Sometimes, places loom like beacons on the horizon, compelling you to pause on your journey, overcome with the need to explore. Parts of the landscape so powerful, they make your heart sing.
Glastonbury Tor, Silbury Hill, Castlerigg stone circle - just a few of the places that have surprised me, over the years, with their immediate impact. A feeling that's inexplicable, a bit like coming home after too long away. A nostalgic yearning, even though you haven't been there before.
Last week, I found another.
Burrow Mump is a small but dramatic mound that springs up from the Somerset Levels like magic -a bit like Glastonbury Tor, downsized, with the ruin of a church on the top.
Forcing my friend to stop the car as soon as I saw it (she didn't object too much, even though we had an appointment in Wellington), I bounded (OK, puffed) up through the scatter of trees to the top in a matter of minutes. There was no one else there. The view was stunning.
It's a place I'd love to go back to when there are no time constraints, perhaps to watch the sun rise up from the mists, or the starlings swirling overhead in weak winter sunlight.
Because Burrow Mump seemed to be just that kind of magical place. Once an island of higher ground in a flooded (now drained) landscape, you sense its strategic importance in the past. A quick google search tells you about Roman pottery finds, a motte and bailey castle, and the connection with King Alfred - which apparently is myth, and can't be proved. But as Joseph Campbell said, “Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”
Alfred was there, I feel sure of it. This area was Alfred's territory. The years he spent hiding in the marshes from the Danes, Burrow Mump would make the perfect viewing platform, where he could watch out for any approaching danger from the wetlands below. A place to sit and think. I could almost smell his burning cakes.
Spend a few moments on the summit and you get a strong sense of this living landscape, stretching back in time. It's inspirational, a place to set stories, create art.
Or that doesn't grab you, maybe just sit awhile, and simply admire the view.
Lu Hersey
(This post - with some modifications - is taken from my patreon site, Writing the Magic)
6 comments:
O, I want to sit there!
I pass this several times a year between home and visiting Cleeve Abbey in Somerset. We're often there at the right time to have our picnic lunch in the carpark at the foot of the hill, but no longer young or fit enough to climb it (last time we were 'able' was pre-covid.) But I love the way it suddenly appears above the road ahead - whichever direction you are coming from!
Lovely post - and agree with you wholeheartedly about Castlerigg: That simple stone circle, with all the peaks ranged around on all sides, sits there in my heart.
Thanks everyone! x
Burrow Mump is special, isn't it? Not very high, yet it's amazing how much you can see from it. I don't have any doubt that Alfred was there - he was at Athelney for several months, which is just a stone's throw away, and it's a high point for observing the countryside - why wouldn't he have gone there? Lovely piece, Lu.
Spot on Lu. For me Sacred Landscapes have that feeling of being just right. Earlier in the years I was in India, in a place called Hampi. I've never before felt such a powerful landscape. One evening we watched the sunset and both my friend and I sat gently weeping.
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