When is a hill not a hill? That is the question....

Right after last week's wash out  Mynydd y Garth it was, come hell or high water!   Immortalised in the film  The Englishman who went up a Hill but came down a Mountain,  is it tall enough to be a mountain or is it a mere hill? 

This was our first view of it from the bridge in Taff Wells after having left the car near the railway station. I was now starting to have second thoughts about this as I'm not a great lover of climbing steep hills ( or mountains!) Still as it was my idea in the first place I wasn't getting out of it that easily.

Nearly 2 hours later and the top is in view. The actual trig point is on top of an early Bronze age burial mound  (estimated at 2000BCE) which is considered to be the source of the tale and is officially 1007ft so - yes a mountain!

The burial mound is getting badly damaged by the number of visitors it gets and there were 3 or 4 mountain bikers cycling over it when we arrived.  A deep gouge ( path)  worn into the side bears mute witness to the stream of visitors. There are a number of smaller circular mounds nearby but they are dwarfed by the main one.


The view from the top must be magnificent  on a clear day. We could just about make out the turrets of Castell Coch rising from the mist, along with the second Severn crossing and Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.

We took another route down - much steeper and very badly eroded in places  but the views were magnificent. The path took us down into that pine forest before we ended up back at the car in Taff Wells.

The total route was about 5 miles but it was heavy going in places. Welsh hillsides are often boggy and this one was no exception. It never fails to amaze me just how much water can accumulate on top of a hill when you would expect it to find its way down. Hopping from one tussock to another gets old very quickly and as for the stile in the middle of a stream....

The lower slopes on the steeper side were much better drained with this being one little rivulet that crossed our path.

Rain rain go away

The weather here today is so dreadful that the weekend wander had to be cancelled.  The delights of "almost spring" I guess.  I was planning to climb Garth Hill and visit the burial mounds but the wind and rain would have made it a miserable experience.

Always next week though. 

On the Level

Despite  no let up in the strong winds this weekend I thought I'd venture out anyway as it wasn't actually raining.

A necessary trip for some new walking trousers selected the direction so it was to South Somerset we headed and the village of Burrowbridge.

I've been passed Burrow Mump many times but have never before stopped and climbed it so despite the dull day  why not now?

Mump is Anglo Saxon for Hill and the remains of St Michael's Church are now an official war memorial. The overall impression is of a minature Glastonbury Tor. The Tor itself was just visible on the horizen.

Although the views from the top are spectacular  I was unable to capture the panoramas entirely to my satisfaction.

The view to the left is over towards Athelney ( of King Alfred and the burnt cakes fame)

Swing round 90 degrees though and the view is entirely different. The wetlands are spread out below you and teeming with wildlife.





 

The church itself is now in poor condition with hawthorn bushes growing inside. Despite the howling gale the inside of the church was very sheltered and the hawthorn was even starting to put out some new leaves.

 Although some Roman   finds have been made there, nothing ealier seems to have been found. I would be very surprised though if the site wasn't in use from a much earlier date.

Stocks & Stones

I've been passing through Faulkland about twice a month now for years but have never bothered to actually stop and look at the stones which are clearly visible from the road.

So today was the day. Nice and early when no one was about as the stones are in the middle of the village green, surrounded by houses and I hate being conspicuous!

There are other stones around  one of which can be seen in the picture alongside.

An interesting feature is the use of the stones to frame a set of stocks - I've never seen them in use  by the way!

I'm told they date from the 16-17th century.

The Grey Mare & her Colts

The Grey Mare is the remains of a neolithic long barrow near Abbotsbury in Dorset. Now a rather disordered heap of stones it dates from around 3000BCE.

The capstone has slipped but it is still an impressive monument even if it is close to a field gate. At least there were no cows although they had left plenty of evidence of their presence!

This was a pleasant stroll from the Kingston  Russell Stone circle although it was further than we expected and a lot of peering through bushes occured in case we were walking past it on the wrong side of the hedge!. Once we were close enough though it was hard to miss.

The Kingston Russell circle itself was very hard to photograph and surrounded by a standing crop. There are certainly better pictures than mine available but for what it is worth - here is a bit of it

This is an English Heritage site and they had a helpful sign pointing in the right direction as the circle itself was almost completely obscured by the barley crop.

Too much of a good thing!

Being an inveterate magpie I have a habit of picking up interesting “bits and pieces” during my wanderings and have managed to acquire a rather large collection of rocks and pebbles over the years – there is definitely a limit to how many boxes of them can be considered reasonable and I have now exceeded that ( and then some!).

So what to do with them? A friend on another forum said she was going to buy a “stepping stone” kit to make something for her garden. This sparked the idea.

Having never seen a stepping stone kit in the UK, I was obviously going to have to start from scratch. A check of the garage revealed that there was no concrete lurking deep in its depths so a trip to the builder’s merchant was required for the basic cement/aggregate mix and some sand.

Having got them home I then used a soil sieve to remove the larger pebbles from the concrete mix.

Next was a mould – I used an old sweet tin, one that had previously held wrapped chocolates and because it had a “lip” at the top I lined it with cardboard so I’d be able to get the stepping stone out. A completely smooth interior would be better but I couldn’t find anything suitable and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for a commercial mould.

Once a couple of inches of concrete had been poured into the mould I was able to concentrate on the fun bit – making the design. I chose a sun wheel motif for this one. If you use quick drying concrete you’d need to have this pre-planned and ready to go but as I was using the traditional mix I had plenty of time to keep changing my mind.

You need to push the stones well in to ensure that they stick but not so far that they disappear.

The whole thing was allowed to set for a couple of days before unmolding. I was really pleased with the way it turned out and it is now the basis of an outdoor shrine in the back garden.

I’ve still got a huge number of stones to find a use for so all ideas are welcome.

Ancient cookery

There is a fairly important archeological dig going on a few miles from where we live and every so often they have an open day to allow people to look around and see what is going on. Sometimes there are some special events and I go occasionally.

Last time there was a demonstration of ancient cookery. The picture isn't great, it was hot and smoky and raining to boot and I didn't get as close as I should have.

The cooking was done in a fire pit on hot stones. There was a basic bread made from spelt grain and roasted hazelnuts which tasted a lot better than you would think.

Coming home I decided to experiment myself with spelt as a bread grain. Spelt flour is reasonably easy to obtain and there are plenty of recipes on the internet.

I've used This one several times now with great success. I've made both loaves and rolls. The main downside is that it goes stale fairly quickly but that isn't generally a problem around here!