Walking to Camelot (17 page)

Seek me no more where men are thick,

But in green lanes where I can walk

A mile, and still no human folk

Tread on my shadow.

—W.H. DAVIES—

“Return to Nature”

THE RUTTED TRACKWAY
cuts deeply into the Jurassic limestone. Tinkers, traders, and soldiers have followed this route for millennia. A few miles south of Cold Aston, the trail drops abruptly down a steeply wooded slope, and I slip and fall on my butt, slithering a few yards into a small ravine in the adjacent wood like a sack of spuds. My camera is caked in a detritus of mud, needles, and leaves. By the time I reach the surfaced track below, I am knackered and bruised. Karl is standing there with an amused expression. He points to a page in his
Guide
informing me that we have just emerged onto Bangup Lane, an ancient track connecting Cold Aston with Turkdean.

“And I must say, John boy, you do seem a trifle banged up.”

He seems chuffed, while my pride is injured — he's the old guy, so why am I the one falling down ravines? I don't know if I can ever get all the mud off my camera, and I shudder to think that the primordial ooze may have penetrated its interior. Why did I not have the presence of mind to bundle it up in the camera bag?

We slog along for two miles, past Bangup Cottage and Bangup Barn, then it's up another sunken lane overhung with dripping, moss-laden maple trees, to emerge in the village of Turkdean. No, I am not making these names up! The origins of many of them are completely lost. For instance, absolutely no one in this region has a clue as to the origin of the name Bangup. So many others are fascinating: Traitor's Ford, Corton Denham, Sutton Montis, Chipping Warden, Compton Valence, Farthingstone, Lower Slaughter, Obthorpe, Sandford Orcas, Prior's Coppice, Tongue End, Upper Oddington, Wyke Champflower, Duntisbourne Rouse, Canons Ashby, Castle Combe.
2

We leave Bangup Lane beyond Turkdean. Near a rusty horse trough we tear downward on a track that is slippery and steep; horses have churned the earth into a mucky mire. The hamlet of Lower Dean lies at the bottom, though the only sign of habitation is Castle Barn Farm. The
Guide
suggests a short diversion to Northleach, prime Cotswold walking country, so we hoof it down the track to explore this cream-stoned former market town.

An unusual attraction in Northleach is the Old Prison, which is unique in several ways. Firstly, it has made the longest journey possible for a prison — from a place of confinement to an upscale bistro and coffee shop. Secondly, it was built as part of a prison reform program in Britain that was to emphasize more enlightened treatment of prisoners convicted of minor offences. Hence the name here: “House of Correction.” Northleach was the brainchild of a reformer named Sir George Paul, who became high sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1780. He was horrified by prison conditions and much influenced by John Howard, who first brought to national attention the terrible conditions of Britain's jails. Henry Fielding dubbed the prisons of the day “prototypes of hell.”

Northleach House of Correction opened in 1791 and included a warden's house, female cells, police station, court-room, and exercise yard. Sir George paid meticulous attention to detail, even ensuring the water supply by having a stream channel routed through the prison yard. Pumps were installed; windows were built larger than ever before allowed; air circulation was improved; and proper beds of horsehair, hemp sheets, and a blanket were provided to each inmate. A separate cell block was installed for women prisoners. For its day, Northleach was an enlightened prison.

The liberal prison regime at Northleach regressed after Paul's death in 1820. In 1823 hard labour was introduced — initially via a hand-cranked corn mill, and then in 1827 by way of the tread-wheel. The wheel accommodated sixteen men at once, climbing eight-inch steps like hamsters on a treadmill. The inmates wore themselves out on this notorious device. The machine was a product of typical Victorian genius, as it combined the moral duty of society to punish an offender with the equally cherished virtues of hard work and production — as the spokes turned, the gears crushed grain. Most prisoners worked a gruelling eight-hour shift, a regimen that often led to injury, illness, or death.

“To think that an exercise treadmill is now used voluntarily by millions to keep fit,” says Karl, “when the whole idea of the machine came from that horrid prison device.”

“Are you saying, Karl, that the prisoners should have been grateful for being kept in shape?”

“Hell, no! I don't care for treadmills or jogging — only walking, with a nice pint or two along the way. Speaking of which?”

Back on the Way, Karl pushes on at his commando pace, while I dawdle with my camera. I even stop to chat with a handsome-looking lady with Italian features who resembles Meryl Streep in
The Bridges of Madison County
.
I spy her in black riding boots feeding some horses in her stable and ask if she would mind my taking her picture. She smiles and poses, tossing back her red kerchief over her long brown hair.

We stand in the sunshine chatting about photography and walking. She remarks that it must be terribly exciting to just pick up and leave with one's rucksack and explore the villages and byways. She invites me into her cottage for a cup of tea. Her husband, she says, is down in Devon looking at “more horses.” She rolls her eyes; they are beautiful flashing black eyes. I decline the tea invite, but thank her.

“Sometimes I really do wish I could just go off like you. We never holiday. I don't mind the work, you know, but it's always just the farm, farm, farm — and Jack won't even go on a weekender up to Scotland with me. Oh, he's a good man, very good, but the farm is his real mistress. It might have been different if we could have had children.”

Her hands tremble. I reach out and touch them for a moment.

Karl has stopped to wait for me half a mile ahead at a curious spot known as the Hangman's Stone. The “Stone” is just a large slab leaning against a rock wall. Tradition has it that a thief with a stolen sheep in his arms accidentally hanged himself while climbing over a stile that once stood in this wall.

“What took you so long, John?”

“Just photographing the lush countryside, Karl. If you slowed down, you might enjoy more of the sights.”

“Wooden head, wooden shoes, and wouldn't listen, my friend.”

The path takes us steadily downward. I stop every few minutes to drink in the sweeping views of surrounding hills and the valley of the River Coln below us toward Chedworth. We enter the village of Yanworth and are immediately struck by the neat, green-painted farm buildings and immaculate Cotswold cottages boasting window boxes, hanging baskets, low trimmed hedges, and finely edged herbaceous borders.

“Now this is my kind of village,” smiles Karl. “We could be in Holland. If only everyone maintained their gardens and homes this well! Neat as a pin.”

“I don't know, Karl, it's a little too regimented for me. Like those prissy cottages in Lower Slaughter. I rather favour the tangled, wild English garden look, with ivy taking off everywhere, wisteria overhead, and climbing roses out of control. Throw in a battered old sundial, and you have paradise.”

The vista from Yanworth looking south is now more defined, a landscape of patchwork fields, copses, a shimmering lake, and little streams meandering about. The path continues across a working farm and then on to Chedworth Villa, which many rate as the premier Roman villa site in Britain. The villa was discovered accidentally in 1864, when a gamekeeper found fragments of pottery in the riverbank. But the real credit for the find goes to a ferret. A farmer had placed his ferret at the entrance to a rabbit hole to root out the rabbits. Trouble is, this particular ferret became lost in the hole. In the course of digging Mr. Ferret out, his owner found to his surprise that the rabbits were enjoying the high life in a warren situated in a Roman bedroom floored with fancy tiles; further digging revealed a treasure trove of Roman artifacts. The ferret should have been pensioned off for life as a reward.

Chedworth boasts unique mosaics, two bathhouses, hypocausts, a water shrine, and a latrine. A child's coffin was found in 1935. The villa was fully operational between the second and fourth centuries. The Romans practised sophisticated heating techniques here, including two separate bathing suites, one for damp heat and one for dry heat. The mosaic-tiled floor in the dining room, for example, was floor-heated by means of hot air circulating in the flues. A natural spring provided the occupants with a clean, fresh source of water, and became the site of a shrine to the water nymphs. A fascinating place!

The villas were the forerunners of the landed manorial estates of the country gentry. Fortunately for the villa owners, the Anglo-Saxons who followed the Romans were primarily farmers and had a real interest in maintaining agricultural production. The evidence indicates that there was little of the wholesale destruction of the villa farming communities such as occurred later on the eastern coast of England with the incursions of the Vikings. The Anglo-Saxon settlers even adopted the concept of the
villein
as part of their agricultural hierarchy.

Interestingly, one of the owners of Chedworth Villa has been identified as a man called Censorinus, and there is an inscription on a silver spoon found on site that reads “May you be happy, O Censorinus.” This sounds like a birthday present or housewarming gift. Censorinus would have enjoyed a diet high in protein: deer, wild boar, eggs, and fish. He also ate oysters, snails, whelks, and mussels, as thousands of shells have been unearthed at Chedworth, plus a device for opening oysters.

Half a mile of thick woods separates Chedworth village from the villa site. En route we note much interesting flora — coppiced hazel, dogwood, bryony, and bluebells. I also stumble on a gigantic snail, which I later learn is unique to this locale and is called
Helix pomatia,
or the Roman snail. It is likely a descendant of the snails known to have been specially cultivated by the Romans for the table.

We tumble out of the woods into Chedworth village, which sits isolated in a sylvan valley. The welcoming Seven Tuns Inn faces a spring that bubbles out of a wall across the lane, and we refill our water bottles there. But a lady passing by tells us that the water is unfit for human consumption, so we empty them on the ground.

A piece of Chedworth village now lies in the state of Michigan. In 1930, Henry Ford purchased Rose Cottage, a dwelling nestled at the lower end of the village. He then had it transported, stone by stone — just like London Bridge — to a waiting ship, which took the cottage fragments across the pond, where it was reassembled at Greenfield Village near Dearborn, Michigan, a heritage community designed by the Ford family to celebrate traditional village life in America. The cottage can still be found there, surrounded by a Victorian flower garden planted with begonias, delphiniums, peonies, and herbs. Ford paid $5,000 for it.

Aside from its famous villa, the Chedworth area is known for another reason. William Smith became the father of British geology by mapping the story of the rock strata beneath Britain, including the fossil record. An important contribution to his understanding of the fossil record was “Chedworth buns,” round, shell-like objects typically measuring three and a half inches in diameter that have been ploughed up by farmers in fields between Stow and Chedworth for over ten centuries. The local populace dubbed them “fairy loaves,” but Chedworth Buns are actually the fossilized shells of urchins that lived in a warm shallow sea that covered central England 165 million years ago, during the Jurassic period.

The entry to the estate village of Rendcomb is dominated by the Italianate Rendcomb Court, now used as a coed boarding school. We check into Landage House, a lovely country mansion with an enthralling view of a pond, fields, and herds of sheep grazing peacefully below. There is even an outdoor heated pool. I could have stayed here for a week, swimming, strolling, and reading.

Too early for the pub, I stop at the village shop and buy a bottle of elderflower cordial to drink. Being parched, I quaff it down quickly. Karl stops me in the street and grabs the bottle from my hand.

“Good God, man, that's concentrate — don't tell me you drank it all!”

“Yes, and it was wonderful.”

“John, tonight you're really going to need your Pepto-Bismol. That concentrate should have been mixed with water to make a whole two litres' worth!”

He was too right; my stomach groaned all night. Somehow all that concentrate did not mix well with a bottle of peppery Shiraz consumed over dinner.

The
Guide
provides for an alternative route south of Rendcomb in order to visit the market town of Cirencester, a place steeped in Roman influences. We decide to put on some extra mileage by traipsing five miles to town and then five miles back to rejoin the main path. This will add an extra day to our overall journey.

For once Karl is keeping a moderate, even pace. I enjoy the twists and turns of the River Churn as we wend our way through lush interlocking meadows dotted with hyacinths and wild irises.

The hamlet of Perrott's Brook lies in the isolated River Churn Valley. It is on the medieval route known as the Welsh Way, which from 1400 was the chief conduit for Welsh drovers to herd their sheep and cattle to market in London. Up to two thousand animals at a time were driven along the track. Wagons also transported cloth and cheese products through here to be loaded onto Thames barges at Lechlade.

The Bear Inn in Perrott's Brook was ideally situated for accommodating travellers along the Welsh Way, and became a favourite coaching stop. It finally closed its doors in 2002 but is now a
B&B
. In the eighteenth century, there was a second inn across the road “compleatly fitted up and accomodated for the Entertainment of Gentlemen and Travellers,” with “a Dog-Kennel neatly compleated and a Pack of Hounds kept to pleasure any Gentlemen that like the Diversion of Hunting.”