Thanks to Deborah Roberts for the above photos – www.deborahroberts.biz
Well that was a walk, that was,
For we explored boundaries,
Spatial, temporal, linguistic, social, spiritual, rational,
By exploring Jon Seagrave’s Stroud map of the subjective,
Of the emotional and the affective,
Rather than the conventional topography:
The boundary between landscape and experience;
We explored the archaeology of industry:
Rusting capstans and a forgotten railway turntable,
John Seagrave was talking of how the turntable
Could accommodate one wagon at a time only,
For the winch down to the gasworks,
And, oddly, in true time-shift fashion,
I noticed a notelet recently dropped
On the ground nearby:
‘DO NOT DOUBLE STACK’;
Pleased by this coincidence of time and space,
This damp leaf typescript revenant,
Our quickening pace took us back
To 1920s guides to London walking,
Gordon Maxwell and HV Morton;
We planned a Captain Swing memorial walk,
Along the old Tetbury branch line,
To the Trouble House Inn;
We talked of walking the 1839 Newport Rising.
We dropped down Time’s wormholes n so many ways
At the Roman villa at Woodchester,
Where Robin Treefellow transported us
With his fictive account of a servant’s life there,
Druid mistletoe shrouding the lime trees;
We walked an ancient track-way,
Courtesy of Bob Fry,
Up a fern filled holloway,
Over iron brown stained springs,
To a Neolithic long barrow,
And subsequent Saxon meeting place,
And boundary marker for the Hundreds,
Where Stuart Butler led us through a linguistic boundary,
To the world of the sacred and the profane;
We toasted Faunus with spoons and wine,
Our libations and offerings to the god,
Bubbling and oddly foaming in the soil’s fissures,
While sky larks ascended with a song;
We discussed how wood anemones could be a palimpsest,
A signpost to forgotten woodland and forest,
As we descended to Selsey Church,
And William Morris stained glass windows,
The early spring light, lustrous,
Streaming over the snowdrops.
We discussed our next two walks,
Both Romano-British in outline,
Sapperton, Oakridge, Bisley and Stroud;
Painswick, Stroud and Rodborough,
With readings from The Mildenhall Treasure,
To entertain and inform,
And studies of Roman maps –
Details to follow.
But as for today,
That was a walk that was,
A magical mystery tour through time and space and language:
That was a walk that was.