Haunts of Ancient Peace

The weather here in my neck of the woods has been absolutely glorious over the past week or so; spring has most definitely sprung!

Taking advantage of the sunshine, Ian and I decided to head off to the Cotswolds on one of our serendipity drives last week, intending to revisit a village we discovered last year, but had forgotten the name of......as you do. Unsurprisingly then, we never did find the village, but ended up revisiting one of my favourite teenage haunts, The White Horse of Uffington, which unless you're lucky enough to be able to fly over it, is very difficult to photograph properly!





It's a place with very special meaning to me; one of ancient peace and timeless tranquility and I always somehow come away from it feeling like my batteries have been recharged. Any cares, any worries, any niggly frustrations with the mundane things in life, instantly disappear the moment I find myself beneath the chalk horse, carved out of the ridgeway of the Berkshire Downs by long forgotten people. Or perhaps they never are quite forgotten, having left such a beautiful reminder of themselves to all who follow in their footsteps, decade after decade, century after century.

When we ourselves are long gone, the horse will remain, a prehistoric sentinel, silently standing guard over the Vale of the White Horse, connecting all who continue to visit it to those who have gone before;-



as will the mysterious Dragon Hill, a low flat topped mound, where legend has it, St George slew the dragon. After the dragon was slain, it's blood seeped into the hillside, scorching a patch of the earth beneath it white, thus preventing anything from ever growing there again.



Those of you of a certain age, or perhaps with children interested in ancient myths and legends might be interested in watching 'The Moon Stallion' which can be found in it's entirety over on Youtube;-



It was made by the BBC in 1978 and perhaps to our modern sensibilities now seems a little wooden and dated, but the Vale of the White Horse, along with the longbarrow of Waylands Smithy just a little further along the ridgeway, features heavily in the storyline which is also rich in folklore from the area. Magical stuff.

And so onto the final leg of our journey which we literally stumbled across on our way home. We saw a sign which suggested there was a ruin nearby and ended up driving down a very long single track road (ever tried passing a tractor when you're in a car on a single track road, it's not easy!) to the ruins of Minster Lovell Hall which was built by one Lord William Lovell in the 1440's and used as a home until 1747, when the last occupant moved away to Norfolk. Since then it's been left to rack and ruin and is now owned by English Heritage who have made it free for the public to roam around. Not that there was anyone there bar Ian and myself in the late afternoon sunshine;



listening to the birds and the babbling of a river that meandered alongside it;





another haunt of ancient peace;-



and of people not yet forgotten....