OF FOLK & BORDERS

From time to time I collaborate with my friends, artist Hannah Willow and storyteller, Phillip Holmes, to produce workshops celebrating British folklore and legends . Alas, much of this year’s program has been cancelled but previous workshops, held at Avebury and Tintern in Wales, have focused on lore related to corvids and the element of ‘air’. Both included birds as messengers and portents and migratory birds were especially significant, suddenly arriving and leaving later as the year rolls towards winter…

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Many of us have a ‘go to place’ and one of ours is the lovely beach just north of Aberdovey, overlooking the lost Cantre r Gwaelod, the drowned lowland hundred of Cardigan Bay. This huge expanse of land was lost long ago swallowed up by a deluge according to legend and song. As you can see, I have shed the boot and crutch for a stylish stick. We spent a few pleasant hours looking at the horizon, imaging the lost…

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This is my first official blog entry, despite lots of notes and intended submissions over the last two or three years. So, I am jumping off into the World of Blog, despite my inept IT skills before more times passes. A major set back a few weeks ago was the fracturing of my fibula in an attempt to rescue some ducklings and their mother for the local wildlife rescue. Hopefully they were able to resolve their problems getting to the…

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September 2017 It was 5.30am, dark, a chill in the air. I had to force myself out of bed. Dan looked at me in horror as I herded him out into the car in the drizzle and half light (he is not a morning dog). It was either now or wait another year. I have wanted to attend the Horn Dance at Abbots Bromley in the Forest of Needwood for over 30 years. This was the day! The horn dance…

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September 2017 It was our new Barefoot caravan, Mollie’s, maiden voyage and we had driven through pouring rain up into the wet Welsh mountains of Snowdonia to find that the pitch we thought had been reserved for us was no longer available! It was getting dark and folk were coming down off the mountains due to the awful weather and we were feeling dejected and wet. Then the blessed sat-nav took us down a blind lane and I had to…

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August 2017       After a drizzly start the sky was clearing as myself and Dan, the dog,started up Titterstone Clee Hill or, according to one seventeenthcentury map, Stitterstone Hill, one of the Clee Hills, (Housman’s‘Blue Remembered Hills’ of Shropshire). Shropshire is blessedwith a number of Holy Wells and I wanted to visit John the Baptist’sWell at Hope Bagot, on the other side of the hill. But, as the carstarted to climb up the hill we came across a…

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Welcome to my new blog! I have uploaded a few earlier pieces I never got round to posting partly because they are favorites but also because my ramblings have been curtailed this summer due to a broken ankle! So here is the first from August 2017…. Mix a few old tales, some archaeology and a dash of pre-history and you’ve got my attention! A warm and sultry morning in early August seemed like a good day to drive over to…

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