FINDING THE SNOW ON THE MOORS

So, I finally arrived in Totnes to visit Alexandra for the weekend, and it was good to see familiar faces. Jack is growing rapidly and Lily is very beautiful. I felt very welcomed and was spoilt with good food and good conversation. We had a good natter about Waldorf education and its nuances. When we got into mathematical principles, surprisingly everyone around Alexandra and I went to bed. I’m not sure why.

We woke up the next day not so early and Alastair’s telescopic eyes noticed that in the far distant hills of Dartmoor, there was a glistening of SNOW. Well spotted, Bruce! So we decided to head in that direction, optimistically with a sled, boots, jackets and hats. This was my new hat, a birthday present from my wonderful sister, who is so worried I wont be warm enough.
We went via Plymouth to pick up Alastairs computer, and there was an amazing modern building, at Drakes circus behind an old ruined church bombed in the war that offset each other in the most dramatic way. I didn’t have time to photograph it so this is from Wikipaedia.

Apparently much of Plymouth was destroyed in the war, and so there is much experimental architecture. It appears that many people hate this building, but I felt it was amazing!
We drove on to Dartmoor, which previously I had somehow circumnavigated last time I went to visit Alexandra. It is amazingly different to the rest of England. Quite stark.

This is where the famous Prison is..and it is an unfriendly place in mid winter with icy winds and endless moors. However there is much that is beautiful, with wild hairy Dartmoor ponies and sheep. However, a little village in the middle has the usual, not very far away pubs and inns. We drove to the highest point, and sure enough, there was snow. The whole world also arrived and there was an army of snowmen scattered around. We had a gentle snowball battle, my first attempt at sledding, which was not very successful .This is Lily getting ready to go.

and built a snowman and a snow dog.

When we were cold enough we went to a pub that served tea with huge scones and Devonshire clotted cream and a warm fire. jack had made a mini snowman and attached it to the bonnet of the car. It traveled all the way home much to his glee, as he had bet Alastair that it would get there, despite Alexandras crazy driving.

It was getting dark when we wended our way back to Totnes. And even though there was not that much snow by most people’s standards, I was happy. It may be all the snow I will see

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day was wonderful sunny day although freezing cold and  I headed on a round journey to another moor..Exmoor..a drive high along the coast with a view to Wales, moor ponies,

where I had hot chocolate heated in my boot and lunch but there were also steep dark valleys and eery lanes. Not a place to drive at night.

I hurried off home and lo and behold, picked up my first speeding fine for going 37mph in a 30mph zone! (you have to go this speed through every village, and there are many villages. Thats why you cant hurry anywhere and why distances seem much further than they are. Not bad for all my driving,though. Here they give you the option to attend a workshop rather than pay the fine (which is hectic at R2200 plus 3 points off your license! they dont joke around here)..okay you have to pay for the workshop, and you can only do it once every three years. I wont be rushing in a hurry!

MISSING THE SNOW AND FINDING STONEHENGE

As you may know, snow is a rarity in South Africa, so I was upset that I missed the snow that came after my visit to Yorkshire. We just had either rain or ice and nothing in between. However, having given up on that possibility, I went off to visit Alexandra and her family in South Devon, deciding to take a detour via Stonehenge and go along the coast as far as possible, since I was heading south already. As I left Nailsworth, it started sleeting, and I thought that I would miss the snow again as I was heading out.

Anyway, after a long and winding journey I finally came to Amesbury, the town before Stonehenge, and knew that the main road, the A303,  went past it. I just wanted to experience seeing it in its strange, at- the- side- of- a- busy road setting. Not quite knowing exactly where it was, and expecting a sweet little English town nearby, as with Avebury, I was amazed to see a huge modern industrial park contrarily called Solstice Park with all the Mac donalds, KFC, Holiday Inns and Toby Carveries. The modern form of Stonehenge? Where you go with your family for a feast.

Well I stopped and was amazed to see that the roads were also named after everything Stonehengey like Equinox road. However between the great big ugly buildings there were two interesting sculptures. One is the Ancestor sculpture made of metal 24m high of an ancestral man on his knees apparently greeting the sunrise. Created by Michelle Topps and Andy Rawlings. He looks out of place here in front of a modern building, and to me he seems to be pleading with the Gods with his back to the modern world. He has apparently been moved to the Glastonbury festival and to the solstice festival and Stonehenge but he seems lost and in the wrong place here.
The other sculpture, also hidden by signs and bushes is a helicopter that has been transformed into a dragonfly by Charlotte Moreton and some aeronautical engineering apprentices. Apparently there is another sculpture of a red kite by her, but with all the advertising signs, I could not find it.

Anyway, I succumbed to a cheap breakfast where you can eat as much as you like for R80, and watched some rather obese young men loading their plates with bacon, I drove on to Stonehenge. The traffic was very slow, luckily, not because everyone was looking at stonehenge, but more because the road thinned out from dual carriageway to single lane. However,  I could watch at my leisure, as you are not allowed to stop on the road, and must enter through the main entrance. It is amazing to see this odd huge pile of stones. You simply cannot ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist.

So I went to the visitor centre, as I had read Bill Bryson’s very funny take on it, where he saw it as the modern equivalent of Stonehenge. Although I thought that Solstice park was the modern equivalent.
And yes, it certainly was strange..you almost didn’t need to go to the monument itself. It was in a huge warehouse trying to look artistic.

Outside were depictions of the houses that people lived in at the time, which were essentially rondawels..in fact not different at all! Apparently rondavels have been re-invented a number of times in different parts of the world, and at different times, but I cant actually believe that, as they are so similar as to be identical. When did Australopithecus Afra arrive in Britain? Or maybe it was much later? Like in 3000 BC when Stonehenge was established, where ancestor worship..so much part of Africa was also here. Where the stones of Stonehenge look so much like Cape Sandstone. Lots of questions. perhaps the people were black and not white? In the centre they had made a model of a resident near stonehenge, and he was very white..a bit like the reconstruction of Jesus as a European when he was quite middle-Eastern.
They also had a model of the stones and how they believed they were moved from 30 miles away. All possible, but I prefer to believe the improbable.

The weather was icy, and I considered walking about 500m to the monument. (you couldn’t see it from the visitor center). They had buses that could take you at a price of R300! Instead I wandered around the visitor centre where people ate breakfast and drank coffee.

They had a central circular room with the stones projected onto the walls as if they were complete and you were in the centre. The projection changed to different seasons and different times so that you got a sense of what it would be like to be there at that time.

However, there were so many tourists taking photos and posing that you could not find that sense. I will have to come back during the summer solstice when it is free to go to the monument and a little bit warmer. Instead I bought the T-shirt for R300, which said Stonehenge est. 3000 BC. So, I’ve been there, done that, but mainly got the T-shirt! (Its for you, Byron).

Two short trips to Wales

On two consecutive weekends, I decided to go to Wales, which is not far away from Nailsworth, essentially to get to the sea, which I have not seen much of (unless you count the cold and windy brief glimpse of the mouth of the Severn at Weston super-mare. (a very strange name for something British..nothing is super in Britain..its more of an American term. ) I expected it to be super..you know super big, super organised, but found it to be a dull depressing stretch of beach

and (yes) super big budget shops. The super in the names actually means “above sea” An area of great wealth discrepancies and many poor. Unfortunately I missed the Banksy exhibit called Dismaland called a bemusement park (a play on Disneyland)which brought in 20 million in 2 months! More than double what was expected even though it charged a measly 3 pounds entrance (compared to 10-15 pounds in many historical sites. Britain has become an expensive tourist destination, where people prefer cheaper sunnier holidays in Europe.
Yay Banksy!
Anyway, this post is not about Weston Super-mare, but a quest to find the seaside. So I was told that the nearest place to go would be Cardiff in Wales. However, Cardiff was separated from Nailsworth by the Severn river which is in full flood, having only 3 crossing areas. The first is at Gloucester, where the river is still narrow, the second is a long bridge built a while ago closer to the mouth of the Severn, and the third is the very long new bridge even closer to the mouth. The quickest way would be to go on the new bridge, but theres the problem. There are toll roads on both bridges, charging the equivalent of R120 if you go from England to wales, but surprisingly no charge if you go from Wales to England! Strange ways of doing business! Anyway, I decided then, since I was not in a hurry, to go via Gloucester into Wales, and then return via the big bridges so that I don’t pay..clever thinking.

So on the first weekend, I forged towards Gloucester, saw a boot sale on the way, and being a cheapskate addict I just had to stop. Besides the huge amount of junk for sale..luckily I could not buy too much as I wouldn’t be able to take it home, there was an entire barber shop on wheels and coffee served out of the hatch back of a car with the full works.

I went over along the other side of the Severn. Found that the trees are infested with mistletoe, which I had been trying unsuccessfully to pick as they normally grow too high up. So I got a bunch..fascinating stuff.

In South Africa we have very little mistletoe and I know of only one place it is to be found and the African variety, although a recognized African remedy has almost no leaves, contrasted with the European varieties that have large leaves that form the only foliage still left on winter trees.
I found a craft centre that had good old Antropos lettering called Taurus crafts with a HUGE bull sculpture made of wood and unnoticed by most a moebius strip sculpture, which only I would have noticed the significance of, which I photographed from various angles.

Here I also found a leather crafter who made exquisite leather masks of the Green man and other pagan images. I didn’t find much else that was anthroposophical, but there was some beautiful pottery
I found a few other weird roadside sculptures;

I headed for Chepstow, the first city in Wales and lo and behold I found my first real castle! Yes, it was old grey and dominating..kind of quite frightening. It was where the Wye river (so much lauded by Wordsworth) met the Severn before widening into dangerous mudflats into the sea.

The minute you enter Wales, the signs are written in two languages..English and welsh, which is the weirdest language I have encountered, having lots of y’s

Chepstow, or Cas-gwent, in Welsh..don’t ask me how to pronounce it,  is a Norman castle perched high above the banks of the river Wye in southeast Wales. Construction began at Chepstow in 1067, less than a year after William the Conqueror was crowned King of England. Built by his loyal Norman lord William FitzOsbern. FitzOsbern’s fortresses were the vehicles from which the new king consolidated control of his newly conquered lands. Chepstow Castle became the key launching point for expeditions into Wales, expeditions that eventually subdued the rebellious population. These are some of the most important (or hated) men of Norman-Welsh history. From the British point of view, the main identifiers of the Norman invaders were the language they spoke (a variant of French) and their tendency to build intimidating castles everywhere. (Prior to the Norman occupation, both the Anglo-Saxons and the Celtic Britons before them had lived in smallish communities built on hill tops. )

The Welsh, luckily, tend to keep their ruins like ruins rather than doing them up for tourists. They also don’t charge so much to get in. I like this about Wales.

By the time I had wandered around Chepstow castle, It was getting too late to get to the sea, so I found the old bridge road going over the Severn. It was a huge bridge and quite terrifying, being prohibited from stopping, I tried to photograph rather dangerously.

On the other side was a welcome to England sign, which was quite strange as I hadn’t realized I left. There was a view point on the other side, but it was characterized by the ugliest building I have yet seen in England, naturally an insurance headquarters.

THE SECOND TRIP

On the second trip, I went with Agathe, our new French volunteer, as I still wanted to see the sea, as did she. We spent too long again at the boot sale. Agathe was worse than I when it came to bargains.

We went a different route to try to find Tintern Abbey, which is also a lovely ruin. We took a tea break on the top of a hill in the highest point of the Forest of Wye area, and found this odd sculpture. We couldnt quite work out what the guy was doing but had our own ideas. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent time in a childrens playground riding the foofy slide,

and found this strange circle of sculptures of some legendary beings.

 

amongst others looking at a stone centre was Sabrina of Hafren and king Arthur. They were created by sculptors Neil Gow and John Hobbs between 2002 and 2003.

Sabrina is goddess of the river Severn that separates South Wales from England. She was the daughter of a married English king and a woman called Elfridis. The king’s wife allegedly had Sabrina and her mother thrown into the river, where Sabrina became a goddess of healing.

In Wales the second Severn bridge is sometimes called Pont Hafren after the goddess and the river.

We did not spend too long at the Abbey, which was a wonderfully ruined cistercian monastry also quite dark and forbidding despite the beautiful paintings by Turner and poetry by Wordsworth.

We were still trying to get to the sea. It was already getting late at Chepstow, and we decided to head back, but this time over the new bridge. Well, it was HUGE, and Agathe tried to photograph, but the over safety conscious Brits had put up huge unsightly barriers on both sides! The bridge itself was amazing.