Emily goes for another walk

Addenda to last nights blog: Before going to listen to the stones with the walking actor, a local in the Red Lion told me about the flying objects in the pub ... on the oak mantlepiece in the bar is a line of five alternate green and red glass tea light holders, heavy, 'shaped like a sprout' as he described it. A couple of times a week the middle one (green) will suddenly, and with no warning, launch itself from the mantelpiece over the heads of drinkers, and land on the stone floor, and never break. He had witnesses to the last time this happened, but they weren't working yesterday. I picked it up - it was quite heavy and there was no spring behind it. It would hurt if you were in the way of its random flights. He said I should put this in the blog. And then he added that a teaspoon from a cup and saucer had taken a high flying arc unannounced the other day too. Curiouser and curiouser.  He said he could tell I didn't believe him. It's not that I didn't, and I ...

I have reached Avebury, another county, another soil, another story. The moon is out, a little misty, and I can still hear the helicopters. Glastonbury feels like a long time ago now, but it's only been five days. On leaving Glastonbury my dad decided to walk the first half of the day with me, across more flat levels and the longest straightest road probably of the whole walk, with egrets rising startlingly white out of the black mud. The Tor behind us didn't seem to be getting any smaller at all - a landscape in which nothing seemed to move. And yet Wells Cathedral came into view and I waved what I thought was a last goodbye to the Tor, only for it to appear again hours later. These past few days I have felt a little like a pilgrim, passing through sacred and ancient sites, sometimes alone, sometimes with others all coming for their different reasons, sometimes disappearing into crowds of shoppers, and suddenly feeling self conscious, and other times fitting in, being unders...

I've descended off the high frosty borderland and into a Somerset of vast, flat, straight-line divided level Moor, dotted with little contour rounded humps and bumps. It's a place you could hardly call flat though, on very many levels. Two days ago there was still snow lingering amidst the trees on the Blackdown hills, and I felt as if I was the only person there to see it, occasionally glimpsing a vast view below of Taunton, and the Mendips, framing the flat lands between. Descending on an old droving route the afternoon was spent walking through and between beautiful villages with huge houses built from local stone, and ghostly quiet with village shops closed down and pubs only open limited hours. This is idyllic, peaceful wealth, at a cost, and it felt a little sad and lonely. At the crossroads before Shepton Beauchamp, however, a car stopped, and a lady travelling with her husband wound down the window and asked if I needed a lift anywhere. She was very concerned when I t...