It's only a pencil

 

On our way home to Gloucestershire from a family visit in Dorset this summer, my brother in law surprised me with a turn off the A-road near Salisbury, Wiltshire. What's he up to? The track climbed and turned until we entered a parking area at the top of the world, overlooking the chalk downland called the Salisbury Plain. 

We were at Old Sarum, an iron-age hill fort, a man-made defensive mound dating to 400 BC (the age of some of the Greek sites I visited shortly afterwards.)

Seeing a good location, the Romans, Saxons and Normans and the Plantagenets in their turn used and developed the strategic hill. The weight of history, indeed. Today English Heritage protects, manages and interprets the site. 

As we alighted from the car I scanned with sky with excitement. As if the prospect of a history visit wasn't enough, nature was brewing up a dramatic storm.  We crossed a wooded bridge over the imposing mote, climbing up to the ravaged stone walls. Goosebumps - electricity in the air, a history 'first' .

We entered the gate, paid admission at a tiny office and shop, and entered the almost deserted courtyard of the storied castle. 

Within five minutes thunder rumbled, the wind began to pick up and I could feel electricity in the air. A flash and another, and rain began to splatter the hard stones. My companion continued to read information panels but I headed downhill to the tiny building. Within seconds a dramatic storm hit, a hurricane wannabe - torrents of rain, wind blasting it sideways, a disconcerting light and sound show. 

To distract ourselves we gave attention to the warm dry gift shop - well-deserved attention, as it turned out. Some fine craft, intelligent gift items, a good bookshop with several volumes on Eleanor of Aquitaine, as an example. A final rack with school trip bits - some handsome frdige magnets, decals and the like. A container of pencils decorated in an appealing Celtic design drew my attention and I left with a fistful. 

I have given a few pencils away - but several I keep in the kitchen by my notepad, and there is something about the sinuous curves of ancient Celtic artwork that draws me back to this place and that day.

The storm lasted until I'd made my choice of Eleanor of Aquitaine book. The sun came out, and we  resumed our exploration of the site. Did that all happen? The pencils take me there.

English Heritage has produced this fine short video which saves me a lot of writing, and you a bunch of reading, and thanks to a pesky drone, provides views I can't even....

Each time I travel I come come away with homework. I have a pile of fine books collected this year waiting for the winter hiatus - on Croatia, English history and Greek art. Like this visit to Old Sarum, every visit to dear England reveals yet more history I am wobbly at. At some point I'll share my English Civil War discoveries, and hikes with my English 'brother'. A long winter might not be all bad.