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| Knap Hill - Neolithic causewayed Enclosure. Cold and bleak in the Pewsey Valley |
Walking: Do we do it for health or for the marvels of the natural world. I expect both. I miss taking a dog for a walk. My last dog Lucy did not like walking particularly especially as she grew older. She did not like other dogs, was queen in her own garden and sleeper on the sofa, till she was too old to jump up. I miss her still, even her mad moments. Goodness knows where they came from, my daughter would probably say she was on The Spectrum, apparently we all are. It gets you in the end, all those funny ways you have can be attributed to a particular happening in childhood maybe, there are plenty of initials to describe what you are suffering from. Just don't grab too many.....
Moss my collie was my favourite walking dog, sensible creatures collies are. They can find paths through gorse or heather and get you back to the car if you get lost.
The Knap Hill photo brought back memories of Pewsey Vale, they now have a Crop Circle information centre at Honeystreet if you want to visit.
But in 2006 as I sat in the bleak cold mist with Moss rolling his ball down the slope and then leaping forward to catch it, I found what I wrote on TMA...
Visited Knap Hill early in February, a cold misty day and most of my photos reflect this. Adams Grave is probably contemporary with Knap Hill and the landscape round here is luminous with the past. If someone from the neolithic past had sat down beside me and Moss on top of that hill I would'nt have been surprised. We would both have been looking at a lunarlike landscape, hills and downs defined by sharply etched lines that meet the plain below. Perhaps in neolithic times the land below would have been marshy and tree covered, but in the distance Picked Hill would have stood out, as did Silbury in its time, was it a sacred hill? could the inhabitants of Knap hill look out and brooded on the meaning of life as they went about their daily tasks - who knows.. But this area is so imbued with man's need to imprint himself within the landscape, The Wansdyke on the other side of Adams Grave reminds one of this. The colossal effort that went into making one's mark, whether in death, or defence, or as a boundary to define the edges of territory.
That crop circle site is annoying. It keeps taking you back to 'latest information'. A friend of mine was one of the Honey Street makers of crop circles. They sit around in the Barge Inn laughing at the people who visit the centre. I saw a real one in the early 1970s. Perfectly circular with the long grass all bent in the same direction and about 20 feet across. I had never heard of them before that but at the time I put it down to little whirlwinds. I still do.
ReplyDeleteYes the clever mathematical minds that created the later crop circles were not very well liked by the farmers. We occasionally went to the Barge Inn as it was on the route to Pewsey church where Paul's parents were buried. I can see the older circles in the link, perhaps you have to play with it a bit more Tom. I had a 16 year old language student once who totally believed it was aliens that made the circles..
DeleteI miss archaeology. Round here many of the sites are at hilltop level and I would struggle to reach them. Hence the churches and Early Christian Monuments etc.
ReplyDeleteCrop circles - pretty but I never thought for a minute they were anything more than man-made - but by folk with a definite mathematical bent. I'll stick to words.
I think the churches are beautiful around your area Jennie. Remembering Knap Hill C/E and there was another at Avebury, Windmill Hill C/E, which still had barrows inside the enclosure. Visited in the depths of winter but now I feel the cold constantly so archaeology is put on the back burner.
DeleteOur dog loves walking but we have such a huge problem with ticks that I'm nervous taking him on wooded trails. Mostly we stick to our neighbourhood streets.
ReplyDeleteWe also have a problem with ticks, though I don't think it is a big problem in Britain but there are plenty of deer around as well.
DeleteI have never been able to choose my favourite dog - they have all been dogs until my last of all - Tess - and she was a bitch - very different in tamperament but all loveable and all well trrained. Miss them still.
ReplyDeleteI occasionally watch 'Max in the Lake District' someone with three dogs, though Max has sadly died very recently. But their walks in this beautiful district compensates somewhat to not being able to walk a dog Pat.
ReplyDeleteThat view! Coming in from Amsterdam to the Birmingham airport and seeing those vast expanses of green marked off into neat little squares by the hedgerows...I can't explain it really. I never hoped to actually see the sight of that with my own eyes. It was so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIt is neat and tidy Debby but when our friends came over from America and we took them around Wales, the thing Loie said 'was why don't they cut all the hedges down' ;) Paul and I were speechless....
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