Winter Solstice Photos

Abbie's Front "Garden"

Sunrise West Cornwall Style

Grazing peacefully up on Trencrom

The Essential Shadow Shots

180 of the 360 View From Trencrom

Sunrise Imminent on Looe Bar

The Mist Rolling Off of Looe Pool

The Ravens Circling over the Pool

Your Author Looking Like She Just Got Up

Emerging

Sunlight starting to hit the red cliffs and illuminate them, still Looe Pool on the right

Boom

Beautifully streamlined and elegant dogfish

Is this really the finale?

I guess its worthy of a dance move.......x

Winter Solstice

As I sit here I want to tell you the details of my winter solstice walk, but I am lost in thought as to where I have ended up at the climax of all of this. One day in January 2016 almost exactly a year ago a voice akin to my own said, “You should do a seasonal walk to celebrate each of the old earth festivals”. I immediately accepted this was what I would do and proceeded to plan the first one. I set out enthusiastically, optimistically and full of the promise of unknown adventures. I had no idea at the time as to what a profound map it was to provide for the journey of my year. Walks made to celebrate the turning of the seasons and as Stevie Nicks sang, the seasons of my life. It was something so simple, self-directed and freeing. From the warm night stroll on the beach to the ninety-mile pilgrimage along the Ridgeway facing hail and snow, this has been an epic year. The sense of achievement is only just starting to sink in and touch me.

Yet I don’t feel sad its over; it’s more just a chapter in a longer story about many more explorations through the landscape. It has set me up to find out more about the land into which I was born, to better connect with its hidden trackways, old drovers roads, coastal paths and green lanes. Many are intersected and overlaid by roads and motorways now. Yet many remain unscathed to be walked too. 

For this, my final seasonal celebration I went home. Not to where I was born, but to my spiritual home in West Cornwall. Here is a place where I feel like I am at fully alive and at peace; with its wild coastlines, far ranging craggy moors and ancient stones. The constant flux and movement  of the winds and the sea. Its hedgerows are full of flowers in the summer and its remote lanes are windswept and muddy in the winter. Somewhere I feel I just disappear into the landscape and merge with the elements. With so many beautiful aspects to the land here I had considered all the areas that I used to roam. There are many ancient stone circles, monoliths, fougous and quoits in this part of Cornwall. I felt that I might design my own circular route between two or three of these places, creating my own sacred hoop. Whilst I loved this idea, when it came to it I totally threw it out of the mix and did something completely different. I just couldn’t drag myself away from the sea. The great roaring, restless ocean calling me back to its side.

My friend Abbie actually served to link it all together for me by inviting me to stay in her beautiful beach side home. She suggested we go up Trencrom Hill which provides a wide 360 degree panorama across the moors, fields and coastline. We sat up there taking shadow photos, talking, eating snacks and admiring the view until the lure of our favourite cafe in Penzance dragged us down. I was able to take in all the scenery of this part of West Penwith, which encompasses some of my recent past and holds the stories of thousands of lives of people who have settled here before me.

And so it came about that the next morning I arose in the dark and dressed in the quiet before dawn. I pulled two skirts on over my old leopard print leggings and with the sound of the sea crashing in my ears I tiptoed out of the house and down towards the beach. I lingered on the steep steps down to the water, staring in the direction of the sunrise. Although cloud was massing out to sea it looked like there might be enough of a clear sky for a sunrise. The tide was right up the sand and there was no chance of starting out along the beach so I took the coast road running parallel to the shore. In parts I could stray off into fields of springy coastal grass dropping away down the cliff sides, and in other parts I had to take on a bit of tarmac, but not for too long. The road soon petered out into the coast path.

At this point I could see what appeared to be mysterious smoke drifting out to sea beyond the headland. I trotted on, greeting a solitary jogger. I then wound down from the headland towards the beach and Looe Bar. Looe bar is a huge shingle ridge separating the sea from Cornwall’s largest freshwater lake, Looe Pool. Cornish legend has it that the bar was formed due to the actions of one Jan Tregeagle, a man believed to have lived in Kernow in the 17^th Century. He was purported to be a man who committed many heinous acts and was set a variety of impossible labours after his death to keep him out of hell until Judgement Day. After having to empty a large pool upon Bodmin Moor using a limpet shell with a hole in it, Tregeagle was dragged down to the south coast. Here he was tasked with moving all the sand from beneath Berepper, across the estuary of the River Cober to Porthleven. A labour that due to wind and tide would see all the sand steadily shifted back to its original location as he worked. One day as the beleaguered man dragged another enormous sack of sand towards Porthleven demons saw fit to increase the difficulty of his task. They split his sack spilling its contents across the estuary, forming the sand and shingle ridge now known as Looe Bar. The unfortunate man is purported to be still labouring at Porthcurno Cove trying to shift it around the corner. When the winds screech and howl in a storm his anguished voice is said to rise above it all.

As I descend onto the beach I can see the source of the smoke. It’s not smoke at all, it’s mist drifting out to sea in a narrow channel. It travels across the beach in a long, thick wisp emanating from the pool. It’s a strange sensation being on a strip of land with sandwiched between fresh and salt water.1 As I near the pool I see birds soaring and a raven flies crawking over my head. Soon there are two birds flying from my right to my left, circling and calling. The chill mist envelops me, moving around my face. Its really cold compared to the surrounding air. The sun is starting gain the cliff top, throwing light onto the reciprocating cliff behind me. It glows with oranges, pinks and reds. My beach island is almost untouched by feet although there are a couple of people up. I watch the mist roll past me and out to sea, more coming, ever more coming. It’s a magical and liminal place. Another legend has it that Excalibur was thrown into this lake and at this moment its easy to believe.

I am suddenly vexed to hear a massive wasp overhead. On closer inspection I see it’s a drone flown by a couple of the beach. I look at them and the drone in rotation with a fiercely unimpressed expression. I can look pretty mean when I want to. Thankfully for all of us they fly it away over another bit of coast. I try not to get irritated that everyone has to be DOING something outdoors. I’m jogging, I’m fishing, I’m dog walking, I’m bloody drone-flying. No-one is just out and about for the sake of it. Everyone has to be bloody DOING something. Okay rant over.

I stare back into the mysterious mist. I wonder if mist used to be spelt with a y instead? (My favourite new pastime is reading from my battered 300 year old dictionary when I am in bed at night. I love to see what was once in common usage and the origins of today’s words). The sea is rolling steadily in and there’ll be no storms today, although of course it was such an event that really grew the sand bar in 1924 with hundreds of huge waves crashing in one after another….I turn to the east and the sun crests the land beaming across the beach. I take a few photos with my rapidly depleting phone, unsure whether each will work. It’s like being back to the old days of film cameras. I walk back in the direction of the ocean and play a game of running from the edge of the waves. My leather boots are soaked, its December but my feet aren’t cold. Maybe its because I don’t care, I am in my favourite place.

Suddenly I spot something at my feet. A dogfish, about half a metre long lies on the shore. Gone are its days of swift swimming, but I admire its rough yet smooth spotty skin and shark like appearance. One of my earlier childhood memories is of my sister and I finding a yellow dogfish trapped in a small rock pool on a beach in Haverfordwest. We nobly bucketed the hapless creature, feeling that it would be happier in the sea, and duly escorted it back there were it could swim freely. Who knows, looking back maybe it had taken itself on holiday and was enjoying the sanctuary of the warmer pool where no bigger fish could chomp it for lunch. I think we were more concerned that someone else might find it and not be as reverent as us and poke it or something. Saying that I don’t recall how we coaxed it into the bucket……The dogfish lies prone, facing out to sea, waiting to be claimed back to the belly of the waves wherefore to lay to rest or to become sustenance for something else. When I return it is inching nearer, pulled gently downhill by each encroaching wave.

I walk on as far as a small headland, marking it out in my mind as the turning point of my walk. As I get closer I see it is not one rock but three. I pause and they become the past, the present and the future and moving between them I weave the strands together pausing for thought before crossing the last. The mystery of the myst merging lake and sea, sky and earth seems to symbolise the merging of my worlds in my walks; undertaken on the same island (almost) yet so many facets, mysteries and so much more to know. There could never be enough time to walk all of this island’s trails but I will have a really good go. Sometimes travelling alone, sometimes travelling together just like life.

The Ridgeway allowed me to travel for 6 days independently, carrying food, shelter, bedding and my wits to travel back on foot to the ancient stones of Avebury for Beltain. Roaming up in the Malvern Hills allowed me to use natural landmarks to navigate with ease and benefit from a friend’s local knowledge to get me started. Vision Questing in the Pyrenees challenged me to face myself and orientate in a hot, arid, mountainous scree landscape completely unlike my own country. And then of course there were the gentler, softer walks. These had no great distance to overcome, may have been completed on a sunny day or even half a day, with no huge challenges to face yet no less profound or touching in the experiencing. In a way, just like life itself. This isn’t the end of my journies it is really only the beginning.

Samhain Walk

Samhain marks the end of the old Celtic year. For me it’s a time of remembrance and reflection. Leaves are falling and being received by the earth, and the energy within them is being transferred back into the soil. What was once fluttering aloft now lies quietly below, decaying; so goes the alchemy of autumn. Samhain marks my New Year’s Eve. I adjusted my year several years back when the current pattern of celebrating just wasn't right for me anymore. I still join with friends at the end of December, but it’s not my new year. So I start my year when the darkness is growing, folding me into the winter dreamtime. Reflections and experiences from the previous year begin settling into my body and mind. Ideally that’s what I would be doing anyway but life is mutable and unpredictable and this year I am caught up in a two-hour traffic jam instead. There is never a time when I feel the ridiculousness of my human condition more than when I am sat in a queue of metal boxes all trying to travel forward but being stopped by someone else’s metal box that has slightly blocked the road. Total insanity. However it means that I get to spin around, with dreams of visits to long barrows shelved, and sit around a few logs on the outdoor fire at my sister’s which is a much better idea than inching along the Bath road at sunset.

Once again due to life commitments, my walk is slightly delayed until past Samhain. The River Parrett in Somerset is my destination and I have only one free day. The whole length would take four days to walk so I choose one tasty part and head down to explore. As it turns out it’s a beautiful day, sunny with clear blue skies and unusually warm for November. I am pondering the nature of all that is unseen and how trust can be nurtured in the invisible world as I motor along. In the next instant I realise that I have left my phone at home. This means no photos, which is ironic. The words will have to paint a picture instead and your imagination can take over……

Once I see Burrow Mump I am actually kind of glad. Its way better as a surprise and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. Autumn is probably a perfect time to see it, as there are a few trees dotted over its sides. A beautiful ruined church sits atop the mump with autumn colours scattering the lower slopes, like a low-key version of Glastonbury Tor. Yet its prettier, really lovely and I am charmed by this dinky hill. I climb up, which takes only a couple of minutes and sit drinking cinnamon coffee admiring the view. Only the repetitive sound of a car horn carries on the wind. Eventually I figure out it’s a farmer in his jeep, herding his sheep the lazy way!

I meet and chat to an older couple from Bridgewater, only 5 miles away. It turns out his father and grandfather before him owned a farm at the foot of the mump and this is the first time he has ever come to see it, demonstrating we sometimes overlook what’s right on our doorstep. I soak up the view and wintery sun and get pretty comfortable, nearly forgetting I am here to walk. So I rouse myself and trot off downhill before I lose momentum and head for the river. With such an easy marker point as the water itself, navigation for this one should be simple…..

The name “Parrett” could have several meanings with its origins lying possibly in Welsh, Cornish, Old English or a mixture of all three. One interpretation of Parrett is “partition” or “divide” as the river once separated the old Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Wessex and Dumnonia. Another translation is “sweet or delicious” river, perhaps it provided good fishing or maybe it was because it was a valuable highway for trade. Who knows what sweet treats may have sailed down the waterways in the times before tarmac? Maybe it was considered sacred to our ancestors. Yet another possible meaning of the name could be the “meeting of four ways”; that of the rivers Tone, Isle, Yeo and Parrett. I love the contradiction that it could mean partition or coming together, seeming somehow apt for these times.

The river rail begins down a country lane alongside the water with a high bank in between. I get frustrated that I can’t see the river as the official track is down on the lane below so I scramble up the bank and walk along the top of the man made wall holding the bank up. Or maybe the bank is holding the wall up. Now I can see the Parrett and she’s flowing surprisingly fast for a small river. This river is tidal and even has its own little bore! Undoubtedly it’s way more modest than the Severn but I’d like to see it one day either way. The banks of the river are replete with lots of sedge, the rustling of these elegant water plants is the background sound to my walk. Forming part of the Somerset Levels the area is good for bird life too, and I see herons, kestrels, egrets and many little hedgerow birds en route. As I walk the wall (another partition) I notice animal scat on top in several places. Somehow its funny that the animals have worked out it’s easier trotting along up here than hacking through the long grass on the river bank. A fox super highway! I follow the wall and soon I can hop off and follow on the actual river bank watching the swirls and eddies of the water below.

The lie of the land is flat and the area around this part of the Parrett is strongly characterized by its arable farmland. It has that numbed feel that I always notice in areas of large monoculture. It is however peaceful on the riverbank and there are horses grazing in every available field. Farm buildings are  scattered about and I fall slightly for an old ruined cottage I find along the way. By turns the wind suddenly whooshes down the river, reminding me that I am not too far from the sea. At times I hear seagulls cawing overhead. I pass an old pumping station, still important in the management of water levels for the moors. I idly move leaves off of a signboard to see what wildlife is mentioned. It requests the public call if they see anyone causing pollution, fire lighting, dumping waste or more cryptically witnessing any “fish in distress”. I spend the next 5 minutes cackling to myself trying to picture how I would identify a distressed fish.

As I near the halfway point I see a large hand painted sign, Beware Farm Dogs. After meeting the dogs I wanted to add on in paint “You may want to steal them”. These two collies were so meek and friendly I turned to check there wasn’t an adjoining farm. I suddenly felt like I had turned into the dog whisperer and kept eyeing them up incase they suddenly turned round and bit my hand off. I left them eventually to their relaxed riverside existence.

Halfway I looped around to join the Somerset and Taunton canal. Apparently unattached to the rest of the network it is an unexpectedly beautiful bit of waterway. I trundle along, past my turn off back along the Parrett. I stop for late lunch in a dip facing the sun.

As I make my way back towards the river and later the mump, I eye up the tidal waters. I’ve been looking for a spot to get near enough to drop some flowers in as a gift to my ancestors. I like the idea that the flowers might make it all the way out to the sea. Nowhere is quite right, due to the wind, mud, too many rushes or the steepness of the riverbanks. I’m nearing my starting point again and get distracted by a beautiful sunset, with many vibrant colours of orange, red, deep blues and greys. I spot an old apple orchard and dive through a gate to scrump some apples. The smell of fallen apples is so beautiful and one of my favourites. I have a great affinity for apple trees. Two once grew in the garden I grew up in and saved me from the wrath of my mum a few times. I stand watching the sky, chomping an apple, enjoying my bit of trespass. The wide vista stretches before me and cows graze quietly in the distance.

I am nearly back when I figure out that the bridge over the river by the mump is the perfect place for the flowers to be dropped. I cast them out with some words into the fading light and watch them as far as I can in the growing darkness. I amble along a little more of the river and gather a few more apples. My eye catches what looks like a shaft of bright golden sunlight rising in the west. What, that’s the wrong direction? Then I realise what’s happening. IT’S THE SUPERMOON! It’s a bit hazy but I scramble up the tump to see her rising. I have the sun setting on one side, and the supermoon rising on the other. Its incredible especially since a heavy fog later envelops half the country and the sky disappears totally where I live for the next four days……I wait for a couple of photographers to leave, but realizing a few people may continue to come up to see the moon, I just get out my drum, light a candle and start to play. I play for the hill, for the moors, for the moon, for my ancestors, for being alive. I can really feel the energy of the time of the year. Although Samhain the date has passed some people prefer to mark the old festivals with the moon cycles and not by any precise dates. This is a more natural rhythm. I can feel the power of the interplay between the light and the dark, both present in the day and the night. This confusion and blurring of shades of light and dark holds great power and somehow represents something for me about this time in history. To be able to sit in the middle of chaos where boundaries blur and shift, to keep bravely surfing the ever rolling wave of existence, to move through the interchangeable powers of both light and darkness and create my own beauty and meaning from it all, for me that is the teaching of our times.

Autumn Equinox Walk Photos - Thanks to Tobes for tech support!

Prelude to the walk - Crop Circle at the foot of Cley Hill near where I live (way past its best)

Nunney Castle  - I explored this tiny gem before setting off for Wales. Its ten minutes from home...

Nunney is collapsed at the front so you can see the whole inside from the outside.
A wide moat surrounds the ruins

Interior views

Last of the light at Nunney

Raglan Castle

Beneath Raglan

The White Castle. Doesn't do it justice.

How many arrows were shot through here?

Inside the White Castle

Llanthony Priory with the cellar bar lit up in the far left

The chance to waft around the priory ruins with a glass of wine as the sun fades......Lush

Bit of sage wisdom from the campsite toilets

Sunday morning view from my tent

Emerging

Big skies

Two views through the ruins

Joined by Vicki, Toby and Sy we all set out up nearby Hay Bluff 

Blue skies and clouds interspersed with rain moving up the valley. Huddle for a wet lunch stop but it passes over

Preparing to scale Lord Hereford's Knob or Twmpa

Half way up. The gradient is pretty ridiculous although its hard to tell. We were using our hands.

Made it. This is Vic. I was last up and hacking away, getting over a chest infection. That's my excuse anyway.

Catching the wind

Mystery Fungi

Gratuitous horse shot

Lord Hereford's Knob in the background. Gives better idea of what we scrambled up.

Sun's out

Me

Me a couple of seconds later. Like a good shapeshift.

Indulgent selfie included mainly to show the amazing deep blue sky

The dream team. Looking a bit like we're about to skydive. Two peaks. One afternoon.