Adventures Archives - David Mosley

Mosley March 31, 2025

Adventures

Ivinghoe Beacon: 30 March 2025

A quick post for a little day walk.

I’ve had a post it stuck in this page of my Rough Guides Walks in and Around London book for a while.

I had a spare Sunday and the sun came out, so I jumped on the train to Tring and took advantage.

The weather was glorious, the sky and the views were crystal clear, and the butterflies were out threading drunken, neon parabolas in the breeze. Spring had sprung and it was great to be out.

Back on the Ridgeway

Ancient beech woodland in Aldbury Nowers

A small section of Grim’s Ditch Earthworks. Probably used to demarcate territory. Fun fact: in Old English the names Grim (and subsequently Graeme and Graham) were associated with the devil. Hence Grimsby translates as ‘place of the devil’, which seems about right. Also, there’s a strong link between earthwork naming and the devil. Hence various Devil’s Dykes around Britain.

Ivinghoe Beacon is the last hill on the right.

Views for miles…

The Whipsnade White Lion. Definitely not an ancient chalk carving. Instead it’s a 1933 invention to advertise Whipsnade Wildlife Park.

In The Coombe

The only downside of being out somewhere relatively accessible on a day like this was that everyone else clearly had the same idea. When I got near the National Trust tea room and Bridgewater Memorial it seemed like every family and person with access to a telescopic walking pole had come out for the day.

Bridgewater (the canal guy) Memorial. (Yes it does look like someone just made a really ugly tower out of breeze blocks).

Strong urge to plan something a bit wilder asap… 🙂

Mosley March 21, 2025

Adventures

O’s 40th in Eryi/Snowdonia: 14-17 March 2025

It was my good friend O’s 40^th birthday over this weekend, so a group of us assembled at Hendre Isaf Bunkhouse in Eryi (a.k.a. Snowdonia) for a weekend of adventures and celebrating.

Side note, I didn’t know the Welsh called Snowdonia anything other than Snowdonia before this trip, but the Welsh name of Eryi translates to ‘abode of eagles’ (like the eagles nest ‘eyrie’), which is a bit more poetic than the literal ‘Snowdonia (from the Old English elements ‘snāw’ – snow and ‘dūn’ -hill). The actual mountain Snowdon is called Yr Wyddfa in Welsh, and legend goes that the giant Rhita, who had a penchant for killing kings and using their bears to make a cloak for himself, was killed and then buried by King Arthur here. I.e. it’s actually a giant burial cairn. (Huge appreciation to the Welsh contingent who bubbled over with Welsh language, tradition and knowledge throughout the trip.)

We left the dead giant alone though, and spent our first (glorious) day climbing Tryfan and the two Glyders of Fach and Fawr instead. Here’s (roughly) our route:

It was an absolute beaut of a day to be out on the hills, feeling like the first day of Spring aggressively asserting itself.

As Miley Cyrus (and later Joe Mcelderry) so profoundly stated: ‘It’s the climb!’

Here’s the birthday boy himself. Sultry.

Can you tell we lived in Japan together?

The views from the top of the Heather Terrace were stunning!

And then there was a quick, fun scramble to the peak of Tryfan.

At the top of the mountain are two stones, nicknamed ‘Adam and Eve’ (or, given as we’re doing Welsh now, Siôn a Siân). Apparently if you jump from one to the other you attain the ‘Freedom of Tryfan’, but with a pretty hairy drop in case of failure, and frankly a lack of clarity about the benefits accorded under said ‘Freedom’, we gave it a miss.

JUMP!

So far, so stunning, but my favourite part of the walk was yet to come. Once we got up on to the plateau between the two Glyders, the landscape became otherworldly. Shattered rock extruded and assembled out of the reflective snow in bizarre formations. (Think if Game of Thrones had a love-child with a paleo-alien civilisation.)

Here’s the view after climbing up one.

From there, it was a pretty steep decent, stopping half way at Llyn y Cŵn for a moment of Zen…

…before the landscape switched from a Game of Thrones to a more Lord of the Rings vibe.

And then back to the car and done, a very happy bunch of walkers.

The next day started with a proper birthday breakfast and celebrations, before we headed out to visit Coed Felenrhyd & Llennyrch (‘Coed’ meaning ‘wood’ or ‘trees’.) This is a rare, Atlantic oak woodland and full of rare lichens, mosses and liverworts (I didn’t know the latter was a thing before this trip). Apparently, whilst they are both non-vascular plants (bryophytes), liverworts have either flat, lobe-like structures (called a thallus), or leafy structures, whereas mosses have distinct stems and leaves arranged around a central axis.

Lichen, moss, or liverwort?

The woods were simultaneously beautiful, damp and epic, in a Jurassic kind of way.

And here are a few of my favourite trees:

And at the waterfall B and C taught us (well, taught the children really, but we all got involved) how to make miniature boats out of reeds, which we then set sail down the river.

The final evening was spent with P teaching us how to sing Bulgarian folk songs. I mainly sat out and listened, because it was stunning and I didn’t want to ruin it! Video below:

And then we were heading home, all too soon. High hopes for a re-run at some point though!

It feels only appropriate to finish with a Sonnet, written by PJ, in honour of the occasion:

Upon the hills where ancient Georgia sings,

We climbed through mists to Tryfan mighty crown,

And Glyders watched us, bold with winded wings,

As laughter echoed, never tumbling down.

The lakes lay silvered in the spring light,

Reflecting joy upon each smiling face,

While hearts were full, and spirits lifted bright—

Each step a gift, each breath a kind embrace.

With hummus, feasts, and bananas by the pile,

We dined like kings beneath the mountain skies.

Old friendships warmed, new ones began to smile,

And love shone clear in children’s gleaming eyes.

So cheers to Ollie, and to Becky too—

And Wales, we thank your hills for all they do.

Ar fryniau hen lle cana tawelwch clir,

Dringasom ni i ben Tryfan yn y gwynt,

A’r Glyderau’n gwylio’n dawel, llawn o dir,

Wrth i’n chwerthin gerdded gyda’r awyr hynt.

Y llynnoedd ddisglair dan y bore’r wawr,

Yn adlewyrchu llawenydd ar bob grudd,

A’n calonau’n llawn, ein hysbryd heb ei fraw,

Pob cam yn rhodd, pob anadl llawn o hud.

Gyda hummus, ffrwythau, bananas mewn torf,

Bwyd fel brenhinoedd dan y nef Eryri,

Cyfeillion hen yn cwrdd mewn llawen gorf,

A rhai newydd, arbennig, gyda chariad pur i’w rannu.

Felly diolch Ollie, a Becky’n wir hefyd—

A diolch i Gymru am ei mynyddoedd cain a hedd.

Mosley January 31, 2025

Adventures

Lake District Trip – Helvellyn and Aira Force: 27-28 January 2025

It was my birthday for me this week, so N and I headed up to the Lake District for adventures and celebrations.

N’s sister had very kindly booked us a stay at The Quiet Site in Ullswater. Initially in a Camping Pod, but the absolutely lovely legends at the site very kindly upgraded us to one of their Gingerbread Houses for free as they were quiet (apparently not many people want to camp in the Lake District in January!)

After driving up and getting settled, I stared at the mountains and tried to convince myself that the weather would be fine for walking the next day…

I’d had my eye on Helvellyn as a birthday walk, and had been checking the amazing Weatherline reports daily from the Helvellyn Fell Top Assessors. Up until a few days out things were looking good, but conditions had been getting worse as the day drew near…

We decided to have a pop at it anyway, adjusting our route to get up the mountain by the shortest and least treacherous route from Swirls as it seemed like the morning would be our best chance of a decent weather window.

At about 450m we hit the snow line, but very manageable.

At about 600m the snow was thicker, but paths still visible and visibility was decent.

But as we got higher, everything started getting nastier…

And nastier…

Until we called it at Browncove Crags, at about 800m, with hail and snow battering our faces in the wind, and the weather looking like it was just about to go full white-out. We turned back having hit our limits, happy with what we’d got to experience. There’s something so beautiful and wild about winter mountain conditions, but with the real edge of knowing that if something went wrong, things would go south very quickly…

As we headed back down the weather worsened.

And we were very glad to get back in the car, warm up, and head to the nearest National Trust tea room!

The Fell Top Assessor’s report filed later that day confirmed that we made the right call!

I’m putting learning full Winter Mountaineering skills on my bucket list. Would love to be able to tackle this in future….

That evening we swapped a cold mountain for the comfy Rampsbeck restaurant and had a beautiful meal, bookended with a country road walk on either side. Always nice to experience some proper darkness getting out of the city.

After a warm sleep, we decided on a slightly tamer walk before the drive back to London, taking in Aira Force waterfall, Glenbarrow Fell, and some cracking views over Ullswater.

Aira Force is the waterfall that inspired William Wordsworth’s The Somnambulist (I’d never heard of it either!) and was in full force given the weather conditions.

After wandering up the higher falls, which were super pretty, we headed up Glenbarrow fell and got pretty nice 360 degree views from the top.

It was the second half of the walk, coming back around alongside and above Ullswater, that was probably most special though. Stunning views in the fading light, with the fell totally to ourselves, and some cute little spots to stop and enjoy.

The perfect way to end the trip before the drive home!

Mosley November 29, 2024

Adventures

South Downs Walk – Hassocks to Cocking: 24-25 November 2024

I picked this walk for a couple of reasons:

1) It slotted neatly against the last South Downs walk I did, and means that I can probably complete the rest of the South Downs Way in another weekend, with a little gap missed between Lewes and Hassocks (my last walk in dark blue below, this one in red)

2) It meant that I could do my overnight camp at Chanctonbury Ring. Which is apparently haunted. Which I’d usually believe was bollocks, except Robert Macfarlane seems like an eminently sensible man. Enough so, that it was enough to make me a bit nervous about wild camping there on one of the longest nights of the year. And being nervous is fun (sometimes).

Due to the short days, I had to catch the 5.48am train from Victoria to get enough daylight to do the mileage. Which was a bit grim, especially since I’d been at a friend’s 40^th birthday party the day before. Oh, and also Storm Bert was a thing.

But whilst the rest of the UK seemed to be battered by floods and snow, the South Downs decided to deliver a beautiful, clear day for me. I considered myself a very lucky bunny and set off with a big smile and a spring in my step…

…Until I started gaining some height. And then wind hit, made my rucksack feel like a parachute, and changed the angle of gravity from vertical to diagonal in my world.

You can see the way it catches the skin on my face in this video:

At least the windmills were happy!

I hadn’t planned any detours/sites of interest for this walk. The plan was to put my foot on the gas to cover the distance before the sun went down at 4pm. But then at Saddlescombe I saw this sign, and couldn’t help myself… Who doesn’t want to know what a donkey wheel is?

Turns out it’s one of these!

A big wheel built over a deep well, that you get your donkey (or children apparently) to walk in to lower a barrel down and then change direction to pull up the water. 55 litres at a time (so pretty damn heavy). This wheel/well would have provided the whole village with all their fresh water daily.

I liked Saddlescombe. They had good advice and cool vehicles as well as the donkey wheel.

Just a little further on, I passed the deep Devil’s Dyke valley. Local folklore says it was dug by the devil as part of a wager between the hermit Cuthman of Steyning after the Kingdom of Sussex converted to Christianity. My guidebook says it’s a glacial valley. But Wikipedia says it was caused by water run-off from the thawing of the last ice-age. Take your pick.

I stopped for lunch sheltering from the wind behind a boat next to a radio mast. Not sure why it was there, but I was very grateful for it. And I was treated to some more stunning views when I set back off again. This section of the South Downs way is all about rolling vistas and big skies, and I’m so here for it. The wind seemed to have put off other walkers too, so I had the trail to myself for most of the way.

Towards the latter part of the day I was hit by a pungent smell coming from upwind. At first I thought a farmer had been spreading slurry, but soon I was corrected. It was the biggest pig farm I’ve ever seen. The combination of the smell, the corrugated iron of rows and rows of pig tunnels repeated for over a kilometre, the mud, and the birds circling ominously overhead, waiting for what the pigs churned up gave the impression of walking through a porcine Mad Max world. An experience I’ve not had before!

I made it to Chanctonbury Ring with time to spare. It looked innocuous enough, and I set up camp round the back, sheltered from the wind and with a great view over the Weald.

As the sun went down, there was definitely a change in vibe. The trees were packed so close together that they rubbed and clanked in the wind. I was excited to see what the night would have in store and tried to keep my ears open for eery screeching.

But after a day of battling the wind I was very soon asleep, and was out like a log until sunrise. Was it haunted? I don’t think I can give a reliable answer. It’s highly possible that the spirits really tried to do a number on me and I slept right through it. I’m a more than 1 alarm at full volume in the morning person, so probably pretty annoying to try to spook once I’ve nodded off.

I woke to a morning that looked like this. The calm after the storm.

With only the occasional reminder of what had happened the previous day

The whole second day was just absolutely stunning. A proper joy to be out in it. And it felt extra special for it being like this at the end of November.

It got even better as the sun went down…

I had to cover 35km so I ended up walking the last section in the dark with a headtorch. This turned out to be magical – it lit up the eyes of all the crepuscular critters that I might have missed otherwise. Including this little fella (and some of his mates), who verified the ‘deer in the headlines’ cliché by staring at me as I slowly crept closer to her/him to get a picture.

I also got to hear and see a Barn Owl, but that was too fast for my camera skills…

And shortly after I arrived in Cocking where a bus took me to Chichester for a cheeky KFC before a train home.

That’s probably me done for multi-day hikes until the days get a bit longer again. But looking forward to covering the last section of the South Downs Way when they do…

Mosley November 1, 2024

Adventures

South Downs Walk – Lewes to Eastbourne: 26-27 October 2024

This weekend’s adventure started in Lewes. I’ve done chunks of the South Downs before, so the plan was to do a day of new stuff, and finish with a day walking the Seven Sisters.

Setting off!

A short walk from Lewes station are the remains of Cluniac St Pancras Priory. Built in 1081, this was the first Cluniac priory in the UK!

Don’t know what a Cluniac priory is? Me neither. This is what I found out:

In 910, William I, Duke of Aquitaine, and the Count of Auvergne got together and founded the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny as the Cluniac ‘motherhouse’. Importantly, they made a ruling that the monastery would be free from any local authority, lay or ecclesiastical interference, and answered only to the Pope. Although they tempered this Papal influence by stating that he wasn’t able to seize, divide or give the property to anyone else, and he also couldn’t appoint an abbot without the consent of the monks. How to make sure this never happened, with a curse of course. I looked it up and it sounds pretty bad:

“First of all he incurs the wrath of Almighty God, and God takes away his portion of the living from the earth and blots out his name from the book of life, and let him become a portion with those who said to the Lord God, depart from us, and with Dathan and Abiron, whom the earth swallowed up with its open mouth and swallowed up the living in the hells. Being restrained by sharp lashes, he escaped scarcely half alive: the other, however, struck by a nod from above, perished most miserably with rotting limbs and spreading worms”

With that taken care of, it was time to become the wealthiest and most opulent monastic houses in the Western world. They hired labourers to do all the hard work that was taken care of by monks in other houses, commissioned candelabras of solid silver, designed golden chalices with precious gems for their masses, and renounced the usual monkly diet of broth and porridge for roasted chicken, cheese and wine.

Not a huge surprise that the order spread like wildfire then!

This first instance of a Cluniac monastery in England came about when Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to England with relics of St. Pancras. St Pancras is patrion saint of children, jobs and health. But he also gets invoked for cramps, headaches, false witnesses and perjury, which feels a bit like Saintly mission creep to me, but I guess the supply is somewhat restricted!

It took Henry VIII to brave the curse, dissolve the monastery and dismantle it to what’s left here. This is a helpful diagram to show how sprawling the priory was back in the day.

The extent of the priory in its heyday

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a large part of what remains are the toilet blocks. (I’d swerve these if I was dismantling a monastery for pieces too). There were only 100 monks living on the site, but they had 56 toilets, which struck me as a bit excessive until I realised that the monks only got short breaks between church services. There must have been a stampede!

After all that excitement it was a bit of a dull yomp to Rodmell: mud, boring fields, roads and a sewage works. I’m putting this stretch on the ‘do not walk again’ list.

Beautiful

I was excited to visit Monk’s House in Rodmell. Virginia and Leonard Wolf bought this house in 1919 for £700 and it was an important place for them and the wider Bloomsbury group. Virginia wrote her biggies here, including Mrs Dalloway, The Lighthouse, Orlando and The Waves (my favourite). Alas, it was shut when I arrived.

As I later crossed the River Ouse, I was conscious that this was the river that Virginia Woolf drowned herself in in 1941. She felt another instance of mental illness begin to grip her (it’s referred to simply as depression in everything I’ve read, but her suicide letter talks about ‘going mad again’ and beginning ‘to hear voices’) and made a decision that suicide was the ‘best thing to do’. It’s not a big river. In fact it’s the kind of river which you’d really have to be determined to drown yourself in; Virginia filled her pockets with rocks in order to complete her task.

The River Ouse

There is an incredibly moving piece of music by Max Richter in his Woolf Works from The Waves section, titled: Tuesday, which opens with Gillian Anderson reading Virginia’s suicide note. The letter is short, but what shines through is her love and absolution of Leonard, and the impossibility (for her) of living without being able to concentrate, in a world where she loses her alacrity with words. I listened to this as I crossed the Ouse, and I’m not afraid to say that I had a little moment…

Also in Rodmell is St. Peter’s church. It’s Norman, from the 12^th century, quite pretty and has some nice stained glass windows. I’m sure this would excite people more into churches than me, but I took a couple of photos and left pretty sharpish.

However, a short hop down the South Downs way from Rodmell is the small village of Southease that did have a church that I enjoyed. This church is Anglo-Saxon (just) originally built in either the late 10^th or early 11^thcentury. It’s now (also) called St Peter’s Church, but was only dedicated to him after the medieval period. It’s small and cosy, was empty when I arrived, and had a really calming feel to it, like walking into a ship’s hull and being cut off from the world.

It’s also got some original 12^th century frescos that were whitewashed in the 1600s, but have been uncovered again since. In the peace of the church they seem to emerge from the walls like comforting ghostly shadows.

After Southease it was a welcome escape from civilisation to climb up onto the Downs at last for a 10km stretch to Alfriston. It was pretty misty up there, which ruined the views, but created an enjoyable atmosphere of seclusion.

This stretch of the Downs is pock-marked with tumuli, many of which are the burial sites of Bronze-age Beaker folk (from about 4,400 years ago). These guys pretty much replaced the Neolithic population in Britain, and are so called because they were often found buried with ‘beakers’ like these (presumably so they didn’t go thirsty in the afterlife).

A whole civilisation named after these…

The burial mounds are pretty hard to spot now, after thousands of years of erosion and grave-robbing, unless someone helpfully puts a sign up next to them.

This stretch ended with a descent into the pretty bougie village of Alfriston. There’s a famous bookshop here called Much Ado Books, and despite the fact that I still had quite a way to go before sunset, I can’t resist a good bookshop. These guys have absolutely nailed how to run a bookshop in the Amazon era, turning the place into a book explorer’s paradise, keeping a packed schedule of events, running a social enterprise, and creating a space that you just want to languish in.

Sylvia Plath was taller than Jack Kerouac. Who knew!

I loved the creative genre shelf labels…

Too much to explore, too little time…

Sunset was due at 5.45pm and I’d spent way too long loitering, so coming out of Alfriston I had to put my foot on the gas and bomb it down the Cuckmere river to get through Exceat in order to find somewhere tucked away I could camp before it got dark.

But I couldn’t not take these photos en route though!

Magnet fishing. For when you fancy a shopping trolley for dinner.

“What should we put in our window darling?” “How about a massive Scooby Doo?” “Done”

I made it, just as the sun was setting, and was rewarded with some beautiful views followed by a night of stars so clear I could see the silken mist of the Milky Way.

35km total on Day 1. And a decent (by tent standards) night’s sleep.

I woke up, breakfasted and packed up to a sunrise that promised an absolute beaut of a day ahead…

The Seven Sisters are a series of (seven!) chalk cliff peaks along the coastline from Cuckmere Haven to Beachy head. It’s a pretty special walk that I’ve done a few times before, but never in such unexpectedly good weather. I didn’t have too far to go today, so I took it slow and indulged the urge to take photos from pretty much every viewpoint.

As I approached the Birling Gap I saw a line of runners streaming up the hill. Turned out I’d hit the Beachy Head Marathon weekend and they were running the half-marathon on the Sunday. It looked utterly brutal – the hills here are steep! I looked it up and the half-marathon comes with 488m of elevation gain. However, the previous day they’d run the ultra, which is 31.5 miles and 1,382m of elevation gain. I can’t even imagine the pain…

Running Up That Hill

Also, look where they put the finish line! At the bottom of this ridiculously steep hill. It’s like they’re trolling the health and safety team…

Watching the runners exhausted me, so I stopped for an ice cream.

Three interesting things I saw in the course of the day:

A red slug. Which Google reverse image search informed me was a Spanish Slug. It has the dubious honour of being the only land gastropod in DAISIE European Invasive Alien Species Gateway’s 100 worst alien species in Europe list and is also known as the ‘killer slug’ as it eats weakened and dead individuals from it’s own species. I think it looks pretty cute though…

2) A lying down horse. Now this might just be a massive miss on my part, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horse lying down like this before and was labouring under the belief that horses slept standing up. I got back on Google again, as I was a bit concerned the horse was sick, or worse. And it turns out that, whilst horses can and do sleep standing up, they can only achieve REM sleep lying down and need about 30-60 minutes of this a day. They tend to take turns with other horses to do this, for safety and survival, so I guess the other horse here is on watch.

3) I saw (and felt) loads of this stringy cotton stuff caught in the wind and flying around through the day. It feels like spider web when it hits you and seems like it must be some kind of natural seed transportation mechanism. Google reverse image search doesn’t really hit the nail on the head with this one, so if anyone reading this knows what it is please tell me!

Then it was a pretty ugly walk along the coast into Eastbourne, where I stopped at the pier to finish the rest of my lunch before jumping on the train back to London.

Just 16km covered on day 2. The Seven Sisters were stunning, but a little crowded with other walkers for my liking. I think I want to go somewhere a bit more remote for my next jaunt…

Mosley October 21, 2024

Adventures

Battersea Half Marathon for Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice

OK, this isn’t quite an adventure per se, but wanted to record it for posterity.

On Sunday I ran the Battersea Park half marathon for Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice. I usually run half marathons for fun and feel cheeky asking for sponsorship, but Noah’s Ark had a matched fundraising campaign; ‘From That Moment‘ that coincided. So I broke my rule and fundraised for this one.

I’ve been volunteering with Noah’s Ark for the last 6 months, and have been blown away by the wraparound support that they give to unwell kids and their families from the moment of diagnosis. From clinical care, to providing specialist knowledge, equipment and therapy to help all kids play and have joy in their lives, to the emotional and practical support given to parents and siblings to help them feel supported and get access to life experiences that might otherwise be curtailed. They really do showcase the best of humanity.

Proud of this one!

Mosley October 15, 2024

Adventures

Ridgeway Walk: 12-13 October 2024

I’d wanted to walk the Ridgeway ever since reading about it in Robert Macfarlane’s Old Ways. It’s a massive miss from my walking repertoire: not only is it the oldest road in Britain, (a venerable 5,000 years), but it’s also packed with history including a good chunk related to the Anglo-Saxon period which I got pretty into at uni.

So, time to redress this and bite a chunk of it. I’d settled on the stretch from Foxhill to Goring with the weekend I’d set aside and set off from Paddington bright breezy on Saturday morning. This meant I arrived early in Swindon with just over an hour to kill before the first bus to Foxhill. I was so grateful for this time though, Swindon is stunning! (Ha)

How will the Ridgeway top this?

I got the hell out of Swindon on the 48 bus to Foxhill before jumping out at the Burj, my starting point. Alas it was shut, but from appearances I think the Burj is kind of like the United Nations, but in restaurant form.

The United Nations of Restaurants

Time to begin! Briefly stopping to admire my first Ridgeway ‘Plaswood’ sign: an environmentally friendly and maintenance free material. Actually quite smart given the number of battered wooden signs I’ve seen over the years.

I bucked off the trail early and went to see some strip lynchets and ancient medieval field systems. Apparently these formed when they ploughed on slopes for so long the gravity made the loose earth fall down and form ‘steps’. After seeing a range I can believe that for the little lynchets. But I saw some huge ones too that looked like intentionally earthworked steps. Must have been pretty backbreaking to form if so…

Big lynchets

Little lynchets

Oh, and I had to be naughty and find gaps in fences to see them all.

Crawling through fences

But I also saw some deer being super cute!

From there it was back to the Ridgeway before my next detour to Alfred’s Castle. Quick summary before you get too excited:

-Not actually a castle (and has never been),

-In reality it actually has nothing to do with King Alfred (the Victorians made up that King Alfred used the site to rally his troops against the Danes in the Battle of Ashdown so that they could sell trinkets to tourists)

-It’s really an Iron Age hill fort dating back to 6th century BCE that was later (1st century) the site of a Romano-British farmhouse.

-Now it’s just some earthworks with loads of nettles inside.

Here’s a wonderfully 1950s primer on the site. (I couldn’t find any traces of the building or any sarsen stones.)

The 5km round trip from the Ridgeway was beautiful though, and the sun was shining!

Standing in ‘Alfred’s’ Castle

Enjoying the October sunshine!

Then it was on to Waylands Smithy, which is a properly cool place. It dates from 3600 BC when a timber chambered oval barrow was built to bury 14 people. 150 years later it got an upgrade in the form of a stone hammered long barrow.

When the Saxons found it (4,000 or so years later) they decided that the magical/God Smith Weyland from Norse folk tales lived there. In the stories Weyland was captured by a cruel king who cut his hamstrings, stole the ring his wife gave him and took his magical sword, all the while forcing Weyland to make him cool smith stuff.

Weyland got a bit narked about this. He killed the king’s sons, turned their skulls into goblets and their eyes into jewels, which he presented to the king, before fashioning a magical flying cloak and escaping. Pretty wild.

The Saxons used to leave unshod animals or broken tools outside the barrow overnight, along with coins, so Weyland would fix them.

Despite all this, it’s actually a beautifully serene place! And it’s pretty powerful to be able to interact with something this steeped in history.

The entrance to Weyland’s Smithy/long barrow

Fun fact: Weyland gets a name check in Beowulf, when Beowulf is fighting the dragon in the third part of the story he says:

“Onsend Higeláce, gif mec hild nime,

beaduscrúda betst, Þæt míne bréost wereð,

hrægla sélest, Þæt is Hraédlan láf,

Wélandes geweorc. Gaéð á wyrd swá hío scel.”

Roughly translated as:

Send to Hygelac, if me battle takes,
battle-shirt best, that my breast protects,
garment finest, that is Hrethel’s legacy,
Wayland’s work. Fate goes ever as it must.

The dragon then kills him (and vice versa) and the story ends with the enemy hordes assembling on the hills to attack his tribe now that Beowulf is gone. Turns out fates a bit of a bitch sometimes.

Here’s a great article on Weyland if you want to know more.

Then it was on to Uffington, with more earthworks, another dragon slaying, and a massive horse.

Here’s Uffington Castle. As you can see it’s another exciting circle-mound. This one’s from the 8th or 7th century BCE and continued to be occupied throughout the Iron Age. It used to have ramparts, sarsen stone walls, and relics of occupation. It’s lost all these fun bits now though.

The earth banking at Uffington Castle

But dragons are fun, and Dragon Hill just behind it is where George slayed his dragon. And if you’re sceptical about whether that actually happened then you can tell it definitely did because on the top of the hill (which was artificially flattened at some point) there’s an empty white chalk patch where nothing grows because this is where the dragon blood spilt.

Dragon Hill: the flattened mound on the right (spot the white patch!)

One final sight here. A huge, 360 feet long and 130 feet wide, white chalk horse carved into the side of the hill. However, what I found even more surprising than it’s weirdness is how difficult it is to find despite its size. It’s been carved in a minimalist, abstract style best viewed from drone/helicopter (or if you’re a God, which I think was the intention vs anticipating drone cams). I spent ages trying to find it, imagining that it would be super prominent. Instead it looks like this- almost impossible to take a photograph of.

My best photo – the horse’s head (the mouth is my favourite bit)

And here’s what it looks like if you’re a God (or Google)

This was the first ever English white horse carving. No-one’s quite sure why this was made at some point between 1380 and 550 bc. Maybe something to do with the Celtic goddess Epona? Maybe it’s actually a dragon? Maybe a tribal symbol? (Similar figures appeared on coins too). It initially seemed odd to me that something this significant could be constructed without a record of why. But then I learned about the behaviour of locals between the 17th and 19th centuries. They held “scouring festivals” every seven years, which included not only clearing vegetation and renewing the faded top layer of chalk, but also climbing greasy poles, rolling wheels of cheese down a hill, pipe-smoking marathons, sledding down the hill on horse jawbones and other batshit crazy English activities. Sometimes I guess humans are just beautifully odd.

Oh, and to cap it all off, Channel 4 used it to advertise the 4th season of big brother. Which really pissed the locals off!

Remember this?

As a final bit of inspiring weirdness, check out David Bedford’s Song of the White Horse (1978), set for ensemble and children’s choir and commissioned for the BBC. The choir had to inhale helium balloons to sing the “stratospherically high notes” of the climax, accompanied by aerial footage of the horse animated to show it rearing up from the ground.

Back to the Ridgeway before the next deviation, to have a go on the Blowing Stone, a sarsen stone that Alfred ‘apparently’ (I’m growing sceptical of all these Alfred stories) used to summon his troops to fight the Danes). More excitingly for me, it’s featured in William Horwood’s Duncton Chronicles novels, which I bloody loved as a kid!

I didn’t really nail getting a sound out of it. But in my defence I think it’s been quite eroded, and it was full of water and snails.

Summon the armies!

Then on to the final stretch to my campsite, stopping briefly to check out Segsbury Castle, before quickly realising it was basically just another big circular mound with nothing to see inside it. I was a bit earthworked out by this point.

A beautiful moment with the low sun framed by the trail behind me spaghettifying my shadow, with the moon already out.

Then, finally, arriving at Court Hill Centre just in time to pitch my tent before dark, and make some Michelin starred food before settling in.

Home, sweet home

Yum!

37.8km on day 1, which was a bit more than I was expecting. Got a bit carried away with exploring, and quite a chunk of that was tramping around looking for a big white horse!

Jackson Pollocked boots

I need to buy some new walking socks

I had a terrible night’s sleep. It was freezing, I should have brought my warmer sleeping bag, and my inflatable sleeping bag sprung several leaks due to age. So I woke up full of joy and with my body and feet raring to go for day two…

Kidding, I got up seriously considering heading to the nearest station and getting home to a warm, soft bed! But after porridge, a change of socks, and some ridiculously strong coffee I was good to go.

Day 2 was far sparser on historic interest, so I told myself that this was all about ‘Type 2 fun’. A term I stole from my old rugby coach meaning not the kind of fun that’s fun at the time (Type 1) but the kind of fun that isn’t fun at the time but becomes rewarding/fun after it’s done. That bit of mental gymnastics got me moving.

There were a couple of interesting things to see, including the Wantage monument that Lady Wantage build to commemorate her husband, Baron Wantage, who seems to have invented the hipster beard.

The Wantage Memorial

Baron Wantage had style!

The quote from Psalm 121 ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help’ was quite moving given her context of mourning her husband, and the placement of the monument.

Hard to read – should have made it out of Plaswood

I stopped for lunch at Scutchamer Knob, the site where King Edwin killed King Cwichelm in 593 (Edwin said he’d convert to Christianity, but only if he beat Cwichelm, which seems a fair enough deal). Don’t feel too sorry for Cwichelm, he’d tried to send an assassin to kill Edwin earlier, so wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. (All the Anglo-Saxon rulers were pretty brutal to be honest.) There’s a burial mound here (more earthworks) and for quite a while people thought Cwichelm was buried here, but excavations have turned up nothing.

Scutchamer Knob

Peanut butter sandwiches taste better here

From here on in it was a case of enjoying the rolling scenery and making peace with the pain in my feet through to the end. Other notable things that happened:

-I tried to make friends with a horse and got electrified by a fence in the process.

-I got asked by a woman if I was ok when I was having a rest stop (I clearly looked a bit broken)

-I saw loads of these rocks with black shiny sections covered by white silty rock. Google Lens hasn’t definitively answered what they are, so if anyone knows please tell me!

Any geologists reading this?

And then, as darkness fell, I made it to Goring station for the journey home. A comfy seat in a warm train carriage has never felt so good!

27km for day 2. Less than day, but it felt like more!