Walking to Camelot (25 page)

Charles
II
hid in a house in Lower Ansford on September 16, 1651, while being pursued by Cromwell's troops after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester. His escape route through England is commemorated by the long-distance Monarch's Way path. From time to time our Macmillan footpath overlaps with it as we wend steadily southwestward toward the English Channel.

Beyond slumbering Ansford, we turn down a rutted track with overhanging trees, eventually emerging into the Ansford Road approach to Castle Cary. Our
B&B
for the night is south of town.

If the blind house in Box was dreary, the lock-up here is pathetic. Picture a round stone erection with a dome on top, all barely large enough to hold one man. This aptly named Pepper Pot resembles a poor Hobbit's hovel. It was built in 1779 at a cost of twenty-three pounds. The structure is said to have inspired the shape of the British police helmet, and that's exactly what comes to mind. It sits in the only parking lot I have noticed in the entire town, perhaps to remind motorists that if they overstay their allotted hours, they stand to pay more than just a small fine. Daniel Defoe dubbed this the most impressive structure in Castle Cary.

I have no luck in finding a bookshop that is open. The quaint store in Castle Cary looks intriguing, but there is no light on inside. I check with the antique vendor next door, who says the bookshop owner has gone on a walking tour to Scotland. Karl laughs and says I have enough books already. Another year, in Arundel, I diverted especially to visit a venerable bookshop, only to find a sign on the door advising that the owner had gone fishing. On yet another visit, I almost struck out with my favourite shop in Dorchester, where the owner had posted this sign: “Proprietor has lost his keys — shop will open when keys located.” I waited around and a short, balding man eventually appeared with keys in hand and let me in. In the course of chatting with him, I discovered that he had formerly been a film editor, and he avidly recalled working on a television edition of the
CBC
's
This Hour Has Seven Days
.

Despite the Pepper Pot's pall, Castle Cary exudes a relaxed air of charm and sophistication, and I love the museum that sits in the centre of town, with its vast plaza of stonework out front where people lounge about on benches. The building itself is a mini Areopagus — classical and stately, with pointed windows, casements, and majestic pillars.

Across the road from the museum sits another George Inn. It was here that Somerset cudgel battles took place in 1769 and 1771 to mark the anniversaries of George
III
's coronation. These were bloodthirsty contests between two strong men who each tried to break open his opponent's head. Contestants and bystanders recited the words “Keep up your butt and God preserve your eyesight.” Inn landlords organized the affairs and dragged them out over two or three days to maximize drinking profits. The contest ended in victory for one man either when blood began to flow above the neck or when a man cried “Hold!” This brutal activity was also called “backswords.” A tempered variant of the sport still exists in Chipping Campden, where “Cotswold Olympics” shin-kicking contests are held. Two contestants kick each other viciously until one party relents.

Castle Cary is the hometown of Douglas Macmillan, after whom the Way is named. Across from the Methodist chapel we find Ochiltree House, where Macmillan lived. Fittingly, the Macmillan clan's motto is “I learn to succour the distressed.”

Macmillan never recovered from his father's slow, agonizing death from cancer in 1911. He was aghast at the ignorance of the disease and at the absence of medical and community support for cancer patients. Determined to help alleviate cancer suffering, he founded the Society for the Prevention and Relief of Cancer, now known as Macmillan Cancer Support.

Macmillan believed that cancer patients should be able to remain in their own homes even in the late stages of the disease. His society was a game-changer. Today Macmillan Cancer Support collects 150 million pounds a year and employs some 2,000 nurses and 300 doctors in Britain. Every second shop in England seems to have a donation box for Macmillan, and its influence has even spread to North America. I witnessed my law partner dying of cancer, yet he remained of good cheer until the end, while remaining in his home overlooking the ocean, surrounded by family and friends.

Castle Cary is the jumping-off point for Macmillan Way West, a 102-mile walking path created as part of the Macmillan system in 2001. It is now feasible to walk 346 miles from Boston to Barnstaple — from east coast to west — omitting the southern leg to the Channel. Last year, Karl and I sampled a slice of Macmillan West over two days as part of our general reconnaissance for a long-distance walk. The Way West passes through the Levels, a low, marshy area of meadowland resulting from the convergence of eight rivers that meander toward the sea. King Alfred famously burned the cakes he was tending while hiding in the Levels from marauding Vikings.

2003 DIARY FLASHBACK:
We commenced at the Pepper Pot, from which one descends swiftly to a series of pleasant meadows. Here we encountered several rare red roe buck deer jumping about. The route parallels the meandering River Cary for a stretch. The meadow grasses were full of wildflowers, through which we caught glimpses of darting hares, or “jackrabbits.” These creatures differ from rabbits by virtue of their longer bodies, floppy ears, and burrowing habits. Hares grow so large in East Anglia that they are called “fen donkeys.”

At Somerton Church we opened the heavy oak door for a peek inside, only to stumble upon a full wedding rehearsal. A beautiful young girl was singing “Ave Maria” to an accompanying organ. We sat respectfully in a back pew and soaked it up.

From Somerton, the route follows the River Yeo. Here we ran into serious trouble. We had about fifteen fields to pass through, with the River Yeo on one side and a deep canal on the other. The weather turned inclement. Driving rain slashed our faces — it was “chucking it down,” as the English say. Each field held between twenty and thirty steers. And I tell you, they were rabid. Usually when you enter a field, a herd of bullocks will approach you and you yell and wave your walking stick and they back off. These animals did not back off. They kept coming, eyes red, mouths foaming. It was like a nightmare, with the lancing chill of the rain and the charging herds of steers — Stephen King's
Christine
is not half so terrifying as those mad brutes chasing you! We kept getting pushed farther down the slope of one field, and I glanced toward the river as a possible escape route. But Karl can't swim. We were in a desperate pickle.

As we clambered wearily over stile after stile into each succeeding field, the aggressiveness of the steers intensified, until in the last field they were wholly bent on running us down. We yelled and screamed with all our might, but they kept coming in a raging fury, and we knew that we were about to be trampled to death. Somehow we reached the far fence but were not going to make it to the stile, so we crawled under the low-hung barbed-wire fence and bloodied ourselves. The herd charged after us and careened past, and then the lead four or five steers crashed into both stile and fence and rolled over and over down the hillside, covered in blood, into the river below, taking most of the stile and fence with them. Karl and I just lay there panting.

“That last bit ought to have taken the bollocks off some of the bullocks,” Karl deadpanned.

When we reached our B&B at Huish Episcopi, the proprietress looked at us as if we were a pair of wet weasels, for we were sodden and bleeding and bruised; but a good cup of tea soon sorted us out. In a quiet conversation with a farmer that evening at the local pub, we gleaned — without any incriminating admissions — that because of the recent foot-and-mouth disease epidemics, many farmers were injecting their cattle with hormonal drugs that supposedly made their animals more resistant to disease but had the unfortunate side effect of “perhaps making them a tad more aggressive.” You think?

AT CASTLE CARY,
we are fortunate enough to book into a wonderful stone manor-house
B&B
on the town's outskirts. Jenny, the owner, even offers to cook us a roast beef dinner. This suits us just fine. Karl heads immediately for the soaking tub, while I update my journal. The day has been long and tedious, and we have overdone it with an eighteen-mile walk that included the climb up Alfred's Tower and a ramble to Stourhead Gardens and back.

Jenny is an effervescent widow in her late seventies. She is both refined and compassionate, and makes sure we have plenty of heat for our rooms — a welcome change from the norm! Jenny is also dying of cancer, yet keeps in good spirits.

Promptly at seven, she raps on my door and announces that dinner is ready, and would I please let Karl know? I will indeed, but have to rap hard on his bathroom door to distract him from his tub ablutions, as I hear him singing amid a cacophony of splashes and thumps. He reminds me of Churchill, who used to behave like a walrus in his bathtub.

“It's time for dinner, Karl!”

No response. I rap harder. Finally the splashing stops.

“Karl, roast beef in five minutes!”

“Ask her if she has Shiraz and plum brandy; I'll be down shortly!”

We relax over a scrumptious meal of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, creamed cauliflower, and mashed potatoes lathered in rich black gravy. Dessert consists of homemade trifle. And yes, there is a choice bottle of Barossa Valley Australian Shiraz, but Karl will have to settle for sherry for his nightcap.

Jenny's joy lately has been anticipating a visit from her long-lost nephew in the United States, whom she wants badly to see. She has no children. The nephew had not stayed in touch since leaving England for America years ago, but recently he noticed her website advertising her
B&B
and contacted her by email. He is now scheduled to come over and visit her in the summer. She says she hopes to live long enough for his visit, as her cancer, which had been in long remission, has now recurred and she has decided to refuse chemotherapy and radiation. But she does not dwell on this, and is immensely cheerful at our candlelit dinner, saying she enjoys the company of many friends. Moreover, the Macmillan Cancer Relief nurses are of immense benefit.

“And are you both enjoying your walk?”

“Yes indeed,” I say. “It's a very different world we see along the Macmillan Way. So much history! A little arduous, mind you, when it starts raining and the wind blows across those muddy fields.”

“Ah, yes, I expect so. A different world for those of us too, John, who have dwelt here all our lives. People in the town now often commute to London or work out of their homes. Not like the old days — why, I walk down High Street now and hardly know anyone!”

Jenny serves strong Colombian coffee with the trifle, and life is good.

Before I turn out my light, I reflect that Douglas Macmillan would be very pleased to know that Jenny is able to continue living in good spirits in her own home despite her body being ravaged by cancer.

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And thro' the field the road runs by

To many-tower'd Camelot;

And up and down the people go,

Gazing where the lilies blow

Round an island there below,

The island of Shalott.

—ALFRED LORD TENNYSON—

“The Lady of Shalott”

THE FIRST COMMUTERS TO
London are gathered at the Castle Cary train station early this morning, most of them carrying laptops. Nearby, a cappuccino board beckons patrons into the Old Bakehouse Coffee Shop. Strong espresso tweaks my nostrils. Needful Things Interiors boasts of its fine silk curtains; Pantry by the Pond offers delicatessen delights such as paella, port tagine, and cream cheese roulades; Maya Boutique offers ladies' clothes, including Scottish cashmere. Sophisticated town meets country here. Expensive
SUV
s mingle with Mitsubishi pickup trucks on the town's main street. No kitsch, please.

I ponder why women like Jenny do
B&B
and conclude that there are two main types: those women who crave human company, and those who are needful of money. Jenny is evidently of the former category, and I so admire her pluck and her graciousness toward travellers in the face of such a difficult disease.

The ascent up Lodge Hill from Castle Cary is invigorating. We pass the earthworks of the old castle and gain a sweeping view of the Mendips, the Quantocks, the Somerset Levels, and Glastonbury Tor. Three huge crosses stand on the brow of the hill. An empty bench overlooks the town below. Here we stop to catch our breath. A plaque on the bench commemorates one Jack Sweet, who died in 1995 and loved to walk here.

We say hello to a friendly man and his collie, who approach us. The fellow is dressed in a long, plain beige raincoat, clutches a yellow polka-dot umbrella, and wants to chat about the fine view and such. But Karl is in no mood to talk. He is on a mission, impatient to bury his little plastic capsule containing a note to his children and some coins. Having dug up his daughter's cache at the Yorkshire abbey, it's now his turn to bury some treasure.

The man with the collie tells us a story about Jack Sweet, informing us that the man hanged himself in 1995 after some involvement with the hard drug trade — a morbid tale for sure.

“Something doesn't quite fit here,” I say. “It's not normal for plaques to be erected to honour criminals, least of all those involved in the shady underworld of drug trafficking.”

“Ah, mate, this Jack Sweet was the darling of the ladies and could sweet-talk his way out of any dilemma. No jail cell ever held him for long. Mind you, he only went to jail on minor charges like break and enter, but he was known to be dealing the hard stuff. Then he seems to have gotten on the wrong side of the big blokes running a local gang, and decided to hang himself. Of course, some people maintain it wasn't suicide.”

Karl fidgets about, trying to get the man to leave so he can dig his hole by the bench and bury his treasure cache.

“Come along, Webster.” The man finally decides to leave, since for several minutes he has only received guttural responses from the two rude North Americans. Webster reluctantly follows. Then Karl begins to dig furiously like a mole, dirt flying in all directions.

Alas, he should have waited for Webster to wander out of sight. His digging provokes Webster into thinking there must indeed be something interesting underground, and the dog comes bounding back, barking furiously, very excited. His owner calls him back, to no avail.

Karl freezes as Webster nuzzles him and peers into his hole. Could there be a mole or a rabbit down there? The dog pokes his nose into the hole.

“Go away, mutt!” Karl shouts and resumes digging, this time with a corkscrew because the earth has become too hard for his spoon and he must loosen up the soil. It does the trick, and soon Karl is scooping out the earth so furiously that the collie's tail wags faster and faster as he excitedly anticipates a rabbit emerging from below. Finally, the exasperated dog owner arrives and yanks Webster's collar, staring in disbelief at Karl and his hole.

I just stand there leaning on my walking stick. “He's burying treasure, that's all.”

“Of course, and I'm the man in the moon. So sorry about all this, chaps. Come along now, Webster.”

The owner leashes Webster and drags him off, both man and dog casting backward glances at Karl on his knees. Even a couple of kestrels swoop and dive overhead, eyeing these weird human antics with curiosity.

A few moments later, Karl finishes with his treasure caching and we resume the trek southward. The route winds gradually downhill to the Levels, where the walking is flat and comfortable. The Levels are composed of marine clay layers plus peaty moors that rise in the inland areas. Neolithic people laid the world's oldest timber road, known as the Sweet Track, over the Levels in 3800
BC
. The lowlands are bounded by rises of land such as the Mendip Hills, islands of high land like Glastonbury itself, and, finally, the southern hills such as Cadbury Castle, which lead into Dorset.

We are approaching a climactic point of the Macmillan Way. About two miles from Castle Cary, the path crosses the River Cam. Here the stream babbles and sings through bright yellow willows. Goldfinches dart about. A couple of boys stand on the banks dipping nets into the stream. I stop to ask the tousle-haired lads what they are trying to catch, and one of them shows me the contents of his net — dozens of wriggly worm-like creatures known as “elvers,” or baby eels. A large grey heron suddenly squawks and flaps itself heavily into a nearby elm tree.

We are truly in the West Country now — that magical, sought-after realm of walkers, holidayers, and adventurers that encompasses the counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Cornwall. As Susan Toth notes in
My Love Affair with England,
the West of the country is often associated with “myth, legend, and the land of faeries.” The western horizon has enchanted and obsessed people since time immemorial. It was not only the search for discovery of new lands to the west that gripped the imagination of the ancients. The daily dipping of the sun below the horizon was also of great concern. Would it return? Hawaiians still celebrate the traditional blowing on the conch shell, or
Pu,
at sunset, to celebrate the sun's passing and to give thanks,
mahalo,
for its daily return.

In
The Lord of the Rings,
Bilbo, Frodo, and Gandalf all depart for the West, with Frodo dreaming of white shores and “beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.” This powerfully evokes the mythology of ancient Britain. Tennyson recalls the Greek enchantment with the Western horizon in his poem “Ulysses,” where the wanderer on his perpetual quest, his odyssey, remains true to his purpose. The concluding lines of this poem have always inspired me. I once recited them when emceeing the retirement dinner of a well-known Canadian member of Parliament who was terminally ill:

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Thus it is appropriate that the West Country be the land of dreams and fairies and myth. Often paradise is imagined as a valley. C.S. Lewis grew up imagining that a picture hanging in his home depicted a verdant heaven, when in fact it was a painting of the Golden Valley in Herefordshire. Lewis modelled his Narnia after this idyllic scene.

In the biographical film
Shadowlands,
Lewis agrees to Joy's suggestion that they take a holiday and track down this Golden Valley, which Lewis has never visited. When they find it, the valley is resplendent, with green meadows and a winding brook bathed in sunshine. Their Arcadian experience is a highlight of the film, with Joy and Lewis walking through fields, holding hands and laughing like lovers do. However, clouds inevitably appear, rain begins to fall, and the Narnia landscape darkens — both literally and metaphorically — with the imminent end of Joy's remission from cancer and her subsequent death.

In my own recurrent dream, Arcadia is a deep, wide valley with a meandering stream, emerald fields, and little copses spread hither and thither. The faint outline of low blue hills appears like a mirage in the distance. I am walking slowly, wending with the stream; I hear the occasional humming of bees on clover and the splashing of trout. The path beckons me onward, and I must follow. The sky turns crimson toward the horizon. But in the dream, the sun never goes down and I keep walking toward the sunset, the landscape about me bathed in shafts of golden light.

The portal into the world of Camelot is a sterile concrete viaduct over the
A
303. The vehicles whizz along far below like ants rushing in straight lines to and from their nests. We halt to inspect Chapel Cross Cottage, with its little thatched chapel that John Leland noted when he passed through here in the sixteenth century: “I turned flat west by a little chapelle,” he wrote in his diary. Long before we reach the village of South Cadbury, we spot the wooded scarp of the high hill astride it called Cadbury Castle — or, colloquially, Cadbury Camelot
.

A mile beyond, the massive earthworks of Cadbury Castle loom directly above us. The village of South Cadbury lies at the very foot of the hill fort, with the Red Lion Inn close by. The word Cadbury comes from Cada's Fort, the ancient, high hill fort that has so intrigued archaeologists and Arthurian New Agers.

Arthurian lore comes to us principally from writers of the medieval period. Of these, Thomas Malory is the best known. He wrote
Le Morte d'Arthur
based upon a combination of folk tradition and chivalry, the latter being all the rage in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Prior to that, Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his
History of the Kings of Britain,
refers to a King Arthur with his principal court in Caerleon-on-Usk. Arthur was reputedly born at Tintagel in Cornwall, a windswept, towering, impregnable fortress on a sea cliff. Shakespeare refers to Arthur's seat as being Camelot in
King Lear,
as does Tennyson in
Idylls of the King
.

Not to be overlooked is the persistent local tradition of Arthur and Camelot that has been passed on by successive generations. John Leland wrote of the site in 1542 thus: “At the very south ende of the chirch of South-Cadbyri standith Camallate, sumtyme a famose toun or castelle, apon a very torre or hille, wonderfully enstrengtheid of nature . . . In the upper parte of the coppe of the hille be 4. diches or trenches, and a balky waulle of yerth betwixt every one of them . . . Much gold, sylver and coper of the Romaine coynes hath be found ther yn plouing . . . The people can telle nothing ther but that they have hard say that Arture much resortid to Camallaet.” William Stukeley visited Cadbury in 1723, and described the hill fort: “Camelot is a noted place; it is a noble fortification of the Romans placed on the north end of a ridge of hills separated from the rest by nature; and for the most part solid rock, very steep and high: there are three or four ditches quite round, sometimes more; the area within is twenty acres at least, rising in the middle . . . There is a higher angle of ground within, ditched about, where they say was King Arthur's palace . . . the country people all refer to stories of him.”

Leslie Alcock describes the epic archaeological digs he oversaw at Cadbury in the 1960s in his book
By South Cadbury Is That Camelot
. He notes that “Cadbury Castle has few equals among British hillforts for the number, complexity, and above all the towering steepness of its defences. Leland's description, as we now see, was by no means over-dramatic.”

So what about King Arthur? Is he just a myth, or something more? What we do know is that there lived a real warrior leader who fought and won many battles against the Saxon invaders, including at Badon and Camlann. The dates of those battles remain fluid; however, there is some evidence that they occurred in
AD
490 and 499, respectively. Alcock and some other commentators believe that Arthur was the successor of the Romano-British general Ambrosius Aurelianus, who was a major leader by 437. This would fit in nicely with the refortification of Cadbury Camelot, which according to carbon-dating analysis was effected in the 470s.

Whether Arthur was the real name of this inspiring chieftain and whether he was truly a king or just a leading warrior are still debated. However, we do know that such a chieftain would have required a high, defensible hill fort in southwest England, that the hill fort must be surrounded by fertile fields and a good source of water, and that the location should not only be defensible but strategically situated in relation to the sea, Cornwall, and travel routes generally. Cadbury Castle meets all of these criteria.

Archaeological interest in the Cadbury site was revived during the twentieth century after numerous shards of pottery and other artifacts were ploughed up by farmers. These artifacts were associated in time with similar objects found at Tintagel and elsewhere in Cornwall. Alcock's excavations in the sixties revealed three fascinating aspects of Cadbury Castle. Firstly, it is now known that this hill fort was continuously occupied from neolithic times — by first the Celts, then the Romans, and finally the Saxons. Secondly, Alcock established that the hillfort defences were massively reconstructed in the 470s, in the largest engineering project of the period in Britain. This may have been where the Romano-Celts made their last stand against the marauding Saxons.