In the Land of Giants

by Adams, Max;

  What we think of as the Welsh border is a much less coherent landscape than, say, the Whin Sill or the Tyne–Solway gap along which Hadrian’s big project runs; or, for that matter, the Forth–Clyde isthmus that carries what is left of the Antonine Wall. The dyke has to cross rivers as often as it skirts mountains and surfs ridges. It does not even run from sea to sea, as King Alfred’s biographer Asser claimed in the ninth century when Offa’s memory was still fresh in Wales. In that sense it is more of a frontier than either of the Roman walls—an artificial line drawn in the sand between what the expansionist Mercians wanted to regard as the lands of the Angles, and the kingdom of Powys. But as the place names show, the cultural frontier is patchy and porous, even non-existent: the dyke is the legacy of a turf war, of political competition. Offa built his dyke because he could; it did not necessarily reflect historical realities, nor those of subsequent relations between England and Wales, even though, in later times, it came to be used as a convenient marker for legal jurisdiction.

  Sometimes the dyke has been emasculated by the plough, or hijacked by a stream. Sometimes I was stalled by a stile or gate or the twist in a road; at these times I stopped to munch on a dried apricot or a handful of peanuts, relishing the trail’s pleasures. Only once did I pass another human; and he was running, with his dog. Offa’s Dyke does not have the same offensive capabilities as the Wall: it was not, I think, designed to launch punitive raids against the kings of Powys; more to remind them that Offa claimed descent from gods (or giants) whose potency legitimised his bid to dominate this landscape. He had probably seen both Roman walls on campaigns in the North during the 650s. But we do not know whose labour constructed his dyke. There is a world of difference between building a fence to keep out the neighbours and forcing the neighbours to construct a wall over which, once built, they cannot climb. Was the dyke built with tributary blood, sweat and tears? One thing is clear: no small population was co-opted as navvies. Near Chirk, whose impressive, fist-thumping castle belongs to the true Marcher lords of Edward I’s late thirteenth-century campaign of oppression against Wales, I took lunchtime shelter in a plantation from a short but vicious squall which held the unpleasant promise of much colder weather. Looking at the map I saw that I had just unknowingly crossed the border, where the dyke meets the River Ceiriog. Now decidedly in Wales, I parted company from the dyke, turned north-west and came out onto the scarp which overlooks the Vale of Llangollen, all metamorphic schists and raw screes; but even in the teeth of a chilling wind the descent into the Vale, and my first sight of the Dee, was exhilarating. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. One last steep climb from the foot of Pengwern Vale up through Pen-y-coed made me realise how tired I was. With sore feet I stepped at last onto the back streets of Llangollen and crossed the river next to the railway station whence runs a small steam tourist line into the valleys. I was delighted to see the taxidermist’s shop still there on the corner below the canal, where I had last seen it fifteen years earlier. In the window was a brilliant blue-flashed jay, which I mean to go back for some time. I followed the line of the canal for a mile or so out of town and came at last to the Tower campsite—a field next to red-brick Victorian farm buildings. I was the only camper, although two small caravans stood forlorn in the next field close to the showers. I pitched my small home from home, gathered the cameras and headed off up the valley to find the Pillar of Eliseg.

  The Vale of Llangollen is lovely in any weather: a broad, sometimes braided river with the canal running along the contour above it, tracking its wild spoor like a hunter; the side closing in, steeply sloped and wooded, as the valley narrows to a gorge and then turns back on itself in a great loop. The way to the pillar took a detour from the gorge up the smaller valley of the River Eglwyseg, which takes the A-road through the Horseshoe Pass and which sounds suspiciously like the name for the site of an early church. Here, indeed, are the remains of the Cistercian Valle Crucis Abbey, named after the cross of which the pillar is a stunted, phallic remnant. It lies in a broad, sheltered plain, steep scarps on either side, with smooth green sheep pastures surrounding neat grey farms. I was delayed in my approach to the pillar by the sight of a poor young shepherd on a quad bike, losing control of his flock. As a dozen of them escaped onto the main road I ran to head off the traffic and eventually order was restored without damage to anything more than the lad’s pride.

  By now the sun was so low that the ancient Bronze Age barrow on which the pillar sits was beginning to be wreathed in shadow; so I took my shots quickly in the day’s dying orange glow. I could feel the night’s cold creeping up from my feet as the shadow of the ridges above sapped the last light and warmth from the air. There is, as every visitor to this famous monument knows, very little now to be read of its original inscription. Most historians accept, though, that the transcriptions made in the seventeenth century by Edward Lhuyd20 are likely to be more or less accurate. Even then, the carving was sufficiently weathered that the full text could not be read. Essentially, it records the achievements and genealogy of kings of Powys from Cyngen, who died in Rome in 854, back into the fifth century and earlier. Cyngen’s descendants traced his line not only from Gwrtheyrn (the Vortigern of the Historia Brittonum) but as far back as Maximus—that is to say, Magnus Maximus, the usurping Roman Emperor of the late fourth century known elsewhere in the genealogies of the Welsh kings as Maxim Gwledig. Outside the debateable value of the genealogies and the Historia Brittonum, the pillar is the only supporting material witness for either Vortigern or for the supposed familial links between this legendary tyrant and the imperial dynasties. Inferentially, the pillar attests to Cyngen’s assertion of Powysian independence from Mercia and associates him with his famous great-grandfather Elise who, we gather, also threw off the yoke of Mercian hegemony at some time in the middle of the eighth century—just before, perhaps, the reign of King Offa.

  PILLAR OF ELISEG

  Even the genealogies of early Welsh kings and their role as federate allies of Rome in the last days of the Empire could not keep me awake that night. I ate as large a plate of food as I could find in a pub on the north side of the river in Llangollen, watched for a few moments the roaring passage of the swollen Dee beneath the town’s bridge and retreated to my sleeping bag. I woke early next morning thinking that dawn must just be breaking until I realised that the dimness of the light penetrating the canvas was due not to the hour but to a covering of snow.

  Saturday 22 March was the longest day of any of my journeys, and the furthest I have ever walked in a single day. I had not planned it that way. My aim was to get to Bangor-on-Dee where I knew of campsites and a hotel, thence to Chester on the day after; and it started well enough. I scraped the now-frozen snow off the tent, dragged my gear to the shower block in freezing drizzle, packed it wet as well as I could and set off eastwards to follow the canal and river out of the mountains. I got into the groove of the trail in good time, and the towpath was as flat as a pancake. The odd barge slipped by. At Pontcysyllte I stopped to admire Telford’s and Jessop’s magnificent 1805 aqueduct, hoping that at the busy canal basin which lies on its north side I would find something warming in the way of a hot drink and a pie or pastry. Nothing doing. I crossed the aqueduct on foot, feeling hungry and slightly queasy: the footway is very narrow, and on the other side of the waterway there is an unnerving unfenced drop to the river, pulsing through the gorge more than a hundred and twenty feet below.

  A mile further along the canal towpath, on the south side of the Dee, I crossed the line of Offa’s Dyke, invisibly, at right angles, and migrated back into Mercian territory at Pentre, a small village where road, rail, river, canal and trail meet and where the Dee swerves north on a lunatic hairpin. The names are still mostly Welsh here, another indication that the border, ethnically and culturally, does not even respect such an obvious barrier as the Dee. I negotiated the muddy, steep paths of a woodland valley, crossed the A483 on a footbridge and then took to whatever back lanes, paths and trails I cou
ld find that would keep me close to the Dee. A crossing would have been a fine thing, but the river here is unfordable and there are no bridges for many miles. Without a friendly boatman there was no crossing, especially with the river in spate. At Coed yr Allt I embarked on a muddy climb through conifer plantation and timber track, only to find a landslide blocking my way. I had to retrace my steps; and then backtrack again to find a way round. Climbing over farm walls and barbed wire fences and feeling guilty, I eventually managed to retrieve the route: by now fed up, sore from falling over a few times in slippery grime and decidedly filthy.

  There was nowhere dry enough on this miserable day to sit for a bite of lunch and rest. I stopped on the slithery bank of the river opposite the Boat Inn at Erbistock (at this point I had, oddly, passed back into Wales) and wished as hard as I could that the ford marked on the map wasn’t under several feet of fast-flowing water. But it was, and I walked on, noticing the first wood anemone of the year coming into its delicate, perfect white blooms. After another half hour I came out of the flood plain at Overton and walked north, smoothing out the curves of the river and heading now more or less directly for Bangor-is-y-coed, Bangor-on-Dee.

  The racecourse aside—and I could see and hear from a couple of miles away that a meeting was in full swing—this Bangor’s fame rests on its hosting of a profoundly important synod in the year 602 or 603. The monastery at Bancornaburg witnessed the convocation of British bishops and ‘learned men’ called to consider Augustine’s call for their church to bring its practices into line with contemporary Roman orthodoxy.21 Augustine had already met their representatives further south on the borders of the Hwicce and the West Saxons, right on the edge of the realms in which his sponsor, the Kentish King Æthelberht, might afford him authority and protection. He had pulled off a perfunctory miracle, restoring the sight of a blind man. Impressed but unconvinced, the British clergy called the synod at Bangor whose very large community—Bede told his readers that it was said to house more than two thousand monks—would make their decision and give Augustine an answer. The site cannot now be identified (I like to think it lies beneath the grandstand of the racecourse), but it must have been a substantial establishment, very likely the nearest thing to a town in all the kingdoms of the British. The bishops were reluctant to give up or change long-held traditions and must have found the admonishing words of a representative of the auld enemy, the Saes, offensive in the extreme. They may have thought his urbane Latin unclassical and vulgar. Even so, they agreed to consult and meet the Archbishop to debate the issues involved—effectively, to decide whether they should submit to his primacy, much as a secular lord submitted to an overking superior in arms and authority.

  Before the meeting, held presumably in the same year, seven British bishops took counsel from a hermit, a very holy man much treasured for his sagacity. He told them that if Augustine came truly from God, they should obey him. But how should they know if he was God’s appointed? Because he would be meek and humble, like a hermit, they were told. And how should they determine his humility? Contrive, answered the holy man, that he and his delegation should arrive first at the appointed place and time. If, when you enter, they rise to greet you, you will know he is meek and humble and truly God’s messenger.

  Dressed up as Bede’s language is, and apocryphal as the story sounds, what this boils down to is diplomatic protocol, a matter of high sensitivity to the British. Augustine failed the test spectacularly, and in the heat of subsequent exchanges he threatened the British that if they did not accept peace from their brethren, they must expect war from their enemies. Bede tells the story with relish, for it sets the stage for the entry of the Bernician kings as righteous overlords of Britain and bringers of enlightened Roman orthodoxy even to those schismatic Britons too stupid or stubborn to accept it from the Pope’s own appointed minister: as, in fact, God’s army. Bede’s retributive sword was not wielded until fourteen years later, by Æthelfrith—a pagan warlord. Æthelfrith, ruler of the combined Northumbrian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira for a total of twenty-four years and the first great overking to emerge among the Northern English, slew an army of Britons at a battle some miles north of here, just outside Chester, in about 615. The story goes that he saw a large party of monks from Bancornaburg praying for the success of the British army, and had them put to the sword.

  Bangor today is just a small village on the east bank of the Dee, site of a bridge carried by the modern A525 but surely much older in origin; but the huge sprawl of the racecourse and its temporary township were a reminder that at great gatherings Early Medieval populations came together at central places to trade, gossip, transact social business and oil the wheels of patronage. Not much has changed. The first fairs took place at sites of cultural importance—the henges, perhaps. During the Iron Age and beyond many were held in hill forts and coincided with tribute ceremonies where renders were brought from farms in their hinterland and from further afield by subject lords. Much of that render was in the form of cattle, which are largely portable, and treasure, likewise. No doubt prize bulls and horses were shown off, admired, traded and envied, just as they were in the holding enclosures and paddocks of the race meeting that I passed on the way to Bangor.

  It had been a long day. I checked my map, registering almost subliminally that the cantref 22 just north of Bangor was called Sesswick, which I took to mean the ‘farm of the English’. I scouted the farm where I thought my campsite would be; no dice—just a small field with a caravan and a tap and no sign of life but for a barking dog. Searching the village yielded neither intelligence nor enlightenment. I went into one of the pubs and after a long, cool drink asked if they had room at the inn. No chance: not with the race meeting on. I tried the other hotel; same answer. I made my weary way back to the racecourse where a large temporary encampment of caravans and trailers offered a Dark Age solution. I found a nice sloping patch of grass, pitched my tent gratefully and was about to go in search of someone to pay when I was unceremoniously asked to leave. Not the right sort, I suppose. Dangerous to the racing classes, perhaps. I was not happy, and tempted to utter a curse against my antagonist’s descendants; instead I packed the tent and left under threat of physical expulsion. I sat on the levée overlooking the liquid snake of the Dee and looked at the map. Tomorrow I wanted to be in Chester. Another twelve miles north. The day was closing in and that seemed like an awfully long way; I had already walked more than twenty-five miles. The nearest other campsite seemed to be in Eydon, two or three miles west. I trudged off along a dead straight road full of fast cars, their headlights blinding in the deepening light but barely noticing the pilgrim until they were almost on him. As I came into the village it started sleeting. The campsite, which on the map had seemed conveniently close to the village pub, had been disestablished along with the hostelry. If we were to measure civilisation by the rise or decline of inns, the present age would seem dark indeed.

  Another three miles, directly north, would bring me to Wrexham and, I hoped, the surety of a bed. The wind and sleet in my face, I walked the distance on autopilot. The only hotel in the centre of town was full of drunken stag-nighters. I wandered vaguely in the direction of the station, the tourist information office being long closed, and eventually found a room at one of those mega-corporate chains whose name I refuse to remember. To their credit, they let me in, mud and all, and I was finally able to disengage the pack, shower, warm up and set to pricking the blisters that had been working at my feet most of the day. Looking at the soggy map laid out on the bed to dry, I saw that the hotel lay within yards of the line of Wat’s dyke.

  A night’s good sleep has the most amazing restorative effect on a tired body and mind. The same goes for breakfast (all you can eat; and I did). I had given up on the idea of walking to Chester; a pity, since my route from Bangor would have taken me past the site of a great burial ground lying next to the Roman road at Heronbridge, where excavations have recovered the remains of what may have been the army de
feated by Æthelfrith in the battle of 615. I decided to cut my losses and get a train; I had another professional speaking engagement to get to at Nantwich the next day, and had frankly had enough of this wet and unwelcoming trail.

  I hobbled the couple of hundred yards to the station, only to find that there was no service. By now in quite sanguinary mood, I joined the queue for the replacement bus service. I dropped my pack on the ground. The gods succoured me with a small moment of serendipity. The woman in front of me in the queue, a rucksack on her back and holding the hand of a young girl, turned round. Rachel Pope, a very, very old digging pal, former student of mine and now distinguished Lecturer in European Prehistory at the University of Liverpool, was on her way to see a man about a car, with her daughter Bella. The bus trip to Chester went by in a flash of catch-up news, gossip, Dark Age shop talk and a scribbled list of sites that I simply must visit when I went to Anglesey and the Llŷn peninsula. And that is another story.

  Interlude Haltwhistle to Hotbank

  Celia Fiennes—Highland cattle—Aesica fort—purpose of the Wall—Vindolanda writing tablets—dilation of historical time—engineers and farmers—Beowulf’s landscape

  HALTWHISTLE’S HEYDAY was forged from a combination of sheep, lead, coal and the railways. Lead, coal and water together suggested a good place to make paint, and so the town exported colour east and west. Now the railway carries mostly tourists who come for the Wall and the Northumbrian landscape. An earlier intrepid traveller passed this way in the 1690s and recorded, in her wonderfully chatty, waspish Restoration English, an encounter with the natives of these parts: