In the Land of Giants: A Journey Through the Dark Ages by Max Adams

Author:Max Adams [Adams, Max]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2016-10-11T04:00:00+00:00

POLLARDED WILLOWS

That afternoon I walked along the lower slopes of the Mendip Hills from where the Romans extracted lead on an imperial scale to satisfy their voracious plumbing needs. On a more relaxed schedule I might have stopped at Wells, another important centre of pre-Conquest religiosity. But time pressed. As afternoon turned to evening, I came down from a delightful green lane that hugged the two-hundred-foot contour, through fields which had once been orchards and where I browsed on small, sweet plums, and into the village of Cheddar. Cheese and gorge notwithstanding, Cheddar’s archaeological fame rests on the Anglo-Saxon palace excavated close to the church by none other than Philip Rahtz. There is nothing to see of the great timber hall and minster, built probably in the reign of King Alfred; the site is marked by concrete plinths in the grounds of a school. Such is the way with the fragile remains of the distant past: the monument is the published report, often written in very technical language that fellow professionals understand and can interrogate. In Philip’s case, there has rarely been an archaeologist who did more to write accessible, unpatronising accounts for general consumption.

I woke in a quiet corner of a campsite close to Cheddar’s medieval church on another perfectly clear morning to the sound of its bells tolling the sixth hour, struck camp early and, finding nowhere open for breakfast or supplies, climbed the south-west scarp of the Mendips through narrow green lanes and dense woodland. I broke cover on the crest at over six hundred feet, a quarry on my right a reminder of the precious treasures of the hills. A small tribe of hairy bearded goats with wicked-looking long horns accompanying me on the narrow road offered a sense of more ancient exploitation of the Somerset uplands. It was very fine to be high up and in the open and I motored along at a good pace, munching on the last of my oatcakes. From Black Down, at over a thousand feet, the view towards the Severn Estuary and the coast of South Wales was breathtaking and seductive and took my mind back to the sea. On either side of me squatted the mammiform burial mounds of Bronze Age pastoralists whose summer steadings can just be seen here and there as grassy humps in sheltered spots. A sharp descent on the north side brought me out through a shallow gorge and past the site of Avelina’s hole, a limestone cave where a very early cemetery, dating to 8000 BC, testifies to the enduring appeal of these rich coastal lands.

At the small village of Burrington I attempted to make my passage along a green lane so choked with brambles and nettles that I finally gave in and had to backtrack, once again scratched and pricked and in militant pedestrian mood to berate the locals for allowing a right of way to fall into disuse. But there was nobody to berate; the twenty-first-century English live in their cars.

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