A magical night of myth, story and song - with Robin Williamson at Castell Henllys...

It is time to start getting to grips with my next story, one that has been a green, earthen, woodsmoke wreathing glimmer in my mind all year. One part of it, both words and illustrations I have been saving until after I had taken in one particular experience.
Last weekend the opportunity finally came about to do what I have hoped to get around to for a good couple of years - to go and see Robin Williamson perform his entrancing bardic storytellling in the Iron Age Roundhouse at Castell Henllys, amid the fire's glow and the dark smoky rafters.

It was a soft Welsh summer evening, with torches lining the wooded path to the Roundhouses on the hilltop...

I didn't take pictures - it just felt wrong to bring electronic beeps and LCD screens into the hushed darkened space. This was the only one taken in a moment at the very end after the spell was broken...

My hope was to absorb the sounds and atmosphere during the telling and to gather imagery for an illustration. It was quite special, no more than two dozen people sitting quietly around the worn wooden benches in two circles about the hearth, not even whispering, but waiting till all were gathered in from the twilight, eyes adjusting to the darkness within...
Despite the distraction of a wriggly five year old fidgetting beside me I was quickly drawn in by Robin's marvellous voice and the magic of his harp music. By the end he had everyone joining in with phrases of the stories and singing verses along with him and back and forth to him. Wonderful!

I wanted to come away with more than the images in my memory, and I was sitting in the perfect place at the back wall to compose an illustration, so in the gloom I managed a few blindly scrawled sketches by the dim glow of a candle.... I couldn't actually see my page or what I had drawn...!

 

Later while the images were still strong in my memory I worked one of these up to better capture the amazing atmospheric lighting and the perspective within the roundhouse for future reference...

Sorry about the murky photos...!

I cannot show you any of his stories from that night, but here is a clip from youtube of Robin storytelling at another time and place...



I have some more things to share from our weekend in Wales but I think I will let this post remain alone in the Iron Age. Hope you enjoyed it, I only wish I could have transported you there to hear and see it all with your own eyes, ears and hearts...

Cley Hill - a skyful of the Iron Age...

The children went back to school today, or rather Elora did and Elswyth cried because her pre-school day isn't until tomorrow and she really wanted to go...
So yesterday, being the last day of the school holidays, we went to one of my favourite places high in the winds and wide open skies - an Iron-Age Hill Fort called Cley Hill near Warminster.
I don't go as often as I'd like anymore, but I used to go there a lot years ago before children came along and its always been a very special place to me.

I used to go at all times of the year and all weathers to feel the sky and the ancient echoes of long forgotten people, and also to watch the buzzards and hawks that always circle there.
My favourite of all times to be there are the wild stormy days when the skies are racing and sun shadows surge across the land far below. Those are the days when the winds are so strong at the summit, that standing up on the main round barrow you can lean fully into the empty air over the drop and be held there, while the damp icy wind snatches the breath from you so fiercely you gasp and gulp for it.
It is a place of elements and ancestry and has always strummed a deep chord in me. I always feel so uplifted and alive there as I sit there at the summit all alone grinning stupidly to the wild wind and sky...



But anyway, yesterday was gentle weather. We saw tiny swarms of miniature sky blue butterflies and the hillside was alive with the constant swooping and skimming of swallows. Birds were everywhere, ravens dancing below us for sheer pleasure on the wind, a lone kestral hanging in the air. The children love it too, especially the place they call the upsy-downsys where the victorians quarried the ramparts for chalk.

If you look closely you can just see Elora hurtling recklessly slong a razor's edge!

This we call the Dragon's Hump, and the land falls away dramatically beneath you as you the reach the top. Quite dizzying!


It is hard to get across a sense of scale in a photo, the staggering steepnesses, the vast shoulders of it that unfold as you walk around the ramparts, and of course the sheer vastness of the sky here.
I'm not sure what my favourite aspect of Cley is, each flank has its own particualr character, but as you walk around the steepest side where the slope hurtles dizzyingly down, Little Cley emerges in its enigmatic poise.



I've often wondered what this little hill was used for, whether it was the ritual place - I wonder if its ever been dug?
Yesterday the remains of a crop circle were still visible - I think it was supposed to be a 3D one but was probebly a bit too effaced by harvesting.
Here is a picture of Little Cley from last september to try and show the steepness of the drop and the curve.


I love this place, and I can see it on the horizon on the way to my nearest town, its flanks ever changing with cloud shadows and sunlight. If any of you are passing through somerset, do take a climb and see for yourselves!
Bye for now...

Castell Henllys and a journey into the Iron Age...

I would love to share with you a place I love so much, and try to visit whenever I'm in Wales... It is a place where you can really feel the weave of past and present as a continuous thread, and where the people of the past seem only a veil of shadow away. It is so easy here to imagine their voices, dim laughter through the woodsmoke, the daily rhythms of shared toil and community...


Castell Henllys near Cardigan in Wales is an Iron Age Hillfort, where some of the roundhouses have been rebuilt on their original foundations and ongoing living archaeological work brings back the past. They keep native sheep and boar and have built a medicinal herb garden... The people who tend this place for visitors always seem such gentle folk with a genuine love for the place, dressed in iron-age garb and showing the crafts and skills that were used in daily life here...
Every time I am here I wish I could stay!

I will show you some things along the wooded paths that wind around the hillfort. Don't be alarmed if my children change size in some of the pictures! I have taken the best pictures from the last three visits!
The first thing you see as you arrive is this magnificent totem pole...


Some hidden carvings emerge from the green...

This year someone had begun making a coracle by the riverside...


And last year a Wicker Man awaited fire on the hilltop...


And if you know the hidden path, you will find a Shrine where a natural spring emerges from the hillside beneath the fort. There are all sorts of offerings and trophys of war... It feels very real!


Here is the Blacksmith's house...

The utterly impressive Chieftain's house with its high roof where swallows nest and flit in and out of the low doorway... If the Chieftain's house was designed to impress and convey status, then it certainly held me in awe when I first saw it!





The Granary on its curious legs...

A smaller homely roundhouse where the children ground corn into flour and made flat breads to cook on the griddles ( and of course like little Goldilocks twins they tried every bed in every house!)

Elswyth making bread

It is so nice for the children to experience all this... next time they shall have to try their hand at wattle and daub - they were too shy this time to have their faces and arms decorated with blue woad, but after all they are a bit small yet for war!



And lastly my favourite place of all. I could sit and dream all day in the big communal roundhouse. I feel so at home watching the sun slant throught the woodsmoke that blackens the thatch overhead, imagining the evenings they would have had here sharing songs and stories out of the wind and weather. The walls are painted with beasts and spirals, the benches well worn. It is dark yet your eyes soon grow accustomed. It is a warm, peaceful place and I am never ready to leave.
My pictures really don't do it justice and just can't convey the atmosphere I feel here. It is a place you need to feel with all your senses, to hear the embers in the fire, smell the soot in the timbers of the houses, touch the wood, grind the flour, immerse yourself in the past...
I love it (can you tell?)
If you are near or passing by, do visit and discover for yourselves!
www.castellhenllys.com