by Hugh Thomson
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Hugh Thomson
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1. The Stranger’s Welcome: From the Dorset coast to Stonehenge
2. The Sun and the Clock: Stonehenge to Little Stoke on the Thames
3. Homecoming: Little Stoke
4. Homeleaving: Along the Chilterns to Cambridge
5. A Circle in the Sand: Cambridge to Seahenge on the Norfolk coast
Timeline
Disclaimers and Acknowledgements
Appendix
Index
Copyright
About the Book
In the past, Hugh Thomson has written books of exploration about places like Peru, Mexico and the Indian Himalaya. Now he returns to explore the most exotic and foreign country of them all – his own.
From the very centre of England – literally, as his village is said to be the geographical point furthest from the sea – he travels out to the furthest edges of the land. The Green Road into the Trees is a journey enlivened and made rich by the characters he meets along the way. And the ways he takes are the old ways, the drover-paths and tracks, the paths and ditches half covered by bramble and tunnelled by alder, beech and oak: the trails that can still be traced by those who know where to look.
Just as in his acclaimed book about Peru, The White Rock, Hugh shows how older, seemingly forgotten cultures, like the Celts, Saxons and Vikings, lie much closer to the surface than we may think; they have created some of the fault lines of land, wealth and privilege that we still live with. In recent years, archaeologists have uncovered some remarkable new findings about these cultures that have yet to percolate through to the wider public. By taking a journey through both the sacred and profane landscapes of ancient England, Hugh casts unexpected light – and humour – on the way we live now.
About the Author
Hugh Thomson has led many research expeditions to Peru and is one of Britain’s leading explorers of Inca settlements.
His previous books include The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland and Cochineal Red: Travels Through Ancient Peru, as well as Nanda Devi, a journey to a usually inaccessible part of the Himalaya. His memoir Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico was serialised by BBC Radio 4.
As a film-maker, he has also won many awards for his documentaries, which include Indian Journeys with William Dalrymple, Dancing in the Street: A Rock and Roll History and Russia with Jonathan Dimbleby. He has taken filming expeditions to Mount Kilimanjaro, Bhutan, Afghanistan and the Mexican Sierra Madre.
www.thewhiterock.co.uk
Also by Hugh Thomson
The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland
Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary
Cochineal Red: Travels through Ancient Peru
Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico
50 Wonders of the World
For Daisy, Owen and Leo
Illustrations by Adam Burton
Out on that almost trackless expanse of billowy Downs such a track is in some sort humanly companionable: it really seems to lead you by the hand.
‘The Romance of the Road’,
The Pagan Papers, Kenneth Grahame
Mi casa es su casa, ‘my home is yours’.
South American proverb
Chapter 1
The Stranger’s Welcome
Hamlet: ‘But this is wondrous strange.’
Horatio: ‘And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.’
I STUMBLED INTO the English spring sunshine after a deep sleep. An unnatural sleep, a jet-lagged sleep. I had spent the months before travelling around South America and the long flight back across the Atlantic from west to east, against the sun, had wound my body up and then down. Now I was emerging after what seemed like a hibernation. The river meadows were flooded with purple bugle and fringed with white hawthorn blossom. My neighbour’s apple orchard was also gleaming with blossom, underplanted with daffodils; it led down to the river which still ran fast with the old rains of winter. Back inland, towards the Chilterns, a flush of yellow was spreading across the year’s first crop of oilseed rape.
Mole at the start of The Wind in the Willows realises that spring has arrived without his noticing. I felt the same way. When I had left for South America, it had been bitter February weather, with snow on the ground and the only colour coming from a woodpecker or robin.
Needing a strong coffee and with no food in the house, I cycled to the local market town. The sound of Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ being pumped out by a brass band could be heard for some way before I arrived. A celebration was in full swing. Red and white bunting hung from the church, matched by the small flags the children were waving and by the icing on the teacakes sold in the market place; near by was a puppet stall where Punch was setting about Judy with ferocity. The children watching had their faces painted to look like lions or tigers.
Tattoos snaked out of the busts and jeans of the farmers’ wives queuing at the ice-cream van, which had been painted in neon orange with a ‘chill-out’ logo, and was dispensing Skyrockets, Mr Magics, Daddy Cools and Blackcurrant Peep-Ups. A quiff-haired teenager ostentatiously did a wheelie right across the Market Square on his bicycle pimped up with double shocks and chunky chrome spokes. Oblivious to the fairground stalls and the noise, an elegantly overdressed older lady with sunglasses, light wool coat and malacca cane was stooping against the spring breeze, leaning into it.
The band had finished ‘Dancing Queen’ and were now playing a more stately jig. I noticed not so much the music as their hats: a pink stetson playing the guitar, a bowler manning the cello, a Pete Doherty-style pork-pie perched on the lead guitarist and there, on the drummer’s head, an unmistakable panama, just as I had seen and bought at a small market on the Ecuadorian coast only weeks before.
England has become a complicated and intriguing country. In truth it’s always been one, but perhaps I’m just noticing it more now. The familiar is looking very strange. It may be the jet lag, or the sudden immersion in all this noise, colour and confusion after a deep sleep, but I am seized with a sudden desire to explore England. The few other times I’ve ever had really bad jet lag – the sort where you walk in a trance, as if under water and sedation – have been when I’ve travelled abroad, not travelled home. The only cure then has been total immersion in the new culture.
So I feel like plunging in – and to do so by the darker, underground ways, again like a mole, tracking the older paths into the country.
My usual pattern is to travel abroad to an exotic location, then rest up at home to write about it and try to cultivate my tomato plants in the insipid English sun. And then repeat the process.
Suddenly I like the idea of doing it all in reverse.
*
I was on my third cup of coffee, when a dog caught my eye before I noticed its owner. Not to disparage the owner, who was large and wearing shorts and a brightly coloured pair of Crocs. But it was the dog that drew my attention: it had the wiry, attractive qualities of a natural rat catcher, a smooth-haired fox terrier with unusual markings, its face black and white in an exactly symmetrical way, black on one side, white on the other, as if wearing a harlequin’s mask. And as such, a natural conversation opened with its owner, not that Simon, said owner, needed much excuse.
Even South Americans don’t introduce themselves so fast. Within ten minutes, Simon had told me his entire medical, matrimonial and financial history, which could be summarised as ‘crocked, divorced and bust’. Not that he was letting this get him down.
He made his living by being an artist and a poach
er; the two seemed complementary. I was more interested in the poaching, having read Richard Jefferies’ books on the subtle arts and skills, and occasionally brutal encounters, of the poaching world.
Simon supplemented his portrait painting by foraging for truffles and mushrooms that his dog found for him in the woods, and the odd larger bird or fish tickled out from under a gamekeeper’s nose. At forty-nine, he was almost exactly my age, with a touch of the overgrown schoolboy, exacerbated by his shorts. He was large with a hint of vulnerability; he certainly had plenty to be vulnerable about. A car crash (or rather a car crashing into him when he was parked) had broken his neck and left him with back pain, which he took morphine for, along with other pain-killers. As he talked, he apologised for occasionally repeating himself: ‘It’s all these drugs I keep having to take.’
I asked him more about the poaching. I couldn’t help noticing the badge on his jacket lapel: it was for the Countryside Alliance.
‘I like to call it “supplying wild produce”. Rabbits, pheasants, squirrels, deer, mushrooms, truffles, crayfish. It’s all in these woods. And a lot of the time if I didn’t have it, it would just go to waste.’
He got out a catapult to show me, keeping his hands well below the café table. It was a beautifully crafted piece from birch, that he had made himself, with a thick industrial rubber band and a supply of lead musket balls that he kept in a pouch.
‘Incredibly fast, incredibly accurate. Totally legal. And the best thing is that I can get it out quickly. Sometimes I’ll get to a field and it’s in those first few minutes that the best game presents itself, before I can get out a gun. With this little beauty I can pop off a rabbit straightaway.’
Simon ate a lot of rabbit and provided it for his son who lived with him. ‘Skinning a rabbit is easy. Make one incision and you just unzip the thing. Get the guts out and you’re away. Although like they say, there’s plenty of ways to skin a rabbit. Not like a squirrel. Squirrel has a pelt so thick it’s unbelievable. I look down the barrel of a gun sometimes when shooting a rabbit and you see the pellet pass straight through the skin, the flesh, the skin and out the other side. But with a squirrel the pellet never gets out again. Skinning a squirrel is a bastard.’
‘Is squirrel good to eat?’ I wondered, mindful of the old adage that they were just rats with tails, and conscious too that with the jet lag I was not at my sharpest.
‘Squirrel? Very tasty,’ said Simon loyally. ‘But what I really like is deer. Plenty of muntjac around. To the extent that it’s a pest. Beautiful deer, of course. I love the way they move. You know the best way to skin a deer?’
This was purely rhetorical.
‘Wrap some rubber bands around the handle of a golf club. Work the golf club down the spine of the deer when it’s suspended from a tree and tied to the ground. Then attach a lead from the golf club to the tow bar of your pick-up truck. Reverse very, very slowly.’ (Simon stressed this, as if concerned that I might rush the job.) ‘And the skin will peel off like a baby’s nappy. But the deer has to be fresh.’
I nodded.
‘Not so much any more, but there was a time when I was supplying a lot. Local hotels, restaurants, places up in London. They loved it. All my stuff was organic, free range – and local. That’s probably what they put on the menu. “Local free-range venison.” You bet it was free!
‘I had a good run with crayfish. They’re not on this year. Something wrong with the river. I tried the usual beats. A couple of years ago they were jumping into my hands. The other day though, I found a lovely stretch for eel. They’re coming back. I was going down in the boat and we passed plenty of perch. But what I liked the look of were the eel. Good, thick ones. Eel only put on a pound a year, so they’re slow-growing. Some of the butchers over in Henley and Maidenhead, towards London, have started to sell a lot of smoked eel.’
Simon ordered another cappuccino.
‘I live on air really. Painting doesn’t pay much. My life is about survival.’ This complaint – which sounded well rehearsed – was undermined when he showed me copies of his paintings on an expensive iPad he drew from a capacious pocket. The paintings were excellent. Some were of horses, commissioned by their owners. Some were large oils of patterns cast on water. ‘I did these from looking out over the river so much, for fish. You get fascinated by the way the light plays on the water. There’s always a patch beyond the trees where the light is slightly different.’
After a brief silence, he changed tack abruptly.
‘I learned one thing from that car crash. All you have in this life is time. All that matters is time, and how you use it. Nothing else matters. Possessions don’t matter. I lost everything after the crash. And I realised that nothing else is real. Your clothes, that magazine you’re reading, that sandwich you’re eating. Your marriage. None of it. None of it is real. All that matters is your time and what you do with it. I’ve wasted a lot of my life.’
Simon had gone from being very talkative to subdued. He explained that he had these sudden mood swings. ‘It’s the medication.’
*
It was easy to live in the countryside, as I did, and not know what was stirring beneath its surface. Most rural dwellers in England are blithely unaware what the farmers around them are doing, let alone the poachers. If I made a journey, as well as being an investigation of the deepest past, I wanted to explore what was happening now – how the countryside was changing.
The question was which journey to make. There were many old trackways threading their way around England. Not far from me ran one of the oldest and most intriguing, the Icknield Way.
Unlike many of the older paths, this had not been commodified into a long-distance trail with accompanying guidebooks, signposts and people to hold your hand. For much of the Icknield Way’s long route from the south coast near Dorset diagonally across the country to Norfolk, it was still half covered by bramble and tunnelled by elder, beech and oak, forgotten and ignored. This prehistoric track dissected England in a way no modern major road did, since most ran arterially out of London. A century ago, one of the poets I most admired, Edward Thomas, had tried to follow its traces.
That same afternoon, I went over to an escarpment near by. Across the fields of oilseed rape, the clearest of paths showed the Way continuing up to the hills beyond.
It was a path I knew well: I had cycled, ridden and walked it many times, with dogs, friends and neighbours. From where I stood, the path led up into the Chilterns, one of the largest forested areas in England when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, as it still is. Before the Saxons came, this had been part of Roman Britain, but more lightly colonised because of the rougher terrain: south of Romanised Dorchester, the River Thames makes a great horseshoe sweep down from the crossing at Wallingford and around below Whitchurch and Mapledurham to reach Henley. The Chilterns sprawl out from the centre of this horseshoe in a mess of wooded valleys.
It was the West Saxons, the Gewisse, who colonised this area, a group less civilised than the East Saxons of Kent, resisting Christianity until much later. Their original name, the Gewisse, is thought to mean ‘the trusties’ – or as we might put it, ‘the heavies’; one historian described them as ‘a strong-arm gang controlling weaker neighbours by brute force’. Only later have they been labelled more sedately as ‘the West Saxons’. The eponymous kingdom they founded of Wessex is often associated with the south-west coast and Thomas Hardy’s novels, but it was first centred here in Oxfordshire and the upper Thames.
Under the veneer of commuter respectability – for Henley in particular lies within striking distance of London and is much prized by Jaguar owners for its regatta and gentility – you do not need to go far into the woods to find traces of a less polite past.
Entering the Chilterns along the Icknield Way I came to Berins Hill, at the start of what locals called ‘the Ipsden triangle’, a dense patch of woodland in which both motorists and walkers were forever getting lost; it also had no mobile phone signal, which I found satisf
ying.
Berins Hill was named after the Italian bishop, Birinius, who in AD 631 came on a missionary expedition to convert those Saxons like the Gewisse who had not succumbed to the earlier charms of St Augustine. Birinius was successful and baptised the king of the Gewisse at nearby Benson.
Benson had now been taken over by the RAF, who performed helicopter manoeuvres over the fields. It was a place of security compounds, breeze-block buildings and shaved heads.
But Berins Hill was still wild. I came in from the fields and entered its wooded flanks. Because the beech trees were climbing up the side of the hill, they had to grow even higher to reach the sunlight. The effect was spectacular, the tall beeches disappearing for nigh on a hundred feet up into the canopy, the great height of the tree trunks accentuated by the delicacy and smallness of the beech leaves floating like maidenhair. With the large ferns guarding the entrance to the wood, the effect was Amazonian; not for the first time, I reflected on how exotic we would find a horse chestnut in flower, or beech forest in spring, if we came across them in Brazil rather than Buckinghamshire.
As I got higher onto the hill, the ground thickened with holly and there were pockets of dense wildwood. And then to my surprise I came across something I had never noticed in all the years of passing, perhaps because, in the old maxim, you only ever find what you are looking for: off to one side, on the north, close to a small road but invisible from it, a broad, deep ditch had been dug, wide enough to be a substantial moat, a hollow way that did not feature on any map. And why was this called Berins Hill? Was it because from here the bishop could survey the broad sweep of the West Saxon heartland, both the farms in the valley and the woods up above?
Certainly St Birinius, as he later became, made a judicious if odd decision when it came to dividing up the parishes. Rather than doing so in the usual compact shape, he created long, thin strips that ran down from the hills to the river, so that each parish should enjoy access to the woods at one end and the River Thames at the other. The fact that they all look like Chile on the map has confused both priests and parishioners ever since: my own church lies many miles inland from the river villages it serves.