Walking to Camelot (27 page)

John and Elizabeth are kind and thoughtful pillars of the community and stalwart stewards of the land, quietly carrying on with the spirit of yeomanry and service that has defined country people throughout English history. They have allowed archaeological excavations on their farm property, on and around which have been located Iron Age foundations of a group of neolithic huts. Romano-British artifacts have also recently been found in an area that likely served as an approach to the main southwest gateway to Camelot.

John weighs in on the subject of badgers — creatures everyone wants to hate — by writing a Letter to the Editor in response to the movement to cull the badger population of the country:

It may seem peculiar but if I am wearing my farming cap I would certainly not like our badgers culled. Nobody could possibly have more badgers than we have on Parsonage Farm . . . As far as we can tell they don't have any TB . . . One can only presume that we are breeding and exporting clean badgers in some quantity and if they were culled, in would come infected ones . . . If I am wearing my green ecological, conservation hat, I would certainly support a cull. We have always had two large setts on the farm and in the old days that number of badgers was sustainable . . . The farm is all old pasture and cider orchards. No artificial fertilisers are used and no tractor spraying, and because of the sheep, no grass is cut until early July.

Until about twenty-five or thirty years ago the farm was teeming with wildlife — plovers, skylarks, pippits, wild English partridge and wild pheasants, also plenty of hares and hedgehogs. Now as far as ground nesting birds and ground game, the farm is the epitome of
The Silent Spring.

Somerset is known for its dairy production, apple orchards, and cider. A folk ritual is practised here called the “Apple Wassail.” Wassailing dates to the pagan era. It typically involves a wassail queen leading a procession to the oldest and most fruitful tree in the orchard. She dips a piece of toast in mulled cider, which is placed in the tree boughs to draw favourable spirits. More mulled cider is poured round the base of the tree, which, when combined with the noise of sticks banged together, scares away evil spirits. The tree is then serenaded by the crowd.

Country apple festivals are held in Somerset and Dorset to promote local apple varieties and make the public more aware of the importance of conserving orchards. These liquid events invariably highlight three periods of English history: Merrie Olde England, where locals portray medieval times by dressing in tight green jerkins, playing fiddles, and waving around pig bladders; the era of
Mansfield Park
refinement, with women wearing muslin dresses being driven around in elegant horse-drawn carriages; and the modern era, with everyone joking around on tractors, baling oats, and quaffing cider to a bevy of off-key fiddlers. Morris dancers and one or two flutists round out the program.

OUR SECOND DAY
at Cadbury is spent relaxing and puttering about the lower reaches of Cadbury Castle. In the evening, we again dine at the Red Lion. On our way back to our
B&B
, we ascend the hill fort for a final visit.

I sit overlooking the sweep of the Somerset Levels atop the highest rampart, dreaming of Camelot and wishing I could have watched Leslie Alcock and his keen archaeologists dig up the grounds and uncover the king's Great Hall. I can see Glastonbury Tor to the northwest and, immediately below, the quiet village of Sutton Montis, with Parsonage Farm, the precious little church on the lane, cute cottages, and the lovely apple orchard winding away toward Queen Camel like some Avalonian garden. Overhead can be heard the drone of a small plane. The plane looks military; it comes closer, circles briefly, then dips its wings and buzzes off like a hummingbird toward Yeovilton's Royal Naval Air Base.

In the mind's eye, thick dust is billowing, as a knight canters up the main entrance from the fields below to enter Camelot and report to his warrior king on the latest incursions of the Saxon hordes. And is that the Lady of Shalott and Sir Lancelot standing furtively in the shadows of the Great Hall?

The idyllic scene is complemented by a huge amphitheatre of quilted fields bounded by high rolling hills to the south with cattle and sheep grazing as mere dots on the hillsides. Glaciers long ago rounded out this landscape into hill and hollow and coomb. Neolithic hunters eventually arrived, followed by Celts, who began to farm and gradually refined the smooth hills by adding a patina of velvety green furrowed fields. It seems a thousand miles from urbanity here, yet the nearby
A
303 can take you to London in two hours.

Of all the places I have been in the world, few move me as much as the summit of Cadbury Castle. New Agers have made much of theories about ley lines around Glastonbury and Cadbury, but one does not need to study astrology to feel the power and magnetism of this fascinating place.

Karl is obviously moved as well.

“I can certainly see why a warrior leader would choose this spot to defend the West Country from the Saxons,” he muses.

Then, after a long pause, Karl turns to me. “This alone was worth the walk, John.”

At that moment I know that he has felt the same frisson of excitement I have felt, the very charged atmosphere of Cadbury Camelot.

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.

—J.R.R. TOLKIEN—

The Lord of the Rings

THE CLIMB OUT OF
South Cadbury follows the crest of Corton Ridge for over a mile. Karl and I pause to look back north. Cadbury Camelot is directly across from us now, as the apex of a triangle. Glastonbury Tor is faintly visible to the northwest, and to the northeast I can see the silhouetted finger of Alfred's Tower. As I ponder the enormous significance of this historic triangle for one last time, a writhing steel snake in the guise of a high-speed train passes far below us near Queen Camel. I hear the church bells ringing in Sutton Montis, then the familiar
Ooo-oo
of a wood pigeon. I know that there is something wonderful here, something to be cherished.

The moment is broken by bracing wind gusts, lashing us on this exposed ridge. Waves of fierce, ugly black nimbus clouds approach from the northwest. The nefarious antics of English weather.

“Dirty weather coming, John,” warns Karl. “Best we hunker down and fortify ourselves.”

We scramble for Corton Denham, a Lilliputian village hidden in a high, remote corner of Somerset. Solace awaits at the Queens Arms, a hospitable free house known for its fine local ciders and sumptuous accommodation. On this high ridge winding down from the Dorset border one is in a virtual fairyland. A lovely parish church nestles into a coomb. Horses, paddocks, and sheep cluster the steep hill upward to the sky like on some
Black Beauty
movie set.

The pub is busy inside. We know we are welcome because of the friendly sign out front: “We like dogs and muddy boots.” So we each order a pint of local cider. Sitting next to us is a family, the father dressed in a tweed sports jacket, jeans, Italian silk shirt, and wellies. Perhaps this is the new attire of the squirearchy — or, more likely, the affluent Londoner down to his cottage for the weekend. Through the back window of the pub I admire a wattle fence decorated by a low lavender hedge.

Refreshed, we don jackets and Tilley hats but have to huddle in the doorway for several minutes to avoid a passing squall. Our route takes us to the village of Sandford Orcas along a narrow lane now slick from the downpour. Cool rain lashes our faces in alternating sheets and splatters.

Sandford Orcas dozes in a copse just inside Dorset. The unusual name originates from a ford here with a sandy bottom — hence “Sandford”; the “Orcas” derives from the Norman Orescuilz family, who were given the village manor by William the Conqueror. The current manor house was built in Tudor times from Ham Hill oolitic stone — and is one of the most haunted places in England.

A team from the Paraphysical Laboratory concluded in 1966 that the house held five separate ghosts. One of them is thought to be the spectre of a depraved footman who was known to rape the young maids of the house. This phantom targets only virgin girls. As part of the Lab's investigations, two allegedly virgin women volunteered to spend a night in a bedroom. Next morning they emerged from the locked room in a terrified state and independently described a seven-foot-tall man dressed in Georgian costume.

I don't know about the ghost, but I am accosted by an angry, rotund gardener who yells and gesticulates at me to go away when I approach the grounds with my camera, repeatedly telling me that the garden is closed. I am simply trying to photograph the manor house framed by the lovely terraced gardens and topiary. My dander up, I yell back at him, “Being England, sir, I expect nothing less!” which leaves him rather nonplussed, likely more befuddled by my accent than by the cheeky purport of my riposte. Perhaps if I had resembled a medieval knight he might have been friendlier. (A fellow walker, Jonathan Greatorex of Stamford, passed through here recently on Macmillan and related how he felt an “out of body experience” when approaching the manor house, suddenly imagining he was a knight returning from a Crusade.)

Squalls lash us, so we stop for a bite at the Mitre Inn. Unfortunately, our ploughman's repast is spoiled by the inane chatter of a henpecked husband being berated by his wife over his refusal to purchase a new bed — I feel like opening my wallet to help the poor bloke just to terminate the tiresome conversation. Then at the bar a disgruntled stonemason complains to the proprietor that his work that week has not been properly appreciated by the homeowner — “Not at all, sir,” the stocky lad moans, “not at all.” The publican commiserates in gentle, cooing tones. The lad gratefully accepts another cider.

On the road again, the capricious clouds part and we are treated to a cerulean blue sky, but with a stiff breeze. Just past the pub we stop to chat with a thatching crew who are refurbishing a stone cottage.

“I love thatched cottages, Karl.”

“They may look quaint,” Karl says gruffly, “but they are dirty and impossible to maintain.”

We have had this argument before.

The use of thatch for roofs dates to the Bronze Age in England. The materials used vary from sedge, flax, and broom to mere grass and straw. Neolithic hut-circles were often roofed with reeds spread over brushwood laid between the poles. The roofers here are using wheat straw. It is estimated that some 250 roofs in England today still have base layers of thatch that were placed over 500 years ago.

Victorians moved away from thatch in favour of tile roofs. Thatch was a symbol of poverty and was condemned as a fire hazard. But today there is a real revival of the “old ways,” and the swank businessman and his wife from the city demand that their West Country cottage be thatch-roofed. It is now considered chic.

At the south end of the village we encounter a lady in her garden cheerfully digging turf with an undersized spade. Overhead, her parrot sits in a dovecote-style cage, rudely talking back to her. She looks up at us, wipes her brow, and all three of us suddenly laugh. Then the parrot laughs. I admire her sea of electric blue cornflowers, clumps of hollyhocks, peonies, and lavender. We chat for several minutes and she offers us tea. We demur, thank her, and cross over a stile to enter a hidden coomb.

I relax and catch my breath in a hollow before the final ascent of the hill, enjoying a scene reminiscent of Hardy's
Far from the Madding Crowd.
Below me a shepherd walks through a narrow valley, herding sheep with the help of his collie. He is dressed in a tattered old wool coat, patched pants, and wellies. Surely I am in another century? I finally climb and crawl my way up the draw, through a spinney. I am looking for Karl's back but instead come face to face with two ruddy-cheeked golfers who are hunting in the brush for a ball. Below me to the south sprawls the historic market town of Sherborne. I was oblivious to the approach of urbanity; the golfers in turn are oblivious to the scene of the shepherd and his flock just below in the valley to the north. Parallel universes.

The sunken roads, enclosed gardens, and high hedgerows give England a three-dimensional look. It is unreal how a country smaller than Oregon appears so gargantuan when sliced up into so many little compartments. Indeed, landscape gardeners have long employed the tactic of creating mini-arboretums, nooks, and bowers so as to enhance the perception of size. Another clever device is the insertion of a “ha-ha” — a low hedge or fence unseen from the home — which gives the illusion of one's property extending to vast fields beyond. Add to this the English propensity to build mazes, and you have a fascinating rural landscape.

Karl is waiting for me in front of the clubhouse. Just beyond this point we enter narrow lanes with recently clipped hedgerows. From time to time on this section of the route from Cadbury into Dorset we encounter hedgerow trimmers, who are pruning the vines, yews, and hawthorn to promote denser growth. The laying of a new hedge must be done in late fall or winter. Branches are intertwined, and it is considered an ancient art to do it properly. The most popular trees for hedge-laying are hawthorn, blackthorn, and hazel. A top binding must be laid to keep it all together, and for this layer willow and hazel are favoured.

In Slavonic languages,
zhivy plod
means “living fence,” that is, a hedge. The word
hedge
comes from the Old English
hecke,
or “enclosure.” Indeed, the Enclosure movement resulted in thousands of miles of hedges being constructed in order to fence in animals and eliminate the common areas previously available to the peasantry. William Wordsworth lovingly referred to thick hedgerows as “little lines / Of sportive wood run wild.” George Eliot viewed the hedge as indissolubly tied to the personality of the countryside. In
The Mill on the Floss
she wrote, “We could never have loved the earth as well if we had had no childhood in it . . . These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows — such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination.”

As woodland areas decreased, the hedgerows became increasingly vital to sustain insects, birds, and small animals. The hawthorn, for example, attracts a variety of insects, including beetles and caterpillars, which most songbirds rely on in turn as a food supply. Hawthorn leaves were used for centuries by the peasantry for tea, and the flowers, like the elderberry, were used for making wine. Elderberry leaves are still used by some folk for lotions and ointments.

Hedges help with erosion and block wind far more efficiently than walls or fences. It is estimated that in southern England, as many as one fifth of all surviving hedgerows date from Saxon times. The hedgerow is, like the church and the castle ruins, an ancient yet living monument of the past. Together, hedgerows and cottage gardens represent England's greatest green resource.

The movement toward corporate-style agriculture began at the end of the nineteenth century and continued until very recently. The enormous enlargement of fields has led to a huge loss of hedgerows. There remain some 236,000 miles of hedges in England and Wales — a huge extent, but still less than half the total in 1945. Now hedgerows are being planted throughout the land to replenish green corridors. The 500,000 acres of hedges estimated to be extant in Britain in 1968 represent twice the area of all the country's nature reserves.

On the outskirts of Sherborne we tool around a corner and come to a halt beside what I can only describe as “trailer-park gardens” — all these ticky-tacky aluminum trailers sitting in a row, nestled into a wooded hill, surrounded by a flowing landscape of Japanese maples, honeysuckle, peonies, St. John's wort, irises, wild roses, poppies, cornflowers, sunflowers, lavender, and yellow celandines which so overwhelms the humble appearance of the abodes that for a moment I want to live in this paradise. What a rich panoply of colour and scents! Bees are humming, butterflies flitting. I see a small, bent-over, grizzled figure clad in a plaid shirt tending with love a little herb garden he has planted to the side of his trailer. A calico cat sits calmly beside him.

“More garden than I saw in half of northern France,” Karl says with a smile. “Of course, the Dutch wouldn't allow such random growth. Have you ever seen their rows of tulips?”

“Yes, and I find them far too regimented, though you probably love the neatness.”

“How far away did you say our next drink was?”

“Not far — the George Inn of Sherborne coming right up.”

“Why are there so many George Inns in this country?”

“That would have something to do with there having been six English kings named George.”

“Better get the move on, John — there's dirty weather approaching again.”

But I still stand transfixed gazing at the trailer-park gardens. For I realize that across the road is another feature of this unique spot: the huge abandoned rock quarry that at one time supplied much of the stone for Sherborne's buildings. The trailer park, I now see, was also part of the former quarry, and this otherwise ugly bowl, surrounded on both sides by towering rock scarps, has been reclaimed as a park — with paths, benches, and flowering trees. Instead of becoming a rundown, grungy trailer park, it has been transformed into an environment of living beauty and joy. It reminds me of a mini version of Butchart Gardens, near Victoria in British Columbia, one of the most popular attractions of western Canada, which is an arboretum established out of the hollows and detritus of a vast gravel pit.

The love of the English for gardening is well known, but how far back in time villagers enjoyed gardens is
not
known. The landed gentry have always boasted arboretums, orangeries, and well-manicured landscapes. After common fields were eliminated by Enclosure, villagers lobbied for yards and gardens of their own, abutting their cottages. Victorian legislators eventually agreed, believing that gardening would keep men away from the pubs. An eighth of an acre was considered adequate, enabling the villager to keep some chickens and a pig, plus grow potatoes and other vegetables and herbs used as medicines. If room could not be found in the village, then allotments were created in a spare field — and indeed there is a revival of allotments today, as we have seen en route.

A side effect of the Enclosure Acts, therefore, was the eventual sprouting of gardens everywhere, many of them walled. The cottagers, in a way, were mimicking the landed gentry, whose vast gardens had evolved into status symbols. A walled cottage garden became the Englishman's place of quietude, no matter how humble his dwelling. The first such gardens were purely utilitarian, catering to cultivation of veggies, herbs, and fruits.

Flora Thompson has written of the herb patch in the cottage garden, “stocked with thyme and parsley and sage for cooking, rosemary to flavour the homemade lard, lavender to scent the best clothes, and peppermint, camomile, tansy, balm and rue for physic.” The rural English love their herbs and readily identify with the lyrics of the ballad “Scarborough Fair,” a song memorably covered by Simon & Garfunkel but which derives from the medieval period.