Pagans, monks and wiccans

I am in the small hamlet of North Hill, just completed my seventh day of walking. I caught up on my journal three days ago and have been keeping up since. It was then, in Lostwithiel, over a Betty Stog Ale, that I started writing a post. It’s been a work in progress since but it never felt quite right. Perhaps it is because my mood has shifted over that period and the writing hasn’t quite kept up. 

Starting on the wild Cornish coast, wind gusting, whipping from all directions, temperatures in the low 40’s F, my mood was ebullient, a challenge awaiting. That was then. I’ve just come down from Bodmin Moor, one of England’s wild places. After a week of slogging through mud, finding alternative routes, walking through streams that should have been footpaths, and backtracking through fields because of locked gates that should have provided public access, the moor got the better of me. 

So let me wind the clock back. I had several thoroughly enjoyable experiences that first day and I’d like to share three with you now: Carn Les Boel, meeting Trevor, and Boscawen Un. 

I began early Monday morning at Land’s End Hostel, a mile or so march from Carn Les Boel where the way begins. Along the Southwest Coast trail, the near gale gusts make the temperature feel even colder. I bundle up in everything I have available to me. My watch cap set on my head, one glove on, the other at the ready, I am glad I opted not to save pack weight by cutting back on warming layers. 

Starting on April 30 is propitious. The pagan holiday Beltane is celebrated the first three mornings of May. Along the way to Glastonbury, I’ll be passing stone circles, standing stones, holy wells, and early churches. I will be hearing about a "wise woman" and walking the Mary Michael earth energy lines dowsed in the late 1980’s. Pagans, monks and wiccans. 

On my treks, I leave myself open to all cultures and spiritualities. My walking meditations have been beneficial. Who knows where they come from or what might instigate their onset. 

My first sighting of Carn Les Boel is from across a steep valley at the bottom of which a small but powerful stream tumbles to the ocean. With my fear of heights and carrying a heavier than usual pack, I ask myself whether it is worth the effort of picking my way down the rocks and up the steep rise on the other side then back again to this spot which is already on the way. Well, I might decide to pass on other sites, but how could I not start at the point where the trail begins. 

I slowly work my way down eroding paths, deep rills created by this winter’s heavier than usual rain. I cross a short wooden slat bridge and climb failing wooden stops that create now disappearing steps out of the hillside. The approaching view shows immense blocks of stone that appear as a fortification.

Carn Les Boel marks the the point where the Mary Michael energy lines first touch England. For some, this spot has spiritual significance. For others, it’s mark is historical. In 700 BC, the Phoenicians landed at Nanjizal Bay, just below the carn, having spied thin black seams of tin in the weather beaten bluffs. They pounded the black seams with stones to loosen the metal critical to Bronze Age culture. They also searched the beach below for metal fallen from the heights above as the rock eroded, using sheep skins to separate the tin from sand as one would pan for gold. 

Trevor Rogers, who’s book proclaims I Have Pagans in my Garden says "It’s nothing to do with magic or religion." The carn is a remnant of an Iron Age furnace that employed the high winds sweeping onshore to raise the temperatures enough to smelt iron ore, the resulting small lumps of metal critical to civilization’s next advance. 

Spiritual or not? Who’s belief is correct? Both of course. Some see the rational and practical; others are more tuned to the sensual. Is there a deeper meaning? No judgement here. But situated as it is on this dramatically sculpted land, clouds moving swiftly in the wind, a palette of greens and blues on earth, sea and sky, one cannot deny that there is a feeling of the sublime here, the raw power of nature. And it is not too much to imagine that the early occupants of Cornwall sensed it as well and marked this place special. 

Standing next to the carn, I am buffeted by the winds, my large pack a sail pushing me back and sideways away from the rock that stands strangely solo on the flat of the bluff top. I catch my breath, reach out to touch the boulder and retreat. I am ready to begin. 

Four miles into my walk, I search out Trevor, eighty eight years young. He asks me into the home he restored from a ruin and puts a kettle up for coffee. We spend an hour in conversation. 

The Phoenicians found tin in the waters cascading to the beach, the same stream I crossed to get to the carn. They followed it inland to what is now Trevor’s land. There they discovered waters bubbling up from the ground, through a small rock enclosure. As worshippers of the Earth goddess Demeter, they held the well as a place of special significance. Fast forward some 2,300 years, in the mid-16th century, a wise woman, Alsia, occupied the property. The well is named for her. 

Alsia was an herbalist. She was the family doctor when healing was a mysterious art. Trevor tells me she aided in midwifery and unwanted pregnancies. She wasn’t paid with money, but with a bag of corn, other food or supplies, whatever was of value in the barter economy. As we finish our coffees and I put on my pack, Trevor reminds me to use the tenth century stairs nearby that King Athelstan built along the path to the church at St. Buryan. To celebrate his victory over the Scilly Isles off the coast of Lands End, the king established a monastery there, one of the first in Cornwall. 

Trevor and I wish each other well and I carry on towards St. Buryan. 

Ten miles into the day’s walk, I am growing frustrated at the number of overgrown stiles I must climb and muddy fields I have to navigate. At one gate, there is no choice but to stand in boot sucking muck as I undo the latch, ooze almost topping my boots. I continue down a muddy path, brush, fence and walls separating me from the fields on either side.

At  the next gate I see a flash of red plaid flannel shirt that resolves into a figure with longish flying grey hair. "I hope it’s worth it," I say as I push the gate open. "It is," Martin replies. 

It is! Boscawen Un is a place of mystery and, yes, energy. It is one of the very few original and complete stone circles in Cornwall. Eighteen short pillars of granite and one of quartz set in a slight ellipse. At the center is a taller granite pillar, set to an angle, unlike any other in Cornwall, perhaps anywhere, to my knowledge. 

Researchers have determined the cant is original and intentional, for what purpose remains unknown. It is hard to describe the sense of awe at viewing something created by the human hand 5,000 years ago, around the time the Hebrew Bible records the epic flood. I circumambulate, speechless. I am not good at judging and I don’t know how far the stones extend below ground level but they must weigh many hundreds perhaps thousands of pounds. How did they do it? Why did they do it? The short answer is, we don’t really know. 

After a convivial conversation with Martin, I turn to head back out the way I came. Then, thinking of all the mud I had come through, I decide that I have had enough of that for the day, and plot a course to the nearest road. Only hard surfaces from there to Penzance. 

This blog was never meant to tell you about all the picturesque things I see, nor what I eat, nor every travail. So in abbreviated fashion: The next several days take me along sections of the Southwest Coast trail, past St. Michael’s Mont (a fraternal, not identical, twin to Mont St. Michel in Bretagne), a wonderful stay in Penryn, a lovely morning’s walk along the Fal estuary. But almost every public footpath I take, every field I cross, is dense with new growth, heavily thorned with what must be at least several years of neglect, or muddy. So much mud that I decide to modify my route to travel more hard surfaces. I miss some pearls, the term used by Richard, the author of the guidebook I am using that contains so much excellent research and insight, to refer to the many sites along the way. 

Because of the time I have available for this walk, I planned to take public transport for parts of the route. So this is a disappointment but not a devastating one. And it is not that I don’t attempt field crossings or use footpaths or bridleways, but for the most part, the times I use them, I suffer for it. 

All this has taken a toll. The path as laid out is not an easy one, so many hills and boggy paths in the best of times, but the heavier than usual winter rains and the paths not yet cleared of new growth either by maintenance or usage, have increased the difficulty. So by the time I reach Bodmin Moor, I find myself less able to handle the challenges I encounter. 

Today, I enter the moor at Minions, past The Hurlers, a stone circle with similarities to and better known than Boscawen Un, but in far less pristine condition. The moor sits close above a granite layer, evident everywhere. I climb to the top of The Cheesewring using the granite strewn along the slope as footfalls 

At the top, I am in awe. If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I recently hiked in the desert for the first time. In a way Bodmin Moor reminds me of it. Not dry. Not brown. Green. Wet. But you can feel it's power. Across its expanse, the moor is undifferentiated. Yes, of course there are noticeable features. But in the same way cosmologists claim the universe is flat despite the concentrations of normal matter that make up galaxies, I sense the moor is flat despite its hills and tors. Plopped down in the middle, without map or GPS, turned round a few times, one would not sense any difference no matter what direction they looked. 

I try to pick out my path from the top of The Cheesewring. I have an idea of where it is but a wall of strewn granite and the heavy pack makes it difficult to achieve it. I climb back down the way I came up and attempt to find the path from there. I probe several different alternatives, even a bit of overland walking. But here, too, I am met with formidable challenges, impenetrable brambles in one direction, a rocky ledge I cannot overcome in another. And boggy turf. The granite, where it doesn’t poke through the surface, lies near underneath. The water accumulates just below the surface growth, depressions full of browning water everywhere. Even here I find myself continually walking over boggy patches. Below ground, the moor is riddled with mining tunnels. Most are known. Others are not. Traversing areas at random carries some risk. 

Finally I find a path north of The Cheesewring. It leads me to a hard surface, then a road. I exit the moor and stroll lovely country lanes to North Hill, my night’s rest. The moor got the better of me. So it goes.