White Horse Pilgrim

New Forest again

 

We travelled an hour and a half south to the New Forest, a broad expanse of public land not far from the ocean. Despite its name, only a part of the land is wooded. In fact it was established as a medieval royal hunting 'forest', or game reserve, in the late eleventh century. Saturday was a lovely day, perhaps the last warm bright day of autumn, and it was a pleasure to ride for four hours.

An hour's ride took Brena and I to the site of the Second World War bombing range near Godshill. In the photo above we're fifteen feet up on top of the main target, a concrete bunker that was covered in earth at the end of the war. Towards the top left of the photo lies an enormous crater some eighty feet across, and as much as a hundred feet deep, made by a five-ton 'earthquake' bomb dropped in 1944. The bomb would have been dropped from an aeroplane flying at twenty-thousand feet at a couple of hundred miles an hour, so the exercise was surprisingly accurate for an era of unguided munitions.

It's strange to think that such a tranquil location was once the scene of explosive testing of bombs and rockets. And it's very unusual to find bomb craters here in Britain. Pits abound in the chalk hills, but they were used to dig out material for road repairs and building work.

Ponies grazed the forest, congregating near ponds. There's one just behind the trees. It wasn't a problem riding past these herds of ponies as mostly they and Brena ignored one-another. There was the occasional whinny, that was all. The ponies seem to have a lovely natural life out here, with plenty to eat, fresh water, shelter and company. Their freedom contrasts with the many domestic horses kept in solitary confinement, often indoors for most or all of the day, so that they remain 'safe' and clean.

Back at the car park I tied up Brena, washed down her back, and fed her. Several ponies wandered across to look at her, both the native New Forest breed and a few Shetlands. Only mares and a few foals are loose in the forest at this time of year. Brena chose to stand with her hind feet up on a bank, hence her peculiar head-down stance. And then they all dozed at the end of a warm afternoon.

 

King Alfred's day

26 October marks the feast day of King Alfred the Great. The only English ruler called 'the great', Alfred repelled Viking attempts at conquest during the 9th century. He led the local army to victory on the chalk hills that I ride, one of many battles during a reign of twenty-eight years. Through his leadership Anglo-Saxon England followed a course characterised by independence, faith and learning. 

It occurred to me this morning, as the priest mentioned the feast day, that Alfred had never been canonised. That makes him unusual - hero in contrast to the saints, teachers and martyrs more usually celebrated - and akin to Stephen the Great of Moldavia who for half a century led the struggle to preserve medieval Europe against the Ottoman menace. The two men were alike, thrust into leadership when their nations needed them and rising to the challenge. Alfred promoted learning, enabling wisdom and culture to flourish in a land ravaged by invaders. Through Alfred's efforts civilisation and the rule of law continued in early England, growing and absorbing influences over time, helping create a nation that still exists over a millennium later. Stephen built many churches and monasteries, most functioning to this day, allowing Christian faith to survive centuries of foreign domination. That Moldavia maintained its distinct identity, and became a foundation of modern-day Romania, is Stephen's legacy. 

Today's ride was quiet and thoughtful. In a couple of hours we met no-one. The countryside was sleepy on the first day after the clocks had changed, horses on the grassy hillside likewise. It was a little magical too. Bright leaves fluttered down from golden trees as the breeze whispered hints of old tales. Alfred rode here, Vikings passed too, following roads that had been old when the Roman legions from the far border of Europe tramped them. Shepherds and soldiers, traders and missionaries: all passed this way. 

The path of my life has led me along some of Alfred's trails, and some of Stephen's too. I live upon the foundations that they, and a few others, built. However ruinous the fragments of their legacies may be, I'm here today because of the choices that they made. History is complex, messy and frequently unpleasant. There were wrong turns, mistakes and downright stupidity. But there was wisdom too, vision and goodness. Had Alfred or Stephen failed, life today would be worse than it is. 

 

One hundred years ago

Today I rode a skewbald mare from a place that once lay in Yugoslavia across the chalk hills of southern England. I could have ridden from her birthplace to Sarajevo in a couple of weeks, as a man might have done a hundred years ago. Plenty to think about. 

I lived almost a decade in Transylvania, just over the Danube and the Carpathian mountains from the Balkans, and practically everything I experienced was in some way moulded by the First World War. The nation in which I lived was formed from the remnants of Austro-Hungary. A national group received their own nation, a minority became foreigners on land once theirs. One deadly war led to the genocide and destruction of a second, followed by four decades of state socialist plague. Fascists murdered on a racial basis, communists upon social status. Even as I loved the peculiar, exotic mixture of hospitality, bucolic villages, monasteries, mountains and forests that epitomise Romania, I mourned the grievous losses of two world wars, pogroms, prisons, labour camps and socialist construction programmes. I knew enough history to begin to understand, and too much to acquiesce to local opinion. 

Riding in the mountains we crossed trenches dug during both world wars, facing east and west. We rode along old military roads. We discovered shell craters, occasional monuments, and once a piece of discarded ordnance. 

A couple of bullets, the petulance of a few arrogant leaders and the jingoism of the masses. All set in motion by one man who thought he was striking a blow for freedom. 

What is the truth? If Austro-Hungary hadn't existed then it would have needed to be created? Or an empire enslaving people thirsting for freedom? 

I look upon Austro-Hungary as a necessary transitional phase that should not have ended so abruptly been severed so arbitrarily. 

Austro-Hungary brought order to Middle Europe. Clumsy, bureaucratic, centralised order perhaps. But order was needed in the wake of Ottoman retreat. Bosnia just didn't want the kind of order that Austria brought. And empires didn't govern with a light touch in those days. 

Riding through the woods I thought of how very much has been lost thanks to those shots. I thought of what those events mean to different people: freedom to some Serbs, a war that cost millions of lives to many more people. To a few of us, most of what went wrong between 1914 and 1989, and a fair amount of what has gone wrong in the Balkans since. It's not as if Princip meant all that to happen. He was a youth of his time, in a poor country that hadn't been free for centuries. Is it a surprise that a young Slav pointed a gun at an Austrian official? No. But with power comes responsibility, and those with it - Europe's leaders - for the most part failed. 

Even my horse is a metaphor for Balkan confusion. Or confusion in Western minds, at least, because people out there have their individual and collective certainties. A Slovenian horse of Austrian breed, bred by a citizen of former Yugoslavia in a place that has - almost within living memory - been Ottoman, Austrian, Yugoslav and Slovene. 

I thought of so much that had been lost. And I wondered what can be built. Something better needs to be built. But what does better mean? A century on we still need to think that one through. 

 

 

Icknield Way

In the Dark Ages this was one of the four Royal highways of England, on which travellers were granted the King's protection. It is said to pre-date the Roman occupation, and is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters. Running through the villages that dot the spring-line, it is the Icknield Way, which parallels the even older Ridgeway up on the chalk hills to the south. 

It's a traveller's trail, with access to settlements and water - unlike the dry, desolate Ridgeway. More than that, it is the sort of trail that would be associated with a civilised kingdom, connecting places via villages offering supplied and lodging. Those travelling along it would have been farmers and merchants wishing to buy and sell, not armies needing to live off those unfortunate enough to live adjacent. 

It's a peculiar experience to ride along the Icknield Way. Now mostly it's silent, almost untravelled. Towns and villages are connected, for the most part, by more modern routes along which vehicles speed. Further west, it is true, the Icknield Way has become a minor road - and one, I believe, that inspired Tolkien's description of the walled path below Weathertop. 

But I did meet a group of teenagers out on a bicycle expedition, loaded with baggage. At last a group of modern wayfarers. They seemed well prepared and even a little intrepid. I was impressed. And then Brena and I had the Icknield Way to ourselves. But I knew that the old trail isn't dead yet, not when people set out to journey along it. 

Nurnberg sojourn

I spent two days in Nurnberg, Germany –the historic city of commerce and art (Albrecht Durer worked here) but also the Nazi rallies and post-war trials. Now it’s a fine city again, civilised and interesting, if very much a modern place built upon a medieval plan.

But I came here on a quest borne of stubbornness, which was to attend a concert with Joan Baez. For complex reasons I missed her UK tour. So a day’s journey in each direction by train was called for, and this in itself was a pleasure: just like the old days when I travelled far and frequently. I crossed southern England, traversed the Channel Tunnel, sped across France and Belgium to Brussels, then took a splendid German train on. Trains in Germany are done well, with comfortable carriages running most often on time. There is plenty of information to help the traveller, wide windows to look out from, and a general sense of order that tends to be missing in Britain. Then it was just a two minute walk from the station. My hotel lay in a backstreet just behind the station, and proved quieter than I expected. (But, to a railway engineer, a bit of train noise is comforting.) I slept well, if not for long enough. 

In the day before the concert I wondered what to do. Well the German State Railway museum beckoned, and contained a wealth of interesting exhibits. The carriage of ‘Mad’ King Ludwig of Bavaria was especially opulent and fine, just the thing for a journey to Neuschwanstein. Then off to the German National Museum.I had not anticipated the Albrecht Durer exhibition, the largest such held in my adult lifetime, and here in the artist’s home town. I waited an hour in line to enter the exhibition, then took two hours to get around, looking in detail at some absolutely remarkable works. Imagine being able to look at paintings that revolutionised art, priceless works over five hundred years old,displayed without even glass in front of them. I could study them in detail from inches away, seeing each brush stroke and effect generated by the artist.To see such works was impressive, moving and quite overwhelming. It was a once-in-a-lifetime activity. (Lytha – you need to take a trip to Nurnberg.)

The concert took place in a park, a risky venture the weather being as it is. Fortunately, after a day of rain showers, the sky cleared to a clear blue. Surprisingly, this was the first popular music concert that I have attended. (Have I mentioned the negative effects of being brought up in a cultureless and reactionary household?) Joan Baez captivated three thousand people on a cool evening that became dark and starry. The German audience was steady and predictable until the first encore was over, and then a mass crowded forwards to the edge of the stage, me amongst them. At that point the concert took on an especially intimate feel, as if Joan was playing to a few dozen of us in a bar. (If only!) There were several encores, including Imagine and (sung in German) Where have all the flowers gone? It was wonderful. I do hope that she visits England again soon! For me this was a step into living life fully and vigorously, to embracing and accepting,growing and fulfilling my destiny. Yes, a step, and one leads to another, then many more.

Next morning I woke as late as I dared whilst not wanting to miss breakfast. Then off by tram (streetcar) to visit the recently-opened Documentation Centre of the Nazi Party Rallying Grounds. This no-punches-pulled exhibition, set in the part-built shell of the largest remaining Nazi construction project – the Nurnberg Congress Hall – documents the Nazi era from beginning to end. Here one can see rare and shocking artefacts (anti-Jewish primary school reading primers, board games where players won by “evicting the most Jews”) presented in context. There was a mass of information about the Nurnberg Rallies, including memoranda in which the civic authorities (themselves Nazi supporters) complained about attendees’ conduct (such as party officials visiting brothels and storm troopers urinating in the subway). And those rallies were apart of a chain of events that led to Nurnberg being devastated by aerial bombardment (it’s likely that one of my family took part in the bomber raids) before the war was over. Hence the paucity of original buildings, though a number have been reconstructed. (But so much is lost. Back in Transylvania, where I lived for eight years, there is Sibiu - a city said to represent “what Nurnberg used to look like”. However Sibiu was not especially well maintained - let's hope that it will be in the future.)

Afterwards I visited the house of Albrecht Durer, now reconstructed to approximately its original appearance. The house is a fine timber-framed building, in which one can see Durer’s studio, kitchen, bedroom and other spaces. I was amazed to think how he created staggering works in a light-filled studio that is there to this day, making things that impress people over half a millennium later. And then, walking through the bedroom, I was reminded how he was human too. Last of all, it was a short if steep up to the Imperial Castle, summer home of the Holy Roman Emperor. I was glad to finish my historic walk in the footsteps of Albrecht Durer and Frederick Barbarossa rather than such modern louts as Hitler, Streicher, Roehm and the other scum of their era. At last, Nurnberg is a peaceful city. In the evening I repaired to a quiet pavement bar on a cobbled alley below a medieval gatehouse tower where I enjoyed a nice dinner with a couple of glasses of good dark beer. What a pleasant way to end a few days away. Hopefully next time my wife D will join me.

There was some time to write as well, not least during sixteen hours on various trains. I had a good think about how to develop the current work in progress, and assembled an improved structure to develop. Though rewriting just seems to be a time-consuming exercise in giving self-serving agents yet more material to dislike whilst offering no help at all. Well, luckily, for the most part I write for my own pleasure. 

Changing view

I have searched for old pictures of the hills near here where the cavalry was trained and exercised. Images seem to be few and far between. The only source that I have discovered, a military history group, guards its archive closely. I have not been able to acquire a single picture. Therefore I shall rely on a similar view taken in another country.The spiked pickelhauben give a clue as to the army.

The hills are silent here, and probably lie still wherever that old photo was taken too. It was all a very long time ago, and no-one pictured could be alive anymore. But a look at that image brings to mind the sound and smell of so many horses. The cavalry might indeed have been a fine employment so long as peace prevailed.

Tolkien was a horse trainer in the army reserve back before the First World War, which may be why the Lord of the Rings contains so much detail about horses. Disliking the hardships of military service, Tolkien was released back to civilian life at his request. Siegfried Sassoon had a bit more success as a cavalryman before transferring to the Infantry in order to see more action. He was to receive plenty, but survived to write Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man and its successors.

More cavalry

A little more research found this rare film. This is the kind of unit that my former neighbour belonged to. It's a pleasure to look at the riding and to appreciate the horsemanship. I'd like to be so agile that I could run alongside a horse on the lunge and simply spring aboard.

Occasionally I did come across that kind of lively spirit around horses, most often amongst young peasant men. Romania is not a country that I would associate with horsemanship. That is not to say that the farm horses were neglected - far from it - however for the most part they were equine tractors. I didn't come across many horse lovers, just a lot of men who could work a horse competently on a farm or in the forest.

I'd like to think that a couple of my staff were almost naturals with horses. They rode fluently despite little formal instruction. Theirs was a confidence that the horses seemed to recognise and respect. I loved going out riding in the mountains with Cornel. Most often he could be trusted. Provided that no drinking den detrained him, he would get to the other end in good order, his horse too. How I miss those rides.

Now in the busy technological West I struggle to find that old fluency. I'm nearest to it when hitching a trailer, loading my horse and going out to ride. Yes, cavalrymen made good mechanised soldiers through their dash and initiative. Having become a skilled trail rider did much the same for me, teaching me to treat life as a matter of finding a dynamic equilibrium across rough ground. Yet I feel as if I'm getting towards the end of those lessons, as if their range has been exhausted. Now the ground is too strange, not exactly rough but simply confusing. Sometimes pointless too. Well, I guess that most probably I've learned how to learn. That's the next trick to pull from my bag.

Here's a picture of a German cavalryman in Africa before the First World War. There's more good simple equipment, though that rifle must have got in the way. Like my neightbour, nice equipment, pity about the cause.

Horsemen of the Apocalypse

I found this picture whilst delving into history. Most particularly I was looking into a part of the history of Eastern Europe where I used to live. One superficial thing that struck me about this picture is the way in which folded blankets are used between horses and saddles, just as I did at my riding centre and still do today. There is a lot to be said for a good army blanket. But that is by far the least important thing to draw from the picture.

A former neighbour told me a little about cavalry engagements during the Second World War, in his case fighting with the Romanian army supporting the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union. The Eastern Front was a callous brutal business from which few men or horses returned. The Romanian army, so I was told, was so short of resources that the men of his unit needed to provide their own horses. My cavalry veteran informant got as far as the River Don by Summer 1942, over half way from his European home to the Caspian Sea deep in Asia. There at the Don Elbow he was injured sufficiently severely to be invalided out of the army. And that is why he lived. His fellows went on to Stalingrad, from which few returned.

Supposedly a book was written about the Romanian cavalry on the Eastern front, titled (I believe) Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I haven't succeeded in getting hold of a copy.

Most of my trail rides carried me across relics of that war. There were shell craters on the mountains, defensive trenches decaying on high ground, bunkers crumbling in the forest, and the wreckage of bridges blown up in 1944. There were more sights than memories, at least more physical remains than stories that anyone wanted to own up to. From 1945 to 1989 those stories were taboo, and by then much had been forgotten. But one thing was clear enough: there was no glory in any of it. There was none of the swank of Western peacetime cavalry in an aggressive invasion. The stories that I heard were, for the most part, the tales of men who rode out to settle scores both national and ethnic. The accounts of bored, frustrated men seeking adventure. In doing so they brought new defeat upon their people, though that wasn't the way their path seemed to lead in the beginning.

I am sorry for them, deluded as they were (and some still are, to judge by things that were said to me - which is one reason why for a while I fell a little out of sympathy with Romania). However I am more sorry for the horses that those men dragged into that bloody conflict. They at least were innocent.

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.

Castles crumbling

I had been about to write that, since I want to restart work on my novel, posting will become a little less frequent. I was thinking of posting three times a week, or thereabouts. Then I became intrigued by Jess's account of a Medici castle.

We didn't have the Medici in Transylvania, however Vlad the Impaler came by historically when he felt like burning a town or slaughtering its inhabitants. I'd have chosen the Medici any day. Later on the Habsburgs showed up, and for about a decade that territory was on the frontier between Austro-Hungary and Russia. The military roads cut into the mountains are used to this day by shepherds, and tend to be referred to as the "Maria Theresa Roads". Hurriedly prepared fortifications were thrown up too, probably intended for scouts and advanced guards.

We had a regular lunch stop in the lee of an old fortress. It wasn't as impressive as Jess's Mugelo citadel, however there is a practical limit to what one can build on a mountain top in a hurry. There were two steep-sided earthen ramparts enclosing square spaces some thirty metres across. In-between those lay foundations that might have been barracks and stables. The fort seemed more of a point to sortie from than a defensive structure, though a few troops might have holed up there against lightly armed adversaries.

Later these forts would have been dismantled, the wooden structures turn down, in order to deny them to outlaws. There were highwaymen until a hundred years ago, for this was Austro-Hungary's "Wild West" (other than being to the east).

To this day these hills are remote. One could ride for hours in summer and meet the occasional shepherd. Outside the high grazing period of barely four months one might see no-one all day long. This was not a place to go alone and get hurt. Until recently there was no mobile phone signal out there. Even now there cannot be any road access up there. The occasional cross or stone marked the grave of a shepherd or traveller for whom the journey had proved fatal. I was told that lightning was the most common killer, and needed no persuasion to shun the hilltops when thunderstorms approached. Burnt skeletons of struck trees and bushes proved the point. The morning after one especially violent storm shattered relics of trees smouldered pungently, and that after a night of rain.

We rode through the quiet hills one May week and nearly had them to ourselves. On a sunny day that was delightful. The whole world seemed at peace. I suppose that we might have felt a little differently in the 19th century, had we been Austrians in what was a conquered fragment of Romania. Back then we'd have stuck to the roads where gendarmes were posted for protection. But if back then we'd have been ourselves - an Englishman accompanied by two American ladies - we should have been intrepid travellers well on the way to writing a book about exploring lovely remote countryside - and how we survived deep rural food, rustic board and eye-wateringly primitive sanitation. Just as Bram Stoker was fabricating a tale set just a few miles away, we'd have brought back a refreshingly authentic tale.