The Somerset Levels From Glastonbury Tor

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The usual meaning of 'Somerset' given is people of The Summer Country, and the arrival of fine summer weather makes the Tor a natural choice for a viewpoint, for on a fine day such as this [July 9, 2010] one can see farther from here than anywhere in the region. With the coming of summer, Glastonbury becomes an international tourism destination (outside of the famous music festival held annually nearby).
By climbing the Tor, one can obtain a 360-degree over the entire region. Here the view is towards the west, past the town. Glastonbury was an ancient port, the tidal reaches of the Celtic Sea once reaching inland to here, at least as a winter flood plain. Some say this winter flooding is the basis of the old Celtic name Ynys Witrin, or Isle of Glass, referring to the reflective qualities of the surrounding water as a mirror - lakes being traditionally entrances to the Celtic Otherworld. Another derivation of 'Somerset' is from Saxon somersetae, 'the settlers on the sea lakes', and archaeological digs have shown there was an Iron Age lake village here, with houses on stilts. There were also settlements built on artificial mounds in the manner of the Scots crannogs.
Later, land-reclamation schemes held back the sea's incursion over the Levels. The worst occasion the Levels were completely flooded was in 1607, when giant waves crested the sea walls, with around 2,000 people drowning before the water ebbed away ten days later. However storms continued to breach the sea defences protecting this low-lying land until the 1920s, when the defences were improved. The entire area is criss-crossed by large drainage ditches to contain the surface water, though parts of the Levels still become flood plains in time of heavy rains swelling the local rivers. The dried-out peat moor makes for rich grazing and farming land. For centuries, unless there was high water, the Levels were largely impassable swamp.
Nevertheless history is all around, concentrated mainly on the hillocks like the Tor which offered defensive settlement sites from prehistoric times on, with sites linked by wooden trackways and causeways across the swamp. The world's oldest known example of timbered walkway, the Sweet Track, was found here. It was nearby to the SW, at the "Isle" of Athelney, that Alfred was able to hide out in safety after his defeat by the Danes (this was where he supposedly burnt the cakes he was meant to be watching). To the NE on a clear day, you can just make out the tower of the cathedral at Wells, England's smallest city. The last pitched battle on English soil, Sedgemoor in 1685, was fought nearby, and the descriptions of corpses lying submerged in the swamp are said to have inspired the scene in Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, where the corpses try to drag Bilbo down.
Glastonbury itself is the focus of many legends about the first British church being founded here by the disciple Joseph of Arimatheia sailing here when it was still a port. Supposedly he planted his staff on Wearyall Hill [the ridge visible in the photo above, lower right], and it sprouted into a Palestinian variety of thorn tree. He also supposedly brought with him sacred Christian relics like the Grail which features in the Arthurian legends. A tomb excavated in the Abbey grounds in 1991 is claimed to be the site of Arthur and Guenevere's grave. This nexus of associated legends is the basis of much of the area's tourism [more info here].

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Bournemouth and Poole have a new joint tourism campaign for 2010, “The Coast With the Most.” It has the tagline “Love Watersports, Love Bournemouth and Poole,” which was evidently meant to tie in with the new artificial surf reef constructed in Poole Bay off Boscombe Pier and new seafront development (which has just won a restoration award). In the event, the surf reef completed in the autumn has proved somewhat underpowered for the handful of keen year-round surfers [pictured] who promoted the idea, but there are plenty of more general-interest attractions all along the coast. As BBC’s hit TV series Coast demonstrated, Poole Harbour is so shallow that it is relatively safe for beginners to learn water sports in, with various equipment-rental services for this. And any definition of “The Coast With the Most” would have to include the Jurassic Coast, which starts on the west side of Poole Bay just beyond the sands of Studland Bay, out of shot on the left. Note that our photo, taken from Bournemouth Pier on a bright but breezy March day, is not of the Boscombe–Eastcliff surf-reef side, but shows the Westcliff side, with the Marriott-Highcliff Hotel above the cliff-face lift from the beach.

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The Anglo-Saxons called February Solmonath, the month of Sol the sun, commorating the first sunny days of the year. This is the phenomenon referred to as 'false spring,' when the first hardy green shoots appear, just before winter's last gasp. The first week of February is also the start of spring in another sense. The halfway points between solstices and equinoxes are known as cross-quarter days, and were marked by ancient festivals. The 5th/6th of Febrary is the halfway mark between the midwinter solstice [21/22 Dec] and the spring equinox [21 March]. The former is the point when the nights rather than the days begin to get shorter, and the latter the point when the days become as long as nights.
Thus one could argue this week is the start of the 90-day Spring season, with a wintery half from now till around the March equinox, giving way to a warmer summery half of days longer than nights. (At present, sunset is at 5pm, and sunrise at 7.40 am.) Around this time, the Celtic calendar celebrated the festival of Imbolc (Oimelc in Old Irish). This sounds like something to do with milk, which is apt: it means the in-filling of the udders of the sheep and cattle, preparatory to the birth of their young in the spring. The Imbolc/Oimelc festival may have begun each year only when this phenomenon (technically, the lactation of ewes) was witnessed locally.
This is a variation on the American version of the ancient Anglo-Saxon cross-quarter day of Candlemas, Groundhog Day (2 Feb), which German settlers to America brought with them, changing the original proverbial animal (hedgehog) for an American one. In both these, and other European versions, the presence or lack of sunlight is used to to predict whether winter weather is over. The idea is if the hibernating animal emerges, sees his own shadow and retreats again, it is a false spring, to be followed by 6 or so more weeks of winter weather. (The 'scientific' explanation is that air temperature and pressure are inversely related, with a rise in temp creating a low-pressure zone which pulls in weather from other zones with higher pressure and thus lower temperatures.) As I write, this effect is already descending upon us, with the forecast of another cold snap, and no doubt, 6 more weeks of winter in general.

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With the entire island of Britain in the grip of Arctic conditions this month, a photo of icy roads, fields etc might seem de rigeur. But instead of one more such photo to add to the tens of thousands already uploaded to personal and news sites, I thought we'd have something different, a photo of what is most important to people in such times - hot meals. Although the supermarkets are reportedly running out of bread, milk and other perishables due to delivery slowdowns combined with panic buying, the cafes along the transport routes are still going, providing vital breaks and comfort to the snowbound traveller. The 'Full English Breakfast' is an English institution, a meal which can be had in B&Bs and some pubs as well as cafes and restaurants, sometimes on an "all-day" basis. This may date back to author Somerset Maugham's famous dictum, "To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day." The standard shorthand for the ingredients is 'EBCB' or eggs, bacon, chips, and beans, usually with toast or fried bread on the side. There will be fried tomatoes and perhaps mushrooms, and these days a complete vegetarian version of the FEB is usually available. These meals are often made using local produce where possible. This one is from a Dorchester cafe, but wherever you find 'Full English Breakfast' listed, you'll find having one sets you up for the whole day.

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The week before the winter solstice and Xmas has brought genuine wintry weather, with freezing rain, black ice, sleet, and fog resulting in a few traffic disasters. The winter solstice [Dec 21/22] is when the sun is at a standstill (sunset and sunrise are the same time for a period of 2-3 days), and the days are at their shortest before getting longer again. Archaeologists now say (based on finds of the bones of pigs which would have born in the spring and when killed were around 9 months old) that this was when the main rendezvous and feast occurred at Stonehenge. They surmise this may have been the main feast of the year in pre-Christian Britain. (For more on the ancient calendar, click here: The Ancient Country Year.)
At the winter-solstice vigil at Stonehenge this year, it was reportedly too foggy to see the sun come up or go down, but a few other days this past week have been cold and clear. This view of the winter-solstice sunset over the River Frome was shot from Wareham Bridge on just such a clear day, shortly before 6pm, when you can see the new moon rising in the last afterglow of the sunset. As usual, it’s unlikely that we’ll get the proverbial ‘white christmas’ the bookies take long odds on down here, but there were a few snow flurries on the official solstice [Dec 21st], as seen in the image below, taken in Corfe Castle square in front of the Greyhound Inn, which we’ve covered before as England’s most photographed pub.

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The Arne Peninsula, on the southern edge of Poole Harbour, is not well-known, but has been in the local news lately. This was part of November's Remembrance Day events, in commemoration of its wartime role as a night-time 'bombing decoy' ground, to lure the Luftwaffe into bombing it instead of Poole across the Harbour - or the Holton Heath cordite factory nearby. Tar barrels, troughs of petrol and the like were set alight to simulate the appearance of a city or factory on fire, leading the bombers to drop their bombs there without loss of life.
The peninsula was chosen as it was largely uninhabited, the few villagers being evacuated in 1942. A few returned after the war, and the small church remains intact today, though without electricity. Its mix of heathland and salt-marsh makes it is unsuitable for building on, and so the area remains undeveloped, declared a nature reserve in 1954. It is a suitable habitat for marsh-birds, with an RSPB bird-watching hide by a lagoon on the edge of the harbour, where you can study various wading birds. Deer also find it congenial, and one can also see small herds in the oak and pine scrub woodland of the 9-acre Big Wood around harbour's edge.
The RSPB, who have had responsibility for the area since 1966, have put in a car park on the village road (off the A351 Wareham-Corfe-Swanage road) which runs across Hartland Moor. From the car park, you can stroll down past the church to the viewpoint at Shipstal Point, where an anti-aircraft battery and command post once stood amidst the heather. From the viewpoint one can look out over the harbour [see below], with Poole port visible to the north and Brownsea and the smaller islands to the east, by the entrance to the Harbour between Sandbanks and Studland. Walking down to the harbour shore, one can just glimpse, to the south, the grey ruined towers of Corfe Castle on its mound in the Corfe gap in the Purbeck coast downs.

Arne remains undeveloped and almost undisturbed, the wartime bomb craters now ponds where wildlife flourishes. Sir Arthur Mee, in his The King's England volume on Dorset, commented that "it has the beauty that is worth living for. No one is ever tired of walking to Arne. " He concludes his entry: "Not far from the church the lane runs out to a point where men raised the great mound for their dead in the Long Ago; this and the church are all that man has made that is notable in Arne." One theory about the name Arne is that it is from the Saxon aerne, 'secret place', and this would certainly be apt.

Now, with the 2012 Olympic games including events on the coast down here as well as in London, the government has decided to act, backing a £25 million plan to turf over the A344 road leading to the coach and car park, and build a prefab visitor centre with larger car park near Amesbury, with ‘shuttles’ (probably land trains) taking visitors back and forth. This is an alternative to earlier schemes over the past two decades, culminating - after £38 million was spent on consultation fees for aborted schemes - in a plan last year to replace the A303 main road by excavating a sort of mini Channel Tunnel under Salisbury Plain -- not suprisingly dropped as too expensive, at £500 million-plus.) Avebury meanwhile, remains in care of the National Trust, who let visitors walk within the stone circle, which is larger and older than Stonehenge.

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Often in England, the autumn weather is sunnier than it was in the summertime. After the promised “BBQ summer” failed to appear, the press have been headlining a “BBQ autumn,” with ‘unseasonal’ sunny weather offering a final opportunity for outdoors pursuits. The south-central coast is a boating playground – hence the decision to hold the marine events for the 2012 olympic summer games here. Poole Harbour in particular is a natural marine playground – shallow, yet almost the largest natural harbour around (98 miles in circumference). Most of the northern side is now a yachting haven, new shoreline housing developments having their own private marinas with mooring areas and slipways. The summer-only residents have gone home by now, leaving the harbour relatively quiet. Local boat owners however can enjoy these last glory days of summer, before autumn gales force them to stow sails and batten down the hatches. For now, harbour waters are calm and still, the only waves from the wake of passing power boats, often pulling waterskiers. Overall, the appearance is almost that of a painting. Here, in the background along the shore at Hamworthy can be glimpsed one of the newer harbour-shore developments at right, with the more traditional type of British seashore structure at left – the beach hut.
This is just west of Poole Quay, and proceeding westward from here, the main channel passes Poole Yacht Club marina and, next to the Royal Marines base at Hamworthy, the new Moriconium Quay marina development [pictured below].

Along here is the area known simply as Lake, where Vespasian’s Roman legions set up their first mainland foothold. Westward are the sandhills of Ham Common and Rockley Sands development and holiday park. Beyond Lytchett Bay, the channel turns southwest, between Holton Heath to the north and the almost completely unspoilt Arne peninsula on the south or Purbeck side, leading up the Frome towards Wareham via a meandering route through an extensive reed-marsh at the river mouth [below].

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English Heritage’s Architectural Heritage Week Open Days are here again, with hundreds of sites not normally accessible to the public opened up for free, often with bookable guided tours available. (Year-round, many of these are normally only open limited hours, or do not offer guided tours, or are not free.) The scene shown above for instance is a public site, and indeed is a famous postcard view. (Yes, it’s the one in the old Hovis ads.) But the adjoining ruined Abbey whose buttresses can be see on the right of the picture normally has limited public access. Abbey Park Walk viewpoint [pictured below] over Blackmore Vale to the south is open 365 days a year as a public promenade, but the Abbey ruins behind are walled off.
Shaftesbury Abbey, with its Royal Nunnery going back to Alfred the Great, was Britain’s foremost women-only abbey, and the grounds now contain a museum and garden. The hilltop town was both a market town and a pilgrimage site (King Canute supposedly died here kneeling in front of the tomb of an earlier sainted king) and, besides the Abbey and Gold Hill Museum, is rich in historic buildings, with a dozen blue plaques. Dorset’s Architectural Heritage Week actually lasts 9 days [Sep 12-20], with listing and booking details available here for this and other guided tours and visits. (If you miss the DAHW event, or just want to visit the town for an independent tour, a downloadable PDF showing a town heritage walk, together with another for the Abbey grounds, can be found here) .

The Osmington White Horse

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This famous Dorset landmark, carved on the Coast Downs in or before 1808 to commemorate George III’s stays at Weymouth, is in the news this week. The story is that a 2-day makeover of the Osmington White Horse, done for a TV ‘challenge’ show, was botched. In September 1989, BBC’s ‘Challenge Anneka’ tasked presenter Anneka Rice and several local Scouts with making the rather overgrown figure show up better. Tons of white Portland stone chippings were brought in to dress the exposed limestone, which is more greyish-purple than white. This was 20 years ago, and in the last few years, the hasty makeover has succumbed to age, leaving the carving looking rather grotty-looking, due to uneven placement, slippage and weathering. The photo above is one I took over 5 years ago, on a sunny day in July '04, and can be compared with more recent ones in the press [Daily Mail story here] or on Wikipedia, which show the deterioration since then.
The 280 by 323 ft figure is now to be restored by the County Council and The Georgian Group preservation charity, to its original state as much as possible. The Portland stone chippings are to be removed, and the ground re-scoured, after a geophysical survey and a study of older photos, for which they have put out a call. For 2 centuries now, it has been an established landmark on the hills overlooking Weymouth’s eastern approach road [A353], past Osmington village [OS Grid Ref SY717842] [map].
The fact the King is shown facing east - and thus riding away from Weymouth – gave rise to spurious local folktales that this was why the king never returned to see it, and that the bookseller who had sketched out its construction (supposedly paid for by Admiral Nelson’s brother) committed suicide as a result of his blunder. In fact, there are many white horses in the hillsides of Wessex, and there are hints the existing carving supplants an older one, to which a human figure was added some 2 centuries or so ago, representing the King – or the Duke of Wellington, or even Lord Nelson. It is the only known white horse carrying a rider.

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Said to be the largest event of its kind in the UK, the 2nd Bournemouth Air Festival [20-23 Aug 2009] drew record crowds of over 300,000 a day, and over a million altogether. There were aerobatics displays by helicopters, biplane and monoplane prop planes and jets, and ground events like a simulated beach landing by the Royal Marines, and evening fireworks. (An over-promoted 'world-record' show on the first evening got bad publicity in the national press for being a fizzle.) The 4-day show's aerial 'stars' were the RAF's Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight of 3 WWII planes (a Spitfire, a Hurricane and a Lancaster), the RAF's newest fighter the Eurofighter Typhoon, a restored Avro Vulcan delta-wing nuclear bomber (a no-show in 08), and of course, the perennial favourite, the RAF Red Arrows aerobatics team. This photo, taken from Bournemouth's Eastcliff at 4pm on Saturday, Day 3, shows the Red Arrows flying off into the late-afternoon haze and cloud, watched by a crowd estimated by police at 340,000, including an 'armada' of nearly a thousand boats moored offshore.

Burton Bradstock beach and Hive Beach Café
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Though England has just enjoyed more than the proverbial 'two fine days and a thunderstorm' that make up a typical English summer (with a heatwave lasting well over a week), the return of more typical unsettled weather has made planning a holiday outing problematic. However even if going to the beach for a suntan is not an option, Dorset's Jurassic Coast offers all-weather outdoors pursuits. Even on a rainy day, a favourite activity is a 'bracing' walk along the seashore, inevitably followed by a hot meal at a nearby café or inn. A particularly popular rendezvous for this, year-round, is the Hive Beach Café at the western end of Chesil Bank near Burton Bradstock in West Dorset. The seaside café/bakery/ice cream parlour has regularly won awards, most recently Coast magazine's 2009 Award for Best Coastal Café/Pub/Restaurant, and the Times shortlist [4-7-09] of Britain's top-ten fish-n-chip outlets. The seafood menu is sourced where possible from Lyme Bay, of which the café environs offer an impressive view, a walk along the bluffs being a must before or (usually) after a meal. (As Dorset-resident TV chef Lesley Waters puts it, "You get a big bowl of fish soup with really good bread, then walk it off on the beach.")

Osborne House, Isle Of Wight
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This seems a timely choice as the film Young Victoria (on current release and coming out on DVD), has made many aware of the Queen's early happy married life. Victoria had spent youthful seaside holidays on Wight, at Norris Castle near Cowes, having begun her popular 'Royal Progress' trip of 1833 by yacht along the Dorset-Devon coast here. After she became Queen, she and Albert bought up the Osborne estate next to Norris Castle, and had their own 'marine palace' built overlooking The Solent. It was designed in the then-fashionable Italianate style as the Solent view [pictured below] reminded Albert of the Bay Of Naples. The Italianate design would give the place some of the appeal of a sunny Mediterranean resort. The Georgian manor house was rebuilt in Palladian style, including campanile towers, a loggia balcony, and pavilion. Terraced gardens with statues and fountains in Renaissance style cascaded down towards the seashore, where Victoria had her own bathing machine.
The result was so attractive that the 'Osborne Style' would be imitated in Britain, Europe, and the USA. It was suitably secluded. Osborne was guarded at times by up to 200 soldiers (and of course her fierce Highland gillie John Brown) who kept tourists as well as anarchists out. (Her new Poet Laureate, Tennyson, also set up a home on Wight, near what is now Tennyson Down, but was soon besieged by tourists.) She remained there after Albert died, dying there herself in 1901. Her later life at Osborne was seen in the 1997 film Mrs Brown, starring Judi Dench as an older, widowed Victoria. The couple's, and later their son's, interest in yachting, with a 'Royal Yachting Squadron,' established the Cowes Regatta as an annual event (1st week August 2009). It being a tradition that Royal princes should serve a stint in the 'Senior Service,' Osborne became in part a Royal Naval College where future kings served as cadets. Osborne later became a major tourist attraction, now kept by English Heritage as much as possible as it was when Victoria died there.

Rainy Bournemouth seafront

Salisbury Cathedral Cloisters
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Now, a report backed by Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber called 'Sacred Britain' has recommended marketing initiatives be established e.g. to "publicise the role of churches in genealogy to the thousands of Americans expected for the 2012 Olympic Games in London." Salisbury Cathedral installed an entry turnstile where you would hand over a "voluntary donation" , and they also tell you the amount you should give (on their website it's £5 per adult and £12 for families). They also had 'formal' admission charges during 750th Anniversary events like the Flower Festival in the summer, but this is now over. It's also less crowded now school has re-started, but with other "Salisbury Cathedral 750" events ending September 30th, it'll soon be last chance to see the historic exhibit in its inner sanctum, the Cloisters courtyard shown in the downloadable image above.

Glastonbury Abbey ruins
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A shot of the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, taken on the June 1st weekend. The property was re-acquired by the church 100 years ago, in 1908.  It had been in private hands following Henry VIII's Dissolution of The Monasteries, which had seen what had been England's finest abbey ruined. It is semi-officially known as "the cradle of Christianity in England" as some believe the first church in England (perhaps in Europe) stood here. Every year, there are both Catholic and CoE pilgrimages. This year, the Catholic one comes first (Saturday 7th June), followed by the Church of England's own official Glastonbury Pilgrimage 2008 on Saturday 21st June.

The New Forest
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This being the Tree Council's 'Walk In The Woods Month' "to encourage everyone to enjoy trees and woods in spring", with a programme of guided walks, and downloadable leaflets (if that's the right word), I've updated our 3 web-pages on woodlands. At the western end of our area (and of the Jurassic Coast) is the Lyme Regis Underwood, the closest you can get to experience Britain's now-vanished "Wildwood." For anyone interested in visiting the eastern end of our coverage area, there is 'The Pines Of Bournemouth'.
      There is also a page on the wooded nature reserve of St Catherine's Hill overlooking the Avon Valley near Christchurch. However, note that the text deals with the hill as a religious "mystery site". The pine woods atop the hill are themselves under threat as the Council wants to cut down up to 15,000 trees to "restore" the hill.) This is also Local History Month, if you're interested in delving into the odd place-names and legends associated with sites like this, there's an opportunity here. The guide to the adjacent Avon Valley area is also updated.
       Inland on the eastern side, we have the New Forest, a mix of woodland and heathland ("Forest" was a legal term for a royal hunting preserve). As we haven't a separate page on the New Forest yet, I've put up a photo of it, above, as our new desktop-download photo, showing the different types of woodland vegetation and ground cover you can see in the Forest.
§ The Pines Of Bournemouth
§ Britain's Lost 'Wildwood'
§ The Mystery Of St Catherine's Hill

View from South Cadbury Hillfort
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May is now upon us - amazingly (for England) coinciding with the first hot days of the year. This is when - in olden times - people would set off on pilgrimages.  So I thought a picture of the view from South Cadbury would be apt, for this impressive Dark Ages hill-fort was one of the legendary localisations of Camelot. (As Henry VIII's travelling antiquarian Leland put it, "By South Cadbury is that Camelot..." of which the people of the time still spoke. This view is looking westward, into the haze.

Corfe Castle, April 2008
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Spring Equinox:  As this year Easter almost coincides with the spring equinox, I thought we should have a pair of tie-in photos to commemorate this double event, one showing a Christian feature (a major church in the region), and other showing a solar event - the sun over a local landmark. So below is the sun over The Agglestone, a 400-ton boulder overlooking the heathland south of Poole Harbour, and below that, Wells Cathedral in Somerset.

Spring equinox 2007, The Agglestone, Purbeck
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Wells Cathedral, Somerset
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Millionaires' Row, Sandbanks, Poole
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Millionaires' Row, Sandbanks (the spit of land enclosing Poole Harbour on the north) has been much featured in the media this past year. Regularly the topic of newspaper stories on high property prices, it was also showcased in an episode (on the 'Property Coast') of BBC's hit series Coast and an ITV 3-part series hosted by Piers Morgan in January 2008. Its nickname Millionaires' Row derives from the fact it is the most expensive real estate in Britain, owing to its combination of a central location (within the Poole-Bournemouth conurbation) and scenic views. Due to its siting on a narrow sandspit, houses have an upper-floor view over Poole Bay to seaward and, in the other direction, Poole Harbour.

Poole Harbour, foggy spring day
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View from St Catherine's Hill
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The Avon Valley and western edge of The New Forest at New Year's, looking E from St Catherine's Hill viewpoint N of Christchurch.

Poole Harbour, winter sunset
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(This is the most suitable wintry photo I could find for December. Sadly, we haven't had any serious snowfall for some years.)

Watership Down, Hampshire
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Watership Down, in Hampshire, famous as the home of a colony of rabbits in Richard Adams's novel, is a real place.