Many of us – in the UK at least -have seen the video of the hard-working, meticulous mouse who has every night been busily tidying up the workbench in a garden shed. Being Country Mice ourselves, we get field mice here in the house from time to time. Not one of them has ever offered to tidy up. Where have we gone wrong?
We all need a bit of feel-good in January. So here he (she?) is:
I’m going to be an intermittent presence on the blogosphere for the rest of the month, both in the posting and the reading of the posts of others. We’re off to Spain to meet our latest granddaughter.
Just over a week ago, a couple of fields within two miles of our house hit the national news. Those of us who live round and about have long known about our very own piece of history: not as visually impressive from ground level at Stonehenge but still thrilling to think about. Now we can share it with the rest of you.
Thornborough Henges are two enormous, human made earth-circles – 200+ metres in diameter, from the neolithic/early bronze ages: somewhere between 3, 500 BCE and 2,500 BCE. Imagine the effort required to construct such circles, originally about 5 metres high, thought to have been coated with bright white gypsum, making them an extremely visible and potent part of the landscape. Why were they built? Nobody is sure, but they almost certainly had a spiritual purpose. Ritual is still important at this site. On Friday, I’ll re-blog a post I wrote one May Day about the ceremony of Beltane held here every year.
To walk here, with only the henge itself surrounding us, in an area normally busy with fields of crops or sheep, with woodland, and with gravel pits, is even now an almost unnervingly peaceful experience.
The henges have rather suffered from rabbits and livestock over the centuries. Now, the monuments have been gifted by Tarmac and by Lightwater Holdings to Historic England and to English Heritage and their future will be more secure.
There is a third henge too. This was planted up as woodland in the Victorian period. Though it’s not a large wood, it’s a peaceful place where I love to go and stroll and spend quiet moments, disturbed only by birdsong. Here it is in summer.
At ground level, it’s impossible (for me) to get decent photos of the henges. I offer you just one, as my feature photo, and then leave the rest to this YouTube video, courtesy of the Guardian.
Come and visit. You can pop in for a chat here afterwards. I’d love to meet you!
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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