I ponder why women like Jenny do B&B and conclude that there are two main types: those women who crave human company, and those who are needful of money. Jenny is evidently of the former category, and I so admire her pluck and her graciousness toward travellers in the face of such a difficult disease.
The ascent up Lodge Hill from Castle Cary is invigorating. We pass the earthworks of the old castle and gain a sweeping view of the Mendips, the Quantocks, the Somerset Levels, and Glastonbury Tor. Three huge crosses stand on the brow of the hill. An empty bench overlooks the town below. Here we stop to catch our breath. A plaque on the bench commemorates one Jack Sweet, who died in 1995 and loved to walk here.
We say hello to a friendly man and his collie, who approach us. The fellow is dressed in a long, plain beige raincoat, clutches a yellow polka-dot umbrella, and wants to chat about the fine view and such. But Karl is in no mood to talk. He is on a mission, impatient to bury his little plastic capsule containing a note to his children and some coins. Having dug up his daughter’s cache at the Yorkshire abbey, it’s now his turn to bury some treasure.
The man with the collie tells us a story about Jack Sweet, informing us that the man hanged himself in 1995 after some involvement with the hard drug trade — a morbid tale for sure.
“Something doesn’t quite fit here,” I say. “It’s not normal for plaques to be erected to honour criminals, least of all those involved in the shady underworld of drug trafficking.”
“Ah, mate, this Jack Sweet was the darling of the ladies and could sweet-talk his way out of any dilemma. No jail cell ever held him for long. Mind you, he only went to jail on minor charges like break and enter, but he was known to be dealing the hard stuff. Then he seems to have gotten on the wrong side of the big blokes running a local gang, and decided to hang himself. Of course, some people maintain it wasn’t suicide.”
Karl fidgets about, trying to get the man to leave so he can dig his hole by the bench and bury his treasure cache.
“Come along, Webster.” The man finally decides to leave, since for several minutes he has only received guttural responses from the two rude North Americans. Webster reluctantly follows. Then Karl begins to dig furiously like a mole, dirt flying in all directions.
Alas, he should have waited for Webster to wander out of sight. His digging provokes Webster into thinking there must indeed be something interesting underground, and the dog comes bounding back, barking furiously, very excited. His owner calls him back, to no avail.
Karl freezes as Webster nuzzles him and peers into his hole. Could there be a mole or a rabbit down there? The dog pokes his nose into the hole.
“Go away, mutt!” Karl shouts and resumes digging, this time with a corkscrew because the earth has become too hard for his spoon and he must loosen up the soil. It does the trick, and soon Karl is scooping out the earth so furiously that the collie’s tail wags faster and faster as he excitedly anticipates a rabbit emerging from below. Finally, the exasperated dog owner arrives and yanks Webster’s collar, staring in disbelief at Karl and his hole.
I just stand there leaning on my walking stick. “He’s burying treasure, that’s all.”
“Of course, and I’m the man in the moon. So sorry about all this, chaps. Come along now, Webster.”
The owner leashes Webster and drags him off, both man and dog casting backward glances at Karl on his knees. Even a couple of kestrels swoop and dive overhead, eyeing these weird human antics with curiosity.
A few moments later, Karl finishes with his treasure caching and we resume the trek southward. The route winds gradually downhill to the Levels, where the walking is flat and comfortable. The Levels are composed of marine clay layers plus peaty moors that rise in the inland areas. Neolithic people laid the world’s oldest timber road, known as the Sweet Track, over the Levels in 3800 BC. The lowlands are bounded by rises of land such as the Mendip Hills, islands of high land like Glastonbury itself, and, finally, the southern hills such as Cadbury Castle, which lead into Dorset.
We are approaching a climactic point of the Macmillan Way. About two miles from Castle Cary, the path crosses the River Cam. Here the stream babbles and sings through bright yellow willows. Goldfinches dart about. A couple of boys stand on the banks dipping nets into the stream. I stop to ask the tousle-haired lads what they are trying to catch, and one of them shows me the contents of his net — dozens of wriggly worm-like creatures known as “elvers,” or baby eels. A large grey heron suddenly squawks and flaps itself heavily into a nearby elm tree.
We are truly in the West Country now — that magical, sought-after realm of walkers, holidayers, and adventurers that encompasses the counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Cornwall. As Susan Toth notes in My Love Affair with England, the West of the country is often associated with “myth, legend, and the land of faeries.” The western horizon has enchanted and obsessed people since time immemorial. It was not only the search for discovery of new lands to the west that gripped the imagination of the ancients. The daily dipping of the sun below the horizon was also of great concern. Would it return? Hawaiians still celebrate the traditional blowing on the conch shell, or Pu, at sunset, to celebrate the sun’s passing and to give thanks, mahalo, for its daily return.
In The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo, Frodo, and Gandalf all depart for the West, with Frodo dreaming of white shores and “beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.” This powerfully evokes the mythology of ancient Britain. Tennyson recalls the Greek enchantment with the Western horizon in his poem “Ulysses,” where the wanderer on his perpetual quest, his odyssey, remains true to his purpose. The concluding lines of this poem have always inspired me. I once recited them when emceeing the retirement dinner of a well-known Canadian member of Parliament who was terminally ill:
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Thus it is appropriate that the West Country be the land of dreams and fairies and myth. Often paradise is imagined as a valley. C.S. Lewis grew up imagining that a picture hanging in his home depicted a verdant heaven, when in fact it was a painting of the Golden Valley in Herefordshire. Lewis modelled his Narnia after this idyllic scene.
In the biographical film Shadowlands, Lewis agrees to Joy’s suggestion that they take a holiday and track down this Golden Valley, which Lewis has never visited. When they find it, the valley is resplendent, with green meadows and a winding brook bathed in sunshine. Their Arcadian experience is a highlight of the film, with Joy and Lewis walking through fields, holding hands and laughing like lovers do. However, clouds inevitably appear, rain begins to fall, and the Narnia landscape darkens — both literally and metaphorically — with the imminent end of Joy’s remission from cancer and her subsequent death.
In my own recurrent dream, Arcadia is a deep, wide valley with a meandering stream, emerald fields, and little copses spread hither and thither. The faint outline of low blue hills appears like a mirage in the distance. I am walking slowly, wending with the stream; I hear the occasional humming of bees on clover and the splashing of trout. The path beckons me onward, and I must follow. The sky turns crimson toward the horizon. But in the dream, the sun never goes down and I keep walking toward the sunset, the landscape about me bathed in shafts of golden light.
The portal into the world of Camelot is a sterile concrete viaduct over the A303. The vehicles whizz along far below like ants rushing in straight lines to and from their nests. We halt
to inspect Chapel Cross Cottage, with its little thatched chapel that John Leland noted when he passed through here in the sixteenth century: “I turned flat west by a little chapelle,” he wrote in his diary. Long before we reach the village of South Cadbury, we spot the wooded scarp of the high hill astride it called Cadbury Castle — or, colloquially, Cadbury Camelot.
A mile beyond, the massive earthworks of Cadbury Castle loom directly above us. The village of South Cadbury lies at the very foot of the hill fort, with the Red Lion Inn close by. The word Cadbury comes from Cada’s Fort, the ancient, high hill fort that has so intrigued archaeologists and Arthurian New Agers.
Arthurian lore comes to us principally from writers of the medieval period. Of these, Thomas Malory is the best known. He wrote Le Morte d’Arthur based upon a combination of folk tradition and chivalry, the latter being all the rage in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Prior to that, Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his History of the Kings of Britain, refers to a King Arthur with his principal court in Caerleon-on-Usk. Arthur was reputedly born at Tintagel in Cornwall, a windswept, towering, impregnable fortress on a sea cliff. Shakespeare refers to Arthur’s seat as being Camelot in King Lear, as does Tennyson in Idylls of the King.
Not to be overlooked is the persistent local tradition of Arthur and Camelot that has been passed on by successive generations. John Leland wrote of the site in 1542 thus: “At the very south ende of the chirch of South-Cadbyri standith Camallate, sumtyme a famose toun or castelle, apon a very torre or hille, wonderfully enstrengtheid of nature . . . In the upper parte of the coppe of the hille be 4. diches or trenches, and a balky waulle of yerth betwixt every one of them . . . Much gold, sylver and coper of the Romaine coynes hath be found ther yn plouing . . . The people can telle nothing ther but that they have hard say that Arture much resortid to Camallaet.” William Stukeley visited Cadbury in 1723, and described the hill fort: “Camelot is a noted place; it is a noble fortification of the Romans placed on the north end of a ridge of hills separated from the rest by nature; and for the most part solid rock, very steep and high: there are three or four ditches quite round, sometimes more; the area within is twenty acres at least, rising in the middle . . . There is a higher angle of ground within, ditched about, where they say was King Arthur’s palace . . . the country people all refer to stories of him.”
Leslie Alcock describes the epic archaeological digs he oversaw at Cadbury in the 1960s in his book By South Cadbury Is That Camelot. He notes that “Cadbury Castle has few equals among British hillforts for the number, complexity, and above all the towering steepness of its defences. Leland’s description, as we now see, was by no means over-dramatic.”
So what about King Arthur? Is he just a myth, or something more? What we do know is that there lived a real warrior leader who fought and won many battles against the Saxon invaders, including at Badon and Camlann. The dates of those battles remain fluid; however, there is some evidence that they occurred in AD 490 and 499, respectively. Alcock and some other commentators believe that Arthur was the successor of the Romano-British general Ambrosius Aurelianus, who was a major leader by 437. This would fit in nicely with the refortification of Cadbury Camelot, which according to carbon-dating analysis was effected in the 470s.
Whether Arthur was the real name of this inspiring chieftain and whether he was truly a king or just a leading warrior are still debated. However, we do know that such a chieftain would have required a high, defensible hill fort in southwest England, that the hill fort must be surrounded by fertile fields and a good source of water, and that the location should not only be defensible but strategically situated in relation to the sea, Cornwall, and travel routes generally. Cadbury Castle meets all of these criteria.
Archaeological interest in the Cadbury site was revived during the twentieth century after numerous shards of pottery and other artifacts were ploughed up by farmers. These artifacts were associated in time with similar objects found at Tintagel and elsewhere in Cornwall. Alcock’s excavations in the sixties revealed three fascinating aspects of Cadbury Castle. Firstly, it is now known that this hill fort was continuously occupied from neolithic times — by first the Celts, then the Romans, and finally the Saxons. Secondly, Alcock established that the hillfort defences were massively reconstructed in the 470s, in the largest engineering project of the period in Britain. This may have been where the Romano-Celts made their last stand against the marauding Saxons.
The capstone to all of this, and the key discovery of Alcock’s archaeological team, is the Great Hall, a massive room that dominated the hill and “was the principal building — the feasting hall, in fact — of the Arthurian stronghold.” Based on what we know of the prevailing hierarchy, this is consistent with the presence of either a king or a supreme warrior leader. The hall has been carbon-dated to between AD 470 and AD 580 — precisely the time period in which the Romano-Celts were fighting their final desperate battles against the Saxons. Judging by its location, its Great Hall, and its history as the highest, most defensible hill fort in the region, Cadbury Castle was probably the key stronghold from which the West Country was defended in the late fifth and early sixth centuries.
No historian or archaeologist has rationally refuted Alcock’s findings. However, Alcock himself admitted later in life that there is still no real evidence that a king or leader named Arthur ever lived, nor that any home base equivalent to the Camelot of legend ever existed. That said, given the strategic importance of Cadbury Castle, there is little doubt that the Saxons could not have extended their grip to include western England without capturing Cadbury Castle — and Alcock’s excavations indicate that a major battle ultimately spelled the demise of the hilltop fortress.
Historian Michael Wood is adamant that Arthur was likely not a high king but rather the leading warrior chieftain of the day. Yet Wood recognizes that this does not derogate the myth or the historical consciousness of the British people. “The figure of Arthur,” he writes, “remains, as it always will, a symbol of British history; the living bond between the Britons and the English Spirit.”
The “once and future king” written about by Malory lives on in the hearts of Britons and people the world over, judging by the number of Hollywood films, books, and Arthurian societies which continue to flourish. As we have seen, it was not enough for even John Steinbeck that he author some of the most successful novels ever produced about American life. He regarded his career as unfinished until he produced a modern rendering of Malory’s epic. And it was to Somerset and Cadbury Castle that he looked for the inspiration for his proposed tome.
THE CLIMB UP Cadbury Castle by the prescribed route commences at South Cadbury. Woods surround the lower flanks, with patches of grazing land perforated by rabbit holes and badger setts. The layers of earthen ramparts are visible at various levels. The lane we climb is deep rutted, muddy, and lined by pink campions. The hill is five hundred feet high, with four main defensive perimeters. At the top is a sloping, grassy field. There was never a stone castle here, but rather wooden walls, ramparts, and a massive gate at the main entrance facing the southwest, above Sutton Montis village.
Within the hill fort walls would have stood the Great Hall and many buildings housing arms, food, and animals. Habitation would have been limited to the chieftain (or king), his household, and his leading warriors and their retinues. Most of the common folk lived below in villages clustered about the hill near the River Cam.
In the great hollowed bowl beneath the hill lay the storybook fields that would have supplied the castle community with grain and other crops; there are two springs in the hill, the most famous being King Arthur’s Well, which has been located on a path near the church in Sutton Montis. According to legend, once a year at midnight the thundering hooves of Arthur and his knights’ horses can be heard as the entourage travels down from Camelot to drink water from this well.
The view at the summit is breathtaking. The sun is setting and the fields below are backdropped to the northw
est by the pillar of Glastonbury Tor, appearing as some distant phallic symbol, its dark image projecting defiant against a rising cuticle moon. Far to the northeast I discern the silhouette of Alfred’s Tower, standing guard over Wessex. And I am here at Cadbury Camelot — Arthur’s centre of operations in resisting the Saxons. It is at this moment that I simply sit down on a rampart, overwhelmed by emotion, and weep. Karl turns away, embarrassed.
Later, I discover that I am in good company in my brief emotional meltdown. John Steinbeck describes his own experience standing atop Cadbury Castle on April 30, 1959: “Yesterday something wonderful. It was a golden day and the apple blossoms are out and for the first time I climbed up to Cadbury-Camelot. I don’t think I remember an impact like that. Could see from the Bristol Channel to the tops of the Mendip Hills and all the little villages. Glastonbury Tor and Alfred’s Tower on the other side . . . I walked all around the upper wall. And I don’t know what I felt but it was a lot — like those slow hot bubbles of molten rock in a volcano, a gentle rumbling earthquake of the Spirit. I’ll go back at night and in the rain, but this was noble gold even to use Tennyson’s phrase — mystic-wonderful. Made the hairs prickle on the back of the neck.” Then Steinbeck broke down.
One reason why myths remain powerful in culture is that they often contain many kernels of truth. They just won’t go away. For example, as hard as Anglo-Saxon writers from Bede onward have tried to ignore the evidence of early Celtic Christianity in Britain, it just won’t wash. Historians now accept that many Britons had been converted to Christianity well before the Roman legions began to withdraw in 410. In fact, Britain sent three bishops to the Catholic Council of Arles in 314. It was the departure of the legions and the arrival of the pagan Angles and Saxons that set back the faith. The latter pushed the native Britons farther and farther to the western fringes, into Cornwall and Wales.
Walking to Camelot Page 23