cup
two one-and-a-half-litre water bottles (currently empty)
fold-up shit-pit-digging trowel
one well-travelled frisbee
Packed into my beloved daypack:
The Map of Possibilities
a virgin journal
small first aid kit
small sewing kit
bog roll
hip flask of single malt
head torch
travelling umbrella
A cotton bag containing:
recent food purchases
plastic container full of DIY hobo muesli
a supply of herbal tea bags
small plastic bottle of olive oil
A bureaucratic pouch containing:
the “Soul Food” poetry collection by Bloodaxe Books
print-outs of poems friends sent me for the journey
passport
An electrical bag containing:
camera charger, phone charger & headphones
A wash bag containing:
toothbrush, toothpaste, small bottle of shampoo
nail scissors, antiseptic cream
plastic tick remover
bottles of lavender, tea-tree & rose
A pencil case containing:
fountain pen & bottle of purple ink
spare marker pen, spare roller ball pen, pencil
small roll of gaffer tape, four purple plastic pegs
book of stamps, silver darning needle
plastic bottle opener & corkscrew
little Swiss Army knife (complete with tweezers)
Packed into my beloved bum bag:
phone
camera
wallet
address book
little notebook
roller ball pen & marker pen
baccie, hash, lighter & skins
compass
one copper hare (called Mellangel)
Not forgetting:
the clothes & boots I’m sitting down in
and last
but by no means least:
the ever-faithful
and ever-forgiving
sun-faded-blue-straw donkey hat
that currently bedecks my balding bonce
Q.E.D.
Oh, it feels such an impossible riddle to prise practicality and comfort and aesthetics and weight and self-entertainment apart. For example, that glass bottle of purple ink probably weighs ten times the weight of a plastic bottle. But drawing up ink from glass, and then gently wiping the back of the nib on the inside of the rim, and then screwing the lid back onto the bottle provides perhaps a hundred times the pleasure.
I guess pilgrim time – and pilgrim spine – will eventually tell me what’s vital to my nomadic existence, and what’s not. But I’m already beginning to have doubts about that fold-up umbrella. Under precisely what circumstances am I going to need to unfurl a small umbrella? I go back inside the pub to order another passable pint of Well Water.
In the winter months, especially on pagan high days and holy days, when the pub fire is broadcasting its welcome warmth, then the main bar of the Red Lion is a fine place to huddle and banter with assorted pagan munters and punters, but overall it’s more of a passing tourists’ pub than an ale-swilling purists’ pub. The best bit inside is probably the village well – dating from around 1600 – now situated in one of the dining areas. “86ft DEEP AND BELIEVED TO BE THE LAST RESTING PLACE OF AT LEAST ONE UNFORTUNATE VILLAGER,” reads the surrounding inscription. I gaze down through the well’s protective sheet of perspex, down through the well-watered foliage below, but still can’t make out the bottom. You’re probably not going to survive that sort of fall. Or was it a push? And did anyone hear the screams? And are there still human bones down there, or was the body hauled up and out? And did they carry on drawing water from the well? And is this place, perhaps, still a little haunted?
“Only spooky thing I’ve heard of,” says the barmaid, pulling my pint, “is a horse and carriage that sometimes clatters over the cobblestones at night. Never heard it myself, but the chef says he has. Several times.” She lowers her voice: “And the chef is never mistaken.”
Back outside in the sunshine, I flex the spine of my virgin journal, roll and light a contemplative ciggie, and gaze a while towards the horizon of both space and time. A whole unwritten summer unfurls before me. A whole summer on the road. Such freedom feels both dizzying and daunting. I open the bottle of purple ink and wet my nib.
Whilst I’m staring at my blank journal page, the man at the next table strikes up conversation, and we’re soon lost in pub chat about hitch-hiking and camping and living off grid and the state of the world and the beauty of the British Isles. He makes and installs wood burners, lives in Devon in a caravan on disputed land, does production work at the odd festie, and we even know a few festie folk in common. We while away an hour and another pint, and when he leaves he gives me his business card and invites me to swing by whenever I’m in his neck of the Devon woods. I haven’t been in Avebury two hours, and already two complete strangers have given me their addresses. How lovely is that?
I begin writing up the day’s proceedings, casting my body-mind back to this morning’s thrilling ride. Thanks, bro.
•
Oh, it feels such an impossible riddle to prise practicality and comfort and aesthetics and weight and self-entertainment apart. For example, that glass bottle of purple ink probably weighs ten times the weight of a plastic bottle. But drawing up ink from glass, and then gently wiping the back of the nib on the inside of the rim, and then screwing the lid back onto the bottle provides perhaps a hundred times the pleasure.
I guess pilgrim time – and pilgrim spine – will eventually tell me what’s vital to my nomadic existence, and what’s not. But I’m already beginning to have doubts about that fold-up umbrella. Under precisely what circumstances am I going to need to unfurl a small umbrella? I go back inside the pub to order another passable pint of Well Water.
In the winter months, especially on pagan high days and holy days, when the pub fire is broadcasting its welcome warmth, then the main bar of the Red Lion is a fine place to huddle and banter with assorted pagan munters and punters, but overall it’s more of a passing tourists’ pub than an ale-swilling purists’ pub. The best bit inside is probably the village well – dating from around 1600 – now situated in one of the dining areas. “86ft DEEP AND BELIEVED TO BE THE LAST RESTING PLACE OF AT LEAST ONE UNFORTUNATE VILLAGER,” reads the surrounding inscription. I gaze down through the well’s protective sheet of perspex, down through the well-watered foliage below, but still can’t make out the bottom. You’re probably not going to survive that sort of fall. Or was it a push? And did anyone hear the screams? And are there still human bones down there, or was the body hauled up and out? And did they carry on drawing water from the well? And is this place, perhaps, still a little haunted?
“Only spooky thing I’ve heard of,” says the barmaid, pulling my pint, “is a horse and carriage that sometimes clatters over the cobblestones at night. Never heard it myself, but the chef says he has. Several times.” She lowers her voice: “And the chef is never mistaken.”
Back outside in the sunshine, I flex the spine of my virgin journal, roll and light a contemplative ciggie, and gaze a while towards the horizon of both space and time. A whole unwritten summer unfurls before me. A whole summer on the road. Such freedom feels both dizzying and daunting. I open the bottle of purple ink and wet my nib.
Whilst I’m staring at my blank journal page, the man at the next table strikes up conversation, and we’re soon lost in pub chat about hitch-hiking and camping and living off grid and the state of the world and the beauty of the British Isles. He makes and installs wood burners, lives in Devon in a caravan on disputed land, does production work at the odd festie, and we even know a few festie folk in common. We while away an hour and another pint, and when he leaves he gives me his business card and invites me to swing by whenever I’m in his neck of the Devon woods. I haven’t been in Avebury two hours, and already two complete strangers have given me their addresses. How lovely is that?
I begin writing up the day’s proceedings, casting my body-mind back to this morning’s thrilling ride. Thanks, bro.
•
Much later
as dusky evening cross-fades into blue-black night
I follow a path through dark meadows overflowing with
thousands upon thousands of buttercups
and dandelion clocks fit to burst
and then
slowly she rises upon the horizon
a gentle swelling of land
with three visible mounds on top
and a Venus-tipped crescent moon
setting directly above her:
Windmill Hill
as dusky evening cross-fades into blue-black night
I follow a path through dark meadows overflowing with
thousands upon thousands of buttercups
and dandelion clocks fit to burst
and then
slowly she rises upon the horizon
a gentle swelling of land
with three visible mounds on top
and a Venus-tipped crescent moon
setting directly above her:
Windmill Hill
I pitch my tent atop one of the mounds, improvise some barefoot evening prayers of gratitude, and then raise my hip flask of single malt to the slender, waxing moon.
Whisky gently glugs through the air and spills into the ground. “To the ancestors!”
Dad used to baulk at this alcoholic ceremony of mine. “That’s a waste of good whisky, Stevie-boy,” he’d say.
“I really hope you appreciate it now, dad,” I whisper, pouring him an extra glug.
Then I neck a slug of the old fire water myself and follow its course down my gullet until it hits my stomach and explodes into a fiery whisky-bloom, which rapidly radiates throughout my body and being and brain. Overhead The Plough is now properly bright, and another planet is rising in the east. Jupiter, perhaps?
For my final night cap, I retrieve “Soul Food” from the bureaucratic pouch. I only got my mitts on this Bloodaxe collection last week, but I instantly knew that it was going to be my poetic travelling companion. It looks like it’s rammed with goodies. I put my head-torch on, and flick through the book’s suddenly-brilliant pages. “Prayer” by Carolyn Forché catches my eye...
Whisky gently glugs through the air and spills into the ground. “To the ancestors!”
Dad used to baulk at this alcoholic ceremony of mine. “That’s a waste of good whisky, Stevie-boy,” he’d say.
“I really hope you appreciate it now, dad,” I whisper, pouring him an extra glug.
Then I neck a slug of the old fire water myself and follow its course down my gullet until it hits my stomach and explodes into a fiery whisky-bloom, which rapidly radiates throughout my body and being and brain. Overhead The Plough is now properly bright, and another planet is rising in the east. Jupiter, perhaps?
For my final night cap, I retrieve “Soul Food” from the bureaucratic pouch. I only got my mitts on this Bloodaxe collection last week, but I instantly knew that it was going to be my poetic travelling companion. It looks like it’s rammed with goodies. I put my head-torch on, and flick through the book’s suddenly-brilliant pages. “Prayer” by Carolyn Forché catches my eye...
Prayer
by Carolyn Forché
Begin again among the poorest, moments off, in another time and place.
Belongings gathered in the last hour, visible invisible:
Tin spoon, teacup, tremble of tray, carpet hanging from sorrow’s balcony.
Say goodbye to everything. With a wave of your hand, gesture to all you
have known.
Begin with bread torn from bread, beans given to the hungriest, a carcass
of flies.
Take the polished stillness from a locked church, prayer notes left
between stones.
Answer them and hoist in your net voices from the troubled hours.
Sleep only when the least among them sleeps, and then only until the
birds.
Make the flatbed truck your time and place. Make the least daily wage
your value.
Language will rise then like language from the mouth of a still river. No
one’s mouth.
Bring night to your imaginings. Bring the darkest passage of your holy
book.
by Carolyn Forché
Begin again among the poorest, moments off, in another time and place.
Belongings gathered in the last hour, visible invisible:
Tin spoon, teacup, tremble of tray, carpet hanging from sorrow’s balcony.
Say goodbye to everything. With a wave of your hand, gesture to all you
have known.
Begin with bread torn from bread, beans given to the hungriest, a carcass
of flies.
Take the polished stillness from a locked church, prayer notes left
between stones.
Answer them and hoist in your net voices from the troubled hours.
Sleep only when the least among them sleeps, and then only until the
birds.
Make the flatbed truck your time and place. Make the least daily wage
your value.
Language will rise then like language from the mouth of a still river. No
one’s mouth.
Bring night to your imaginings. Bring the darkest passage of your holy
book.
Beautiful: Bring the darkest passage of your holy book...
Ah, I suddenly feel pleasantly knackered, and quietly blessed to boot, which sure ain’t a bad way to end any day. I climb inside my faithful tent, zip shut both its doors, caterpillar down into my sleeping bag lover, and soon dissolve into Windmill Hilltop slumber…
Ah, I suddenly feel pleasantly knackered, and quietly blessed to boot, which sure ain’t a bad way to end any day. I climb inside my faithful tent, zip shut both its doors, caterpillar down into my sleeping bag lover, and soon dissolve into Windmill Hilltop slumber…
Friday 18th May
•
Windmill Hill – St James’ Church – Silbury Hill – West Kennet Long Barrow
The Sanctuary – Avebury – Stanton Drew
•
Windmill Hill – St James’ Church – Silbury Hill – West Kennet Long Barrow
The Sanctuary – Avebury – Stanton Drew
I wake bathed in an unusual and puzzling sense of peace. It takes me a snoozy while of sleeping-bagged introspection to trace this quiet peacefulness back to its source: last night both my grandads appeared in a dream. All I can recall is the three of us just sitting together, in a long yet easy silence. A golden silence.
Alec and Harold – two kind, stoical, gentle-hearted men. They got on well together, really enjoyed one another’s company. So special to spend some time with both of them in the dreamtime world. Maybe the whisky called them forth? But I don’t remember either of them being whisky men. Alec – mum’s dad – however, was a dedicated beer-swiller in his latter years. There was always at least one yeasty demi-john of Boots homebrew a-blooping in the airing cupboard of his Dewsbury home. Bloop. Bloop.
Ah, grandfather energy. And a sort of grandfatherly blessing. I can feel my heart still smiling, and yet it’s always a bit confusing when the dead appear in dreams. You get them back – and it sometimes feels so real – and then you lose them again. Sorrow and joy woven fine.
I extricate myself from both sleeping bag and tent, scoff some hobo-muesli, and wash it down with a pan of freshly-brewed herbal tea. The breakfast view from up here is exquisite: the Ridgeway to the east; Avebury to the south, tucked into a plush, tree-ringed hollow; and then a tad further south, silhouetted against a bright yellow field of freshly-flowering rape, the wonderful and mysterious Silbury Hill.
I take my vorpal fold-up shit-pit-digging trowel in hand, dawdle barefoot to some nearby Tumtum woods, and squat a while in uffish thought.
How did pilgrims of yore go about their itinerant crapping? What did they wipe their pilgrim arses with? Dew-speckled moss? Particular leaves – arsewort, perhaps? Nimbly-manoeuvred zen-twigs? Smooth, excavatory river stones? Or did they just spread their pilgrim buttocks far and wide and hope for a clean and puritan break?
No scatology, no eschatology?
•
It takes an age to strike camp. It always does.
•
Returning to Avebury along a satisfyingly-deep rutted old farm track, flanked by hawthorn blossoms so bold yet so tender, I decide to swing by the village church, which I discover is dedicated to Saint James. Pinned to the handsomely-riveted and well-worn door is the sweetest of calligraphic notices:
Alec and Harold – two kind, stoical, gentle-hearted men. They got on well together, really enjoyed one another’s company. So special to spend some time with both of them in the dreamtime world. Maybe the whisky called them forth? But I don’t remember either of them being whisky men. Alec – mum’s dad – however, was a dedicated beer-swiller in his latter years. There was always at least one yeasty demi-john of Boots homebrew a-blooping in the airing cupboard of his Dewsbury home. Bloop. Bloop.
Ah, grandfather energy. And a sort of grandfatherly blessing. I can feel my heart still smiling, and yet it’s always a bit confusing when the dead appear in dreams. You get them back – and it sometimes feels so real – and then you lose them again. Sorrow and joy woven fine.
I extricate myself from both sleeping bag and tent, scoff some hobo-muesli, and wash it down with a pan of freshly-brewed herbal tea. The breakfast view from up here is exquisite: the Ridgeway to the east; Avebury to the south, tucked into a plush, tree-ringed hollow; and then a tad further south, silhouetted against a bright yellow field of freshly-flowering rape, the wonderful and mysterious Silbury Hill.
I take my vorpal fold-up shit-pit-digging trowel in hand, dawdle barefoot to some nearby Tumtum woods, and squat a while in uffish thought.
How did pilgrims of yore go about their itinerant crapping? What did they wipe their pilgrim arses with? Dew-speckled moss? Particular leaves – arsewort, perhaps? Nimbly-manoeuvred zen-twigs? Smooth, excavatory river stones? Or did they just spread their pilgrim buttocks far and wide and hope for a clean and puritan break?
No scatology, no eschatology?
•
It takes an age to strike camp. It always does.
•
Returning to Avebury along a satisfyingly-deep rutted old farm track, flanked by hawthorn blossoms so bold yet so tender, I decide to swing by the village church, which I discover is dedicated to Saint James. Pinned to the handsomely-riveted and well-worn door is the sweetest of calligraphic notices:
WELCOME all Pilgrims
All faiths and none
from near or far
We pray you find Peace here
We pray you find God’s love here
We hope you will rest awhile
Please know
you are welcome
HOME
All faiths and none
from near or far
We pray you find Peace here
We pray you find God’s love here
We hope you will rest awhile
Please know
you are welcome
HOME
I really enjoy clicking open the latches of ancient country church doors. You never know what you’re going to find. I remove my donkey hat, enter as quietly as I can, and stand at the back, breathing it all in.
Separating the chancel from the nave is a giant wooden screen, ornately carved and painted with blues and reds and greens and golds, and guarded by ten gilded, haloed saints. As far as I know, you don’t get many chancel screens in rural Anglican churches. I can’t recall ever seeing one as bold and bright as this.
I pass between the saints and through the screen, and plonk myself down in one of the choir seats. And I suddenly find myself smiling: rural churches don’t just feel so familiar, they smell so familiar too. It’s as if the God of my Lincolnshire childhood still lives in here, somewhat distant and yet somehow near – that stern but loving Father God who smells of wood polish and brass polish and stone-infused Victorian dusty dampness, all woven through with whatever recent floral bouquets the flower ladies of the village have recently arranged.
And now, out of nowhere, I sense an exquisite sadness descending through my heart. As if part of me still misses that old-school parental God and the close relationship we once enjoyed. That sense of being able to communicate with a separate God who was listening and concerned – that was a big part of my childhood and early adulthood. It would be OK if by now I was now an established mystic, rooted in the knowledge that everything and everyone is divine. But I’m not.
I close my eyes and try to pray, but I realise that I no longer know what prayer is. Who or what could possibly be listening?
What was that line from last night’s poem? Language will rise then like language from the mouth of a still river. No one’s mouth.
On a whim, I find myself opening both mouth and throat and allowing a quiet, grainy “Ahhhhhhh” to transmit these wordless longings and confusion. It feels like an honest-enough form of prayer. And as I listen to my voice growing in volume, it suddenly locks onto the harmonics of the surrounding wood and space and stone.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
After a few lungfuls of noise, I just sit within the church’s well-tempered silence, and allow feelings and memories and echoes to flow through me.
•
When we were kids, mum was a convinced – and, at the time, quite pentecostal – Christian, whereas dad was a convinced atheist rationalist scientist. Which, nominally, meant that me and my brother were free to choose our beliefs. What this religious freedom meant in practice though, was that most Sunday mornings I was faced with the following choice: whether to dress in my Sunday best and join mum in trudging up to the village church, or to enjoy a lie-in and then dawdle down to the kitchen, where dad would be frying up bacon for his infamous Sunday morning bacon sarnies.
It was a terrible spiritual dilemma for a young boy to have to make on a weekly basis: whether to sit in church feeling pious but slightly bored, or to stay at home feeling bacon-happy but slightly guilty.
Why, oh why, does the Devil have all the good sandwiches?
•
The click of the church door disturbs my reverie. I emerge from behind the chancel screen to see two long-haired hippies scanning the walls of the bell tower, beckoning one another whenever they discover whatever it is they’re looking for. Intrigued, I approach, and as I near I realise they’re not hippies at all, but a pair of metal heads – with well-groomed hair, studded denim jackets and all. “What are you looking for?”
“Pilgrim graffiti,” replies the one.
“This one says fourteen eleven!” replies the other. “Six hundred years!”
I scan the walls: 1411, 1591, 1600, 1717; various sets of initials; and quite a few well-executed circles, too.
“Should have brought a hammer and chisel,” says the one.
“Next time,” says the other.
They both nod homeopathically in my direction, before making a swift exit. I guess metal heads can only hold a certain amount of heavy metal oxygen in their lungs before having to resurface from the depths of the alien Christian sea.
I spend a while perusing the well-presented information panels at the back of the church, which include pictures of the imagined evolution of the church: from a simple wattle and daub creation in the Saxon eighth century, replaced by an Anglo-Saxon stone nave and squat chancel in tenth century, through its Norman and medieval and finally Victorian modernisations.
To my delight, the panels also inform me that this church was once a well-used departure point for pilgrims on their way to Bristol’s port, and then by ship to the continent for pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela. Santiago – Saint James. And the church at nearby Winterbourne Monkton was known as a “slipper church”, where pilgrims would remove their footwear in order to walk barefoot from there to here, where they would receive an official blessing for their pilgrimage ahead.
This information suddenly changes my whole relationship with the church. Seems I’ve pilgrim-stumbled into quite the right pre-pilgrimage Christian place.
•
In one of the village shops I buy a couple of dozen postcards to send to friends, and two wonderful facsimiles of etchings by the eighteenth century antiquarian and godfather of stone botherers, the Reverend William Stukeley.
Outside the Red Lion, mug of strong black coffee steaming before me, I unroll, weigh down, and peruse both etchings.
The first is entitled “The Groundplot of the British Temple now the town of Aubury Wilts”, and is a crow’s eye view of Avebury as it stood in 1724 – henge and houses and fields and all – including details of stones standing, stones fallen, and stones recently removed:
Separating the chancel from the nave is a giant wooden screen, ornately carved and painted with blues and reds and greens and golds, and guarded by ten gilded, haloed saints. As far as I know, you don’t get many chancel screens in rural Anglican churches. I can’t recall ever seeing one as bold and bright as this.
I pass between the saints and through the screen, and plonk myself down in one of the choir seats. And I suddenly find myself smiling: rural churches don’t just feel so familiar, they smell so familiar too. It’s as if the God of my Lincolnshire childhood still lives in here, somewhat distant and yet somehow near – that stern but loving Father God who smells of wood polish and brass polish and stone-infused Victorian dusty dampness, all woven through with whatever recent floral bouquets the flower ladies of the village have recently arranged.
And now, out of nowhere, I sense an exquisite sadness descending through my heart. As if part of me still misses that old-school parental God and the close relationship we once enjoyed. That sense of being able to communicate with a separate God who was listening and concerned – that was a big part of my childhood and early adulthood. It would be OK if by now I was now an established mystic, rooted in the knowledge that everything and everyone is divine. But I’m not.
I close my eyes and try to pray, but I realise that I no longer know what prayer is. Who or what could possibly be listening?
What was that line from last night’s poem? Language will rise then like language from the mouth of a still river. No one’s mouth.
On a whim, I find myself opening both mouth and throat and allowing a quiet, grainy “Ahhhhhhh” to transmit these wordless longings and confusion. It feels like an honest-enough form of prayer. And as I listen to my voice growing in volume, it suddenly locks onto the harmonics of the surrounding wood and space and stone.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
After a few lungfuls of noise, I just sit within the church’s well-tempered silence, and allow feelings and memories and echoes to flow through me.
•
When we were kids, mum was a convinced – and, at the time, quite pentecostal – Christian, whereas dad was a convinced atheist rationalist scientist. Which, nominally, meant that me and my brother were free to choose our beliefs. What this religious freedom meant in practice though, was that most Sunday mornings I was faced with the following choice: whether to dress in my Sunday best and join mum in trudging up to the village church, or to enjoy a lie-in and then dawdle down to the kitchen, where dad would be frying up bacon for his infamous Sunday morning bacon sarnies.
It was a terrible spiritual dilemma for a young boy to have to make on a weekly basis: whether to sit in church feeling pious but slightly bored, or to stay at home feeling bacon-happy but slightly guilty.
Why, oh why, does the Devil have all the good sandwiches?
•
The click of the church door disturbs my reverie. I emerge from behind the chancel screen to see two long-haired hippies scanning the walls of the bell tower, beckoning one another whenever they discover whatever it is they’re looking for. Intrigued, I approach, and as I near I realise they’re not hippies at all, but a pair of metal heads – with well-groomed hair, studded denim jackets and all. “What are you looking for?”
“Pilgrim graffiti,” replies the one.
“This one says fourteen eleven!” replies the other. “Six hundred years!”
I scan the walls: 1411, 1591, 1600, 1717; various sets of initials; and quite a few well-executed circles, too.
“Should have brought a hammer and chisel,” says the one.
“Next time,” says the other.
They both nod homeopathically in my direction, before making a swift exit. I guess metal heads can only hold a certain amount of heavy metal oxygen in their lungs before having to resurface from the depths of the alien Christian sea.
I spend a while perusing the well-presented information panels at the back of the church, which include pictures of the imagined evolution of the church: from a simple wattle and daub creation in the Saxon eighth century, replaced by an Anglo-Saxon stone nave and squat chancel in tenth century, through its Norman and medieval and finally Victorian modernisations.
To my delight, the panels also inform me that this church was once a well-used departure point for pilgrims on their way to Bristol’s port, and then by ship to the continent for pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela. Santiago – Saint James. And the church at nearby Winterbourne Monkton was known as a “slipper church”, where pilgrims would remove their footwear in order to walk barefoot from there to here, where they would receive an official blessing for their pilgrimage ahead.
This information suddenly changes my whole relationship with the church. Seems I’ve pilgrim-stumbled into quite the right pre-pilgrimage Christian place.
•
In one of the village shops I buy a couple of dozen postcards to send to friends, and two wonderful facsimiles of etchings by the eighteenth century antiquarian and godfather of stone botherers, the Reverend William Stukeley.
Outside the Red Lion, mug of strong black coffee steaming before me, I unroll, weigh down, and peruse both etchings.
The first is entitled “The Groundplot of the British Temple now the town of Aubury Wilts”, and is a crow’s eye view of Avebury as it stood in 1724 – henge and houses and fields and all – including details of stones standing, stones fallen, and stones recently removed:
“Demolished by Tom Robinson 1700”
“taken away 1718”
“Broken 1722”
“taken away 1718”
“Broken 1722”
Seems like Avebury was being demolished before Stukeley’s very eyes, its pagan erections toppled and shattered, to be incorporated into boundary walls and civilised Christian chimney stacks – which I hope occasionally still emanate properly randy, heathen dreams.
Trundling through the middle of the engraved village is a horse-drawn cart piled high with hay, and – look! – there’s me in the picture, just approaching the southern entrance: a wayfarer with a staff slung over his shoulder, on the end of which is a tied a sack of – enviably light – worldly belongings. Not quite me, then.
Trundling through the middle of the engraved village is a horse-drawn cart piled high with hay, and – look! – there’s me in the picture, just approaching the southern entrance: a wayfarer with a staff slung over his shoulder, on the end of which is a tied a sack of – enviably light – worldly belongings. Not quite me, then.
The second etching is entitled “A Scenographic view of the Druid temple of ABURY in north Wiltshire, as in its original”, and is an eagle eye’s overview of the whole Avebury geschmoodle in its pristine ancient glory – as imagined by the imaginative Rev. Two lengthy serpentine avenues undulate out of Avebury’s megalithic heart: Kennit avenue arching a mile or more south-east to a snake’s head stone circle on Overton Hill; Bekampton avenue arching south-west and tailing around the foot of Cheril hill.
Oh, to be an eccentric eighteenth century Anglican priest, trotting along the lanes and cantering over the fields of pre-industrial England, surveying and recording its fading, crumbling pagan temples, all the while day-dreaming of Druidic forebears and cosmic serpents slinking through the land. That’s my kind of vicar.
Oh, to be an eccentric eighteenth century Anglican priest, trotting along the lanes and cantering over the fields of pre-industrial England, surveying and recording its fading, crumbling pagan temples, all the while day-dreaming of Druidic forebears and cosmic serpents slinking through the land. That’s my kind of vicar.
Thing is, without Stukeley’s recordings and interventions and engravings, significant parts of pagan Britain might now be hidden from both site and sight. I suspect he had an inkling of the legacy he was going to leave. William Stukeley, I salute you. And shame on you, Tom Robinson.
Stone-toppling AD 1700 Tom Robinson, that is, not 2-4-6-8-Motorway Tom Robinson.
I refurl the etchings and order another coffee. I’m not ready to set off yet. Feels like there’s something ceremonial I should be doing, but I don’t quite know what. Arriving yesterday on the back of brother’s Road King was a proper buzz, but perhaps a more humble and pedestrian approach would be more appropriate? I consult a map, and plot a mini pre-pilgrimage pilgrimage, taking in Silbury Hill, the West Kennet Long Barrow and the intriguingly-named Sanctuary. Then I’ll be able to arrive actually walking along the West Kennet Avenue, as in days of yore, rather than zooming right past it.
I ditch my rucksack in a large patch of nettles the other side of the village chapel and stride out in search of the river Kennet, which, when I find it, feels more of an adolescent stream than a fully-fledged river. As I follow the river-stream’s meander, Silbury Hill slowly grows and grows in size and impression until its sheer scale finally hits me: for a handmade hill, it’s fucking big – almost worthy of a small Norman castle atop. Some say it’s the largest neolithic structure in the whole of Western Europe. And in its heyday it wouldn’t have been covered in modest grass – it would have been spanking chalky white, surrounded by a very wide moat. A conical pyramid of jaw-dropping and dazzling splendour rising from – and reflected in – a wonderfully still and circular lake.
Did our ancestors really create this, or did the gods themselves?
I cross over a double-arched bridge and into a soggy meadow, fording a sort of ditch courtesy of several large, wobbly stepping stones. The sounds of guitar and song begin to cross-fade into my awareness – John Denver’s Sunshine On My Shoulder – so I deviate in order to explore their source. The music stops ahead of my arrival. It’s those two metal heads again, sitting facing the hill across the moat that now resembles a water-logged meadow. More nods, with a smidgeon of embarrassment thrown in. “Any way of getting across the water?” I ask.
“Don’t think so,” says the guitarist. I make my excuses, and leave them to their soulful song. It seems that metal head ogres, accustomed to the very music of hell, also have soft, acoustic, rustic, pilgrim underbellies.
But, just out of sight and adjoining the A4, there’s a proper earthen causeway leading to the foot of the hill. I straddle a meagre fence, disobey a warning notice, and begin my ascent – up a trespassing path so well-trod that there are compacted steps almost all of the way up. The flattened hilltop is guarded by a vigorous ring of cowslip-speckled nettles, which I wade through onto an island of calf-high grass, in the very centre of which resides a small inner circle of extra-lush green. The belly-button, perhaps, of Silbury Hill? Or perhaps its belly-button fluff?
I bimble around the grassy island, breathing in the views below and all around. Whilst Avebury’s henge is not visible from up here, what slowly dawns on me as I walk around is that I am on the same level as all the surrounding hills. It’s almost as if the ancestors built a hub for a giant wheel of land. Although, come to think of it, I don’t think they’d actually invented the wheel by then. But it does feel like I’m standing in the centre of a wheel from which you can watch the hills and skies and seasons wheel on by. Oh my.
And there below I spy the two metal heads, still sitting on the edge of the moat, strumming and singing away to a silent song. A little Dolly Parton number, for all I know? I decide against a wave. Instead, I retreat to the centre of lush green grass, lie down on my back, and find myself staring up at a sky now full of out-of-focus clouds, the chalky ground beneath me hard and strong.
I read somewhere that “they” once sunk a deep shaft right down into this hill, and it was just chalk chalk chalk. But they didn’t fill the shaft in properly, and a large sinkhole later appeared. Maybe I’m lying on the entrance to that shaft? Maybe it’s still got some more settling down to do?
I close my eyes tight, and imagine gently falling down a chalky shaft and down, down through the hill – first white, now earth-dark, now deep purple, now purple-black. Sinking down through the middle of the hill and into the welcoming earth below. A Chogyam Trungpa quotation comes to mind – something like, “The bad news is that you’re falling through the air without a parachute, but the good news is that there’s no ground.” Except I’m sinking through the ground without a rucksack, and the good news is that it feels like just the free-falling yet earthy medicine I need right now.
•
It takes a while for the West Kennet Long Barrow to come into view, and then a while longer to reveal its true size and shape. It looks a bit like a long, sleek ocean-faring racing boat with a giant stone cabin at its stern. If you were going to set sail on the celestial seas, this is the sort of vessel that could weather the inter-dimensional storms.
I wander widdershins around the outside of the barrow, before actually entering the tomb, the mouth of which is still protected by several giant and faithful stones. The tomb consists of a corridor flanked by two sub-chambers either side, with a larger chamber at its end. As I enter the subterranean gloom, fluttering flying creatures shoot past either side of my lowered head, activating my bat-alert brain before I realise they must be nesting birds. I sit down on the floor inside the far-end chamber, my back against cool, damp stone, and settle quietly until the swallows return.
I once slept the night in the chamber of a long barrow, but emerged with the feeling of having trespassed beyond my skill and right. But even sitting respectfully in such a chamber during the day – in this tomb in which, five and a half thousand years ago, human bodies were once laid and honoured – it still feels like I don’t quite know what I’m doing.
•
Wandering down a muddy green lane, chewing a bitter-sweet young oak leaf nibbled straight from its twig, I enter East Kennet, which feels more like a hamlet than a village. Built of old brick and local stone – with chunky sarsens incorporated into sturdy garden walls – and set apart from the nearby A4, it’s a charmingly peaceful backwater of a place. And by now the Kennet feels like a happy young river, rather than a stream full of dreams. I cross a bridge and follow a lane and signposts to the Sanctuary.
I’d been expecting something more intact, but the Sanctuary is now just an imagined temple rather than a still-standing one. Blue and red concrete blocks laid in the grass indicate where both stoneholes and wooden postholes were once discovered. A diagram nearby describes the original temple as consisting of seven concentric stone and timber rings, and provides an intriguing artist’s impression of how it once may have appeared – a circular wooden temple, surrounded by circles of stone, with two parallel rows of standing stones stretching off into the distance and towards out-of-view Avebury.
I usually encircle new stone circles before I enter them. But, having walked around the outside of the outer ring of blue concrete blocks, I’m left with this strange but strong sense that this is not a space into which I can – right now – simply invite myself. Do I need permission? Or an invitation from someone else? Or was I meant to bring a gift? It’s a disturbing sense to have for a habitual trespasser like me, but I decide to honour it. Not worth pissing off the local – or even national – deities this early on in my journey.
But where does superstition end and intuition begin?
Was this temple a sacred preparatory space for the journey – via the West Kennet Avenue – to Avebury itself? Or was it once a potent temple in its own right? Which came first? The Sanctuary of the henge? As always, answers probably lie just a digital type, tap and scroll away, but I resist the temptation to consult my omniscient phone. I enjoy strolling around with unanswered questions.
I position myself at the beginning of the avenue, between two blue concrete slabs, and follow trampled grass down and out of the field. Having crossed the A4, once more I turn right onto the West Kennet Avenue, but this time on two humble legs rather than two inflated tyres. After a few hundred yards walking along the road, a gate the other side beckons me into the Avenue itself.
It feels refreshingly epic to find myself standing in the middle of this surprisingly wide avenue. How many pilgrims have trod this very ground? Whether these particular stones have remained upright all along, or were uprighted in recent centuries, I knoweth not, but I’m mighty glad they’re here, and not just represented by blue concrete blocks. Slowly, with a hint of awe in my step, I follow the avenue’s course all the way back to Avebury’s southern entrance. Yes, this feels a more fitting way to approach the ancient temple that will host the beginning of my pilgrimage, and – all goes well – the end.
•
Avebury in its modern-day, higgledy-piggledy, well-worn state is impressive enough. But back in the glorious day the outer bank would also have been a dazzling white, and much higher, and the inner ditch far deeper. As with Silbury Hill, any neolithic pilgrim or wayfarer would have had their prehistoric socks knocked off by sheer magnificence and brilliance.
The vision and industry and devotion that must have built this place: the astronomers and astrologers, the geomancers and diviners, the scapula shovellers and antler wielders, the stone draggers and stone raisers, toiling season upon season to build a temple as grand and sacred and potent as any of the great medieval cathedrals.
And no roof to raise. Or keep up. Or upkeep.
Quite the marvel of the isles it must have been. And still is.
I climb the southern bank of the henge, and once more unfurl my two Stukeley engravings. Cross-referencing them with what the old man once told me, and with what I’ve seen today, I reckon Stukeley probably got it right. Two long processional avenues – the West Kennet one possibly for the women and the lost Beckhampton one for the men – arcing their way to a cauldron-henge containing both masculine and feminine inner circles. “Basically,” said the old man – who was known to some as The Grid Keeper – “it was a giant fertility temple. And probably not just a symbolic one at that.” I remember the cheeky wink in the glint of his pagan eyes.
However accurate Stukeley’s various drawings and etchings, they must have proved useful when Alexander Kieller – of the Kieller’s marmalade millions – rocked up two centuries later and started buying up the village and uncovering buried stones and re-erecting them, long before archaeological etiquette and laws forbade such monumental interference. Alas, Kieller's restorative work was cut short by the Second World War, but still, he – or, rather, the unsung workers – managed to upright a good fifty of the blighters.
Consequently, despite all the destroyed and missing and still-buried stones, despite two ignominious roads running right through its centre, despite the numerous village buildings within its bounds, it’s eminently possible for your imagination to fill in the missing Avebury gaps. More to the point: it’s a deep sort of time-warping, ancestor-appreciating, stone-bothering fun.
I bimble along the high bank in the midday sun, nodding hello to tourists and pagans and possible pilgrims alike. At the eastern entrance I linger a while amid the exposed and tangled pixie-goblin roots of the beech trees, colourful clouttie ribbons and hand-written prayers dangling from their branches:
Stone-toppling AD 1700 Tom Robinson, that is, not 2-4-6-8-Motorway Tom Robinson.
I refurl the etchings and order another coffee. I’m not ready to set off yet. Feels like there’s something ceremonial I should be doing, but I don’t quite know what. Arriving yesterday on the back of brother’s Road King was a proper buzz, but perhaps a more humble and pedestrian approach would be more appropriate? I consult a map, and plot a mini pre-pilgrimage pilgrimage, taking in Silbury Hill, the West Kennet Long Barrow and the intriguingly-named Sanctuary. Then I’ll be able to arrive actually walking along the West Kennet Avenue, as in days of yore, rather than zooming right past it.
I ditch my rucksack in a large patch of nettles the other side of the village chapel and stride out in search of the river Kennet, which, when I find it, feels more of an adolescent stream than a fully-fledged river. As I follow the river-stream’s meander, Silbury Hill slowly grows and grows in size and impression until its sheer scale finally hits me: for a handmade hill, it’s fucking big – almost worthy of a small Norman castle atop. Some say it’s the largest neolithic structure in the whole of Western Europe. And in its heyday it wouldn’t have been covered in modest grass – it would have been spanking chalky white, surrounded by a very wide moat. A conical pyramid of jaw-dropping and dazzling splendour rising from – and reflected in – a wonderfully still and circular lake.
Did our ancestors really create this, or did the gods themselves?
I cross over a double-arched bridge and into a soggy meadow, fording a sort of ditch courtesy of several large, wobbly stepping stones. The sounds of guitar and song begin to cross-fade into my awareness – John Denver’s Sunshine On My Shoulder – so I deviate in order to explore their source. The music stops ahead of my arrival. It’s those two metal heads again, sitting facing the hill across the moat that now resembles a water-logged meadow. More nods, with a smidgeon of embarrassment thrown in. “Any way of getting across the water?” I ask.
“Don’t think so,” says the guitarist. I make my excuses, and leave them to their soulful song. It seems that metal head ogres, accustomed to the very music of hell, also have soft, acoustic, rustic, pilgrim underbellies.
But, just out of sight and adjoining the A4, there’s a proper earthen causeway leading to the foot of the hill. I straddle a meagre fence, disobey a warning notice, and begin my ascent – up a trespassing path so well-trod that there are compacted steps almost all of the way up. The flattened hilltop is guarded by a vigorous ring of cowslip-speckled nettles, which I wade through onto an island of calf-high grass, in the very centre of which resides a small inner circle of extra-lush green. The belly-button, perhaps, of Silbury Hill? Or perhaps its belly-button fluff?
I bimble around the grassy island, breathing in the views below and all around. Whilst Avebury’s henge is not visible from up here, what slowly dawns on me as I walk around is that I am on the same level as all the surrounding hills. It’s almost as if the ancestors built a hub for a giant wheel of land. Although, come to think of it, I don’t think they’d actually invented the wheel by then. But it does feel like I’m standing in the centre of a wheel from which you can watch the hills and skies and seasons wheel on by. Oh my.
And there below I spy the two metal heads, still sitting on the edge of the moat, strumming and singing away to a silent song. A little Dolly Parton number, for all I know? I decide against a wave. Instead, I retreat to the centre of lush green grass, lie down on my back, and find myself staring up at a sky now full of out-of-focus clouds, the chalky ground beneath me hard and strong.
I read somewhere that “they” once sunk a deep shaft right down into this hill, and it was just chalk chalk chalk. But they didn’t fill the shaft in properly, and a large sinkhole later appeared. Maybe I’m lying on the entrance to that shaft? Maybe it’s still got some more settling down to do?
I close my eyes tight, and imagine gently falling down a chalky shaft and down, down through the hill – first white, now earth-dark, now deep purple, now purple-black. Sinking down through the middle of the hill and into the welcoming earth below. A Chogyam Trungpa quotation comes to mind – something like, “The bad news is that you’re falling through the air without a parachute, but the good news is that there’s no ground.” Except I’m sinking through the ground without a rucksack, and the good news is that it feels like just the free-falling yet earthy medicine I need right now.
•
It takes a while for the West Kennet Long Barrow to come into view, and then a while longer to reveal its true size and shape. It looks a bit like a long, sleek ocean-faring racing boat with a giant stone cabin at its stern. If you were going to set sail on the celestial seas, this is the sort of vessel that could weather the inter-dimensional storms.
I wander widdershins around the outside of the barrow, before actually entering the tomb, the mouth of which is still protected by several giant and faithful stones. The tomb consists of a corridor flanked by two sub-chambers either side, with a larger chamber at its end. As I enter the subterranean gloom, fluttering flying creatures shoot past either side of my lowered head, activating my bat-alert brain before I realise they must be nesting birds. I sit down on the floor inside the far-end chamber, my back against cool, damp stone, and settle quietly until the swallows return.
I once slept the night in the chamber of a long barrow, but emerged with the feeling of having trespassed beyond my skill and right. But even sitting respectfully in such a chamber during the day – in this tomb in which, five and a half thousand years ago, human bodies were once laid and honoured – it still feels like I don’t quite know what I’m doing.
•
Wandering down a muddy green lane, chewing a bitter-sweet young oak leaf nibbled straight from its twig, I enter East Kennet, which feels more like a hamlet than a village. Built of old brick and local stone – with chunky sarsens incorporated into sturdy garden walls – and set apart from the nearby A4, it’s a charmingly peaceful backwater of a place. And by now the Kennet feels like a happy young river, rather than a stream full of dreams. I cross a bridge and follow a lane and signposts to the Sanctuary.
I’d been expecting something more intact, but the Sanctuary is now just an imagined temple rather than a still-standing one. Blue and red concrete blocks laid in the grass indicate where both stoneholes and wooden postholes were once discovered. A diagram nearby describes the original temple as consisting of seven concentric stone and timber rings, and provides an intriguing artist’s impression of how it once may have appeared – a circular wooden temple, surrounded by circles of stone, with two parallel rows of standing stones stretching off into the distance and towards out-of-view Avebury.
I usually encircle new stone circles before I enter them. But, having walked around the outside of the outer ring of blue concrete blocks, I’m left with this strange but strong sense that this is not a space into which I can – right now – simply invite myself. Do I need permission? Or an invitation from someone else? Or was I meant to bring a gift? It’s a disturbing sense to have for a habitual trespasser like me, but I decide to honour it. Not worth pissing off the local – or even national – deities this early on in my journey.
But where does superstition end and intuition begin?
Was this temple a sacred preparatory space for the journey – via the West Kennet Avenue – to Avebury itself? Or was it once a potent temple in its own right? Which came first? The Sanctuary of the henge? As always, answers probably lie just a digital type, tap and scroll away, but I resist the temptation to consult my omniscient phone. I enjoy strolling around with unanswered questions.
I position myself at the beginning of the avenue, between two blue concrete slabs, and follow trampled grass down and out of the field. Having crossed the A4, once more I turn right onto the West Kennet Avenue, but this time on two humble legs rather than two inflated tyres. After a few hundred yards walking along the road, a gate the other side beckons me into the Avenue itself.
It feels refreshingly epic to find myself standing in the middle of this surprisingly wide avenue. How many pilgrims have trod this very ground? Whether these particular stones have remained upright all along, or were uprighted in recent centuries, I knoweth not, but I’m mighty glad they’re here, and not just represented by blue concrete blocks. Slowly, with a hint of awe in my step, I follow the avenue’s course all the way back to Avebury’s southern entrance. Yes, this feels a more fitting way to approach the ancient temple that will host the beginning of my pilgrimage, and – all goes well – the end.
•
Avebury in its modern-day, higgledy-piggledy, well-worn state is impressive enough. But back in the glorious day the outer bank would also have been a dazzling white, and much higher, and the inner ditch far deeper. As with Silbury Hill, any neolithic pilgrim or wayfarer would have had their prehistoric socks knocked off by sheer magnificence and brilliance.
The vision and industry and devotion that must have built this place: the astronomers and astrologers, the geomancers and diviners, the scapula shovellers and antler wielders, the stone draggers and stone raisers, toiling season upon season to build a temple as grand and sacred and potent as any of the great medieval cathedrals.
And no roof to raise. Or keep up. Or upkeep.
Quite the marvel of the isles it must have been. And still is.
I climb the southern bank of the henge, and once more unfurl my two Stukeley engravings. Cross-referencing them with what the old man once told me, and with what I’ve seen today, I reckon Stukeley probably got it right. Two long processional avenues – the West Kennet one possibly for the women and the lost Beckhampton one for the men – arcing their way to a cauldron-henge containing both masculine and feminine inner circles. “Basically,” said the old man – who was known to some as The Grid Keeper – “it was a giant fertility temple. And probably not just a symbolic one at that.” I remember the cheeky wink in the glint of his pagan eyes.
However accurate Stukeley’s various drawings and etchings, they must have proved useful when Alexander Kieller – of the Kieller’s marmalade millions – rocked up two centuries later and started buying up the village and uncovering buried stones and re-erecting them, long before archaeological etiquette and laws forbade such monumental interference. Alas, Kieller's restorative work was cut short by the Second World War, but still, he – or, rather, the unsung workers – managed to upright a good fifty of the blighters.
Consequently, despite all the destroyed and missing and still-buried stones, despite two ignominious roads running right through its centre, despite the numerous village buildings within its bounds, it’s eminently possible for your imagination to fill in the missing Avebury gaps. More to the point: it’s a deep sort of time-warping, ancestor-appreciating, stone-bothering fun.
I bimble along the high bank in the midday sun, nodding hello to tourists and pagans and possible pilgrims alike. At the eastern entrance I linger a while amid the exposed and tangled pixie-goblin roots of the beech trees, colourful clouttie ribbons and hand-written prayers dangling from their branches:
We hang this wish upon this tree,
For all these people’s eyes to see,
We hope and pray our wish comes true,
Bless us with a child either pink or blue.
For all these people’s eyes to see,
We hope and pray our wish comes true,
Bless us with a child either pink or blue.
A man with a yin-yang tattoo on his neck approaches one of the trees, presses his forehead against its bark, and wraps his arms around its trunk. Breath by breath I watch their bodies meld. There’s a man who knows how to pray.
An adolescent lamb has just climbed the rooty mound and is eyeballing me with unsheeplike confidence. I’m the first to blink. Game over, he descends in pursuit of Jack Russell on a lead, almost ramming the bewildered beast off his turf and through the nearby gate. I’ve never seen a lamb with such large literal and metaphorical testicles. Or such a perplexed Jack Russell.
The north-east quadrant of the circle is largely free of stones; the north-west quadrant more plentiful; the south-west quadrant provides a proper taste of the enormity of the outer bank and inner ditch.
Returning to the southern entrance, I now enter the southern inner circle, which I assume was the masculine focus. Alas, the original phallus is no longer – instead it’s represented by a rather modest concrete menhir. A man is standing next to it, with two copper dowsing rods in his hands, teaching four American pilgrim-tourists the joys of dowsing. I watch as he walks away from the unimpressive phallus, allowing the two L-shaped rods to swivel in his loose, upright-fisted grip.
When they’ve gone, I get my hip flask out, take a nip, then pour some whisky over the concrete stump. No words come to mind, so I let the alcohol do the talking. If anything’s going to help resurrect the long-lost cock of Ancient Britain, then a slosh of single malt will surely help. It would definitely wake me from my slumbers.
I cross the road to the feminine inner circle, at the centre of which are two massive stones – once three – known as The Cove. A three-sided vulvic vessel, perhaps? This place definitely feels like the living centre of Avebury right now. But maybe that’s because the original phallus is no longer with us? Did these ancients favour the feminine principle over the masculine? Or were they sacred equals in their dance of life? How patrifocal or patriarchal was their society? How matrifocal or matriarchal? How other-gendered? How non-gendered? How straight? How wonky? How queer?
I take another nip of whisky, and pour the remains onto the earth, holding the hip flask high until it drips no more. I lie down on the ground, within the cup of the Cove, and let myself sink into the earth once more. It’s good to know – and to physically feel – that this land has got my back.
Pre-pilgrimage DIY ceremonies thus fulfilled, I retrieve my rucksack from its nearby nettle-patch lock-up, and return to the Red Lion for a well-earned beer and chips.
•
Last week I bought a £1.99 roadmap and on the overview of Britain I’ve scribbled down dozens of recommendations made by friends, and a couple of inky dozen of my own:
An adolescent lamb has just climbed the rooty mound and is eyeballing me with unsheeplike confidence. I’m the first to blink. Game over, he descends in pursuit of Jack Russell on a lead, almost ramming the bewildered beast off his turf and through the nearby gate. I’ve never seen a lamb with such large literal and metaphorical testicles. Or such a perplexed Jack Russell.
The north-east quadrant of the circle is largely free of stones; the north-west quadrant more plentiful; the south-west quadrant provides a proper taste of the enormity of the outer bank and inner ditch.
Returning to the southern entrance, I now enter the southern inner circle, which I assume was the masculine focus. Alas, the original phallus is no longer – instead it’s represented by a rather modest concrete menhir. A man is standing next to it, with two copper dowsing rods in his hands, teaching four American pilgrim-tourists the joys of dowsing. I watch as he walks away from the unimpressive phallus, allowing the two L-shaped rods to swivel in his loose, upright-fisted grip.
When they’ve gone, I get my hip flask out, take a nip, then pour some whisky over the concrete stump. No words come to mind, so I let the alcohol do the talking. If anything’s going to help resurrect the long-lost cock of Ancient Britain, then a slosh of single malt will surely help. It would definitely wake me from my slumbers.
I cross the road to the feminine inner circle, at the centre of which are two massive stones – once three – known as The Cove. A three-sided vulvic vessel, perhaps? This place definitely feels like the living centre of Avebury right now. But maybe that’s because the original phallus is no longer with us? Did these ancients favour the feminine principle over the masculine? Or were they sacred equals in their dance of life? How patrifocal or patriarchal was their society? How matrifocal or matriarchal? How other-gendered? How non-gendered? How straight? How wonky? How queer?
I take another nip of whisky, and pour the remains onto the earth, holding the hip flask high until it drips no more. I lie down on the ground, within the cup of the Cove, and let myself sink into the earth once more. It’s good to know – and to physically feel – that this land has got my back.
Pre-pilgrimage DIY ceremonies thus fulfilled, I retrieve my rucksack from its nearby nettle-patch lock-up, and return to the Red Lion for a well-earned beer and chips.
•
Last week I bought a £1.99 roadmap and on the overview of Britain I’ve scribbled down dozens of recommendations made by friends, and a couple of inky dozen of my own:
from Mên-an-Tol to Calanish
from Cader Idris to Samye Ling
from the Lord Nelson to Ye Olde Fighting Cocks
from the Drunken Duck to the Applecross Inn…
from Cader Idris to Samye Ling
from the Lord Nelson to Ye Olde Fighting Cocks
from the Drunken Duck to the Applecross Inn…
I have named it The Map of Possibilities. Because it costs absolutely nothing to upgrade a cheap roadmap into a mythical, mystical tome.
My rough plan is to circle south-west, southern and eastern England, and then take it from there, each morning consulting The Map for that day’s destination. I know that pilgrimages are traditionally taken along well-trod routes to especially sacred places, so this pilgrimage is a bit of a post-modern experiment – fraught, I’m sure, with all the post-modern, pick’n’mix spiritual pits and traps that the traditionalists traditionally warn us about.
But why take the road more travelled?
I consider heading to the sulphurous hot springs of Sulis-Minerva, aka Bath Spa, but I’m not really ready for town or city life today – I’ve got a rural itch, and it needs a bit more scratching. Instead my eyes settle on Stanton Drew, recommended by Julian Cope in his gorgeous stone-bothering bible, The Modern Antiquarian. Apart from getting around Bath, it should be a straight forward enough hitch.
I open the “Soul Food” collection and Mary Oliver’s well-known poem leaps from its page, a pitch perfect poem for today’s proceedings.
My rough plan is to circle south-west, southern and eastern England, and then take it from there, each morning consulting The Map for that day’s destination. I know that pilgrimages are traditionally taken along well-trod routes to especially sacred places, so this pilgrimage is a bit of a post-modern experiment – fraught, I’m sure, with all the post-modern, pick’n’mix spiritual pits and traps that the traditionalists traditionally warn us about.
But why take the road more travelled?
I consider heading to the sulphurous hot springs of Sulis-Minerva, aka Bath Spa, but I’m not really ready for town or city life today – I’ve got a rural itch, and it needs a bit more scratching. Instead my eyes settle on Stanton Drew, recommended by Julian Cope in his gorgeous stone-bothering bible, The Modern Antiquarian. Apart from getting around Bath, it should be a straight forward enough hitch.
I open the “Soul Food” collection and Mary Oliver’s well-known poem leaps from its page, a pitch perfect poem for today’s proceedings.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
It’s got such a quietly heroic, rousing ring to it, that poem. I really like it. At the same time, the hero in me right now is full of ambivalent feelings, and my ankles – they are being tugged.
But I remember this ankle-tugging ambivalence. Excitement tinged with a sort of fear in my belly. Hesitancy. Under-confidence. Over-confidence. Trust. Doubt. Push. Pull. It’s familiar psychic territory. It’s how I feel at the beginning of any big hitching or travelling adventure. I visit the pub loo – urinals marked small, medium and liar – fill up one of my water bottles, and then visit the pub kitchen to ask one of the staff for a piece of cardboard.
I know that there are hitchers who hitch by thumb alone, but I’m not one of them. If I can, I always hitch with a sign, even if it’s just a simple PLEASE. And I’ve already got an enduring PLEASE that I prepared in the studio beforehand, written on an open envelope of corrugated plastic – into which I can slip the name of my destination. I’m rather proud of this innovation. I ponder the route to Stanton Drew, and finally settle on TOWARDS BATH PLEASE.
A little bit strange, perhaps, but it keeps my direction clear while also allowing for shorter lifts. Coz I reckon this might well be a journey of short lifts.
Then I hoick my rucksack onto my back, attach my daypack to my front, and set forth, pilgrim-beetle-like, in search of a suitable hitching spot, which I soon find. I watch a few cars pass until I’m sure that there’s space and time enough for someone to pull over, should they so desire.
If you think about it: you’re driving along, minding your own business, and then, in the mid-distance, you suddenly see a hitcher – don’t see many of them nowadays – and you’ve got only a few seconds to ascertain several important things. Do they look dodgy or do they look harmless-enough? Where are they going and am I going there? Have I got room, and do I want to pick them up? Is there enough time to slow down and stop? Is there a safe spot to pull into? Is anyone on my bumper? Is this a good idea? It’s a heck of a lot of out-of-the-blue information to gather and process in such a short period of time, and your unconscious is as much at play as your conscious, probably a lot more so. It’s one of the quiet marvels of humanity that anyone actually stops.
I place my rucksack on the ground, and move my daypack onto my back. And then I trust my body to settle me into its well-worn hitcher’s stance: standing behind the rucksack but a tad to the left; sturdy sign in my right hand, pointing towards any oncoming windscreen; left arm outstretched, but not locked; thumb upright and clearly visible. All topped with a sort of Mona Lisa smile upon my face, distinguishing me – hopefully – from both a mad axe murderer and a presumptuous free-loader.
And then a slight tilting of both neck and head to the left, with a compensating shift of weight onto my left leg. I don’t quite know why I do this, it just seems to work – adds, perhaps, an element of respectful request?
Thus lightly planted by the roadside, and thus committed to the following journey, I hereby place myself at the mercy – and kindness and generosity – of complete strangers. It’s such a bizarre – and yet quietly thrilling – thing to do, this hitch-hiking malarkey.
Let the adventure begin.
But I remember this ankle-tugging ambivalence. Excitement tinged with a sort of fear in my belly. Hesitancy. Under-confidence. Over-confidence. Trust. Doubt. Push. Pull. It’s familiar psychic territory. It’s how I feel at the beginning of any big hitching or travelling adventure. I visit the pub loo – urinals marked small, medium and liar – fill up one of my water bottles, and then visit the pub kitchen to ask one of the staff for a piece of cardboard.
I know that there are hitchers who hitch by thumb alone, but I’m not one of them. If I can, I always hitch with a sign, even if it’s just a simple PLEASE. And I’ve already got an enduring PLEASE that I prepared in the studio beforehand, written on an open envelope of corrugated plastic – into which I can slip the name of my destination. I’m rather proud of this innovation. I ponder the route to Stanton Drew, and finally settle on TOWARDS BATH PLEASE.
A little bit strange, perhaps, but it keeps my direction clear while also allowing for shorter lifts. Coz I reckon this might well be a journey of short lifts.
Then I hoick my rucksack onto my back, attach my daypack to my front, and set forth, pilgrim-beetle-like, in search of a suitable hitching spot, which I soon find. I watch a few cars pass until I’m sure that there’s space and time enough for someone to pull over, should they so desire.
If you think about it: you’re driving along, minding your own business, and then, in the mid-distance, you suddenly see a hitcher – don’t see many of them nowadays – and you’ve got only a few seconds to ascertain several important things. Do they look dodgy or do they look harmless-enough? Where are they going and am I going there? Have I got room, and do I want to pick them up? Is there enough time to slow down and stop? Is there a safe spot to pull into? Is anyone on my bumper? Is this a good idea? It’s a heck of a lot of out-of-the-blue information to gather and process in such a short period of time, and your unconscious is as much at play as your conscious, probably a lot more so. It’s one of the quiet marvels of humanity that anyone actually stops.
I place my rucksack on the ground, and move my daypack onto my back. And then I trust my body to settle me into its well-worn hitcher’s stance: standing behind the rucksack but a tad to the left; sturdy sign in my right hand, pointing towards any oncoming windscreen; left arm outstretched, but not locked; thumb upright and clearly visible. All topped with a sort of Mona Lisa smile upon my face, distinguishing me – hopefully – from both a mad axe murderer and a presumptuous free-loader.
And then a slight tilting of both neck and head to the left, with a compensating shift of weight onto my left leg. I don’t quite know why I do this, it just seems to work – adds, perhaps, an element of respectful request?
Thus lightly planted by the roadside, and thus committed to the following journey, I hereby place myself at the mercy – and kindness and generosity – of complete strangers. It’s such a bizarre – and yet quietly thrilling – thing to do, this hitch-hiking malarkey.
Let the adventure begin.
Avebury
During the war, he said
we lived like kings and queens
upon the land
The fields were full
the hedgerows ripe with berries
the rabbits fat and easy to catch
And an endless summer
barely scathed by war
bloomed and blossomed within my mind
He was a proper English pagan
gent he was:
courteous
mischievous
kind
During the war, he said
we lived like kings and queens
upon the land
The fields were full
the hedgerows ripe with berries
the rabbits fat and easy to catch
And an endless summer
barely scathed by war
bloomed and blossomed within my mind
He was a proper English pagan
gent he was:
courteous
mischievous
kind
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Thanks, my friends x
https://www.pigandink.com/village-funding.html
Thanks, my friends x