White Horse Pilgrim

Between showers

The day brightened enough to suggest a trip out to ride. My slick machine swept into action. Just over an hour later I was aboard Brena in a quiet valley several miles away. Another half-hour saw us on the ridge looking down across the Thames Valley. This is Dean's Bottom, where King Alfred and his men chased the defeated Danes (i.e. Vikings) after the Battle of Ashdown - just one thousand one hundred and forty one years ago. In the hills memories are long.

The power station in the valley threw up a huge cloud. See the sheep grazing in the shady foreground, on the old turf covering the remains of a Roman temple. Today's edifice throws up a spectacle to stand above the relics of a long-dead empire. And I traversed the Roman road imagining a legion marching towards me: the tramp of the boots, the clink of armour and weapons, their raucous voices and the greeting of their officer to an august traveller. (Well, I'm not going to imagine myself a tramp!)

The sun was low. It was time to turn back towards the trailer. At one point we cast a shadow across a meadow yellow with cowslips. It's not a lofty exciting hill, but it's still attractive in green and yellow. Years ago I used to ride up a hill like that leading trail rides - usually the first day of a week out - stopping to picnic at the top. One of these days I'll pause atop this little local hill with victuals to consume.

We rode into a pretty sunset. Just in time because we would be arriving back at the trailer at twilight and would get to the field with just the faintest glimmer still in the westerly sky. Slithering through the mud in darkness is such fun. A little bit of light just makes the difference. But I did not dwell on logistics. I enjoyed the view across to the golden-fringed pink clouds above pastel fields.

Ancestors lived here

Silent and mysterious, Segsbury camp lies abandoned on the ridge. A circular chalk rampart nibbled by sheep, it sits incongruous between modern fields. But its organic smoothness, its curves and the very material from which it is made, the camp fits into the rolling hills. Three thousand years old, it might still have been tenuously occupied when the Romans arrived in 43AD. By then its glory days as a centre for tribal agriculture and commerce seem to have passed: so the archaeologists tell us.

Past the camp I rode, another traveller on horseback, a speck upon the long history of this place. But at least I think about that history and wonder. Mostly one can just speculate and wonder. On a quiet day the traveller might stop here, imagining himself or herself a final inhabitant of the place. The group walking, the farmer in his tractor, they might represent the first trudging Roman legion confident in its superiority. Like horses through all antiquity Brena would nibble the grass. Only unlike most of her historical predecessors she's more of a family member than a chattel. And I look at that rampart as a place to take in the view or to sit in the sun rather than a final defence against neighbours. Sic transit gloria mundi. But sometimes the mundane isn''t such a bad thing.

Roman fields and Celtic memories

A grey breezy Saturday made way for a warm bright Sunday. Soft innocuous cumulus clouds sprouted and formed into rows stretching from western horizon to eastern. However no rain threatened. It would be a lovely day for riding, and a productive day for the harvesters too.

I headed West with Brena, driving truck and trailer towards a quiet valley where the only businesses are horse breeding and arable farming. From the thin chalk soil of the gently sloping land spring forth racehorses and grain. But we are not the first inhabitants of that place. Tractors hum and Thoroughbreds graze amidst prehistoric burial mounds. Ancient field patterns remain as crop marks. Beech groves from who knows what antiquity gaze down, potential descendants of the wildwood that once enveloped these marches between past and present.

 
Away we rode, up the hill past racehorse gallops and over the grassy crest. An even quieter valley, dry and road-less, welcomed us. Here only grain is grown and farm workers come only to plough and sow in spring then to harvest in late summer. But today they were doing none of those things in the quietest of valleys, being busy over the hill harvesting by the road.

So Brena and I travelled in tranquility along a grassy path between fields of barley, the only noise being her footfalls and my occasional words of encouragement to her. The barley seemed to have shrunk, shrivelled in the warmth, dry and ready for harvest. Soon these fields too would be bare harrowed expanses, the soil roan with chalk and flint.

 

The Romans farmed here, and the Celts before them. Until the 1940s there the remains of Celtic strip fields graced the far hillside, only to be ploughed out as soon as the farmer mechanised. But it is the Romans who left the most for archaeology. To the south of the path that I rode along - which was to my left for I was riding westward (and in the centre of the following photo) - the remains of a sizable villa and farm complex have been excavated. The Romans intensified farming, requiring manuring of the fields, spreading fragments of broken Roman pottery and other rubbish to be found two millennia later for those people threw all their waste into the midden.

These were wealthy Roman farmers. Their villas possessed mosaic floors, underfloor heating and extensive barns and outbuildings. The remains of corn dryers have been found. So this was a prosperous and thriving valley for a few centuries long ago. Perhaps that was the busiest that it has ever been?

 
Today's farmers were busy a few miles to the north, hard by the great prehistoric thoroughfare that is the Ridgeway. This has been a broad open land since pre-Roman times, its woodland largely cleared by industrious Celts who sought a dry fertile place in which to live and farm. Probably the land was less arid then than now, the water table being much lower today thanks to a century of extraction for drinking and industry.

Two millennia ago this was the grain belt of England, jealous tribes storing their produce within chalk-walled hilltop fortifications that survive to this day. Today there are fewer people and new machines, lending a certain superficial modernity to the scene. But not everything has changed. Far from it. Only now, for the most part, people are obsolete except as consumers.

 

Mostly people are obsolete out here, and so are horses. But plenty of people visit the Ridgeway with its prehistoric fortifications, and some horses too. I saw six other riders, one distantly and five close by. Of the five who passed me, two appeared unimpressed, presumably because I look more like a Western rider than English. Some people here find that beyond the pale. It's their loss.

The grass up here is thick and lush, as perhaps it has always been. Brena is just the latest of hundreds of generations of horses to graze happily up here. The Celts rode here, indeed the transition of their culture from pedestrian to equestrian saw their garb change from robes to trousers. The Romans rode too, and all of them had chariots and farm carts. So we travel a well-trodden trail. We have auspicious predecessors.

 

Returning

The latter part of this week contained much work and some irritation. Not least some kind of idiocy prevented that inefficient megalith HSBC from paying Typepad resulting in my account being suspended for a couple of days. The call centre in India may well tell me that "now everything is very fine sir", but it was not and only a visit to a bank branch in person got the problem sorted. Now I know that the concept of paying from an account that is actually in credit may be strange in debt-ridden card-addicted Britain. (Were there more people like me then banks would make a lot less money!) Oh but it was due to "security"! (Like Typepad might be laundering money, or maybe it's a front for terrorists?) Anyway, the problem is sorted. However it was quite a trying day.

So riding has been a relief and a refuge. Not only being out with a good horse but travelling through this mysterious land.

We were out late. Again I returned home after 10pm in the last failing trickle of light.

In the low evening sunlight the landscape seemed nearly luminous. The play of light across this land which is spacious yet far from flat, sculptural in its flowing form, is a source of great beauty.

There goes the Ridgeway, snaking away to the horizon. So the chalk crest appears to me, and very similar did it appear to ancestors centuries and millennia ago.

In this arid season the bleached chalk bones of the hill stare at the traveller. The bedrock is snowy white, like unseasonal frost. Unyielding as ice, chalk flows like the living organic thing that once it was.

And the land is dry. Truly this is a green desert, for there is not a drop to drink yet the hardier plants flourish. This place is a gift to the ascetic if rather a challenge to the farmer.

Doru carried me along the track, bare hooves ringing on the bleak rock of Churn Hill. This is an auspicious place, for just behind me in the year 635 Saint Birinus preached and began the conversion of Wessex, sowing a seed that led to King Alfred the Great.

So people remember history and the land also maintains memories. I recall Birinus and Alfred, whose deeds are remote chronologically yet seem recent so powerfully do their echoes reverberate. The chalk preserves prints of horses that have passed lately. Yet also the land maintains the memory of all of significance who have passed. equine and human. So timelessness reaches out to touch the face of the perceptive traveller.

Sometimes land seems to have changed over time. Thus is the city especially, where discontinuity is a plague. But here I tread the same ground as ancestors both humble and auspicious, land perhaps changed a little in appearance, but no more different than a friend clad in new garb. And indeed this land is an old friend to my ancestors and I.

Dean's Bottom and the contemplation of change

Today I received a welcome visitor at the barn, and we took the two horses - Doru and her nice well behaved gelding - on a circuit of the Downs. We weren't out for very long - less than three hours - because I don't want to over-work a still-recovering Doru. However the great roan beast did well indeed, and was eager in the company of another. I wonder whether he will be stiff tomorrow?

Mina the dog is tired too. She decided not to return to me yesterday evening, but instead slipped away into the shadows and spent the night at the barn. This morning I found her sleeping by the gate to Doru's field, a good loyal dog if naughty too for not coming when called - there is a fine duality to ponder. Now she is trying to curry favour and came out on the ride, which was a little longer than she is used to. She will sleep well tonight.

The ride took us east, over the hills, and up to a point where a view across the Thames valley opens up. There lie the archaeological remains of a Roman temple (which look like grassy raised parts and ditches in a meadow where one might imagine, say, fallen columns and broken pediments) and a Roman road (now a muddy track between fields). But there also is Dean's Bottom, a dry hanger where far back in the year 871 the army of King Alfred the Great chased the retreating Danes (i.e. Vikings). That is the place where red poppies still are called Danes' blood. But by 1066 our ancestors were Norsemen, as were the invading Normans.

Still it is a poignant place where history was made.

How nice it was to ride with my old ease regained, relaxed in the saddle, untroubled by aches and pains. This is a valuable gift.

We made one good canter, where Doru surged forward as of old. This gave me hope, and besides it is a pleasure to ride fast on a strong steady horse.

Later I took Doru over to the field where he will be covering a mare. Now the two of them are on opposite sides of an electric fence (a means of separation that both respect) gaining familiarity. Hopefully he will send her into season, and then we shall leave them in together.

I am looking forward to the product of this union. It will make Doru more complete as a stallion to breed, and he will pass on good characteristics of temperament and conformation. Besides I do love foals.

But, leaving him in another place to perform this task is like letting a close family member go on a quest. I am at once happy and nervous embracing change with its hopes and fears.

This makes me realise how closely I protect my few remaining animals. Before, when my barn contained two dozen horses, I sent them out daily to work in pairs and groups. The draught horses worked in the forest and on steep meadows, on the roads too. The riding horses went all over the place. Mina followed us across hill and vale, running for miles along the side of busy roads. Yet now I fear for small mishaps, and take closer care of these creatures than ever I did before. They are fewer and more precious, and I know each better. Tragedy I have seen too much of. Yet I want to live a full life, and I wish this for them too. Now I am trying to explore the middle ground between fearfulness and recklessness.