I’m wondering if we’ll get severe winter weather in January or February?  Some of my friends further north have had snow on the hills, but apart from a few hard frosts it’s stayed mild in southern England.  We noticed on our walk that fungi is still much in evidence, including the Jelly Ear Fungus Auricalaria auricula-judae, whose scientific name reveals an older common name supposedly derived from the belief that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from an Elder tree, on which this fungus commonly grows.  While some reckon it to be a wild food worth trying (both Richard Mabey’s Food For Free and Roger Phillips’ Wild Food give recipes), its texture isn’t hugely appealing and it needs long or imaginative cooking to render it palatable.  As you often find the Chinese equivalent (aka ‘Wood Ears’) in spring rolls and stir fries, maybe do as they do: slice very thinly and cook well until tender.  And try not to keep in mind that you are eating something that essentially resembles a severed human ear.  Yum.

 

Halfway along our walk with the rain now taking on that familiarly British quality of penetrative persistence, we took temporary shelter in West Kennet longbarrow.  In fact when we first arrived it was standing room only inside, so we drank coffee leaning against the sarsen stones and watched the clouds scouring across the Wiltshire countryside with somewhat gloomy drama.  Once the throngs had thinned somewhat we spent a few minutes in meditative silence in the damp darkness inside the chamber, atmospherically lit by a couple of candles left by previous visitors.  (And also lit through the slightly less-atmospheric glass tiles cemented into the ceiling.)  At around 5,600 years old this tomb predates Stonehenge by nearly half a century. Without wanting to succumb to an attack of yoghurt weaving, you can feel the weight of millennia when you stand quietly in there.  When Neolithic folk were building this, wheels were the latest thing and the plough had yet to be invented.  Archaeological work has showed that the barrow was used for burials and ritual for 1,000 years… So hardly surprising that there is still a presence of some sort to be felt there now.

 

The rain and ourselves continuing, our walk took us over the A4 and past Silbury Hill, following the route of the beginnings of the River Kennet (or “the baby River Kennet” as our route guidebook would have it).  Unsurprisingly after a year of scant precipitation, the “baby River Kennet” was not in evidence, consisting of a ditch with a few watercress plants and little else.  With April 2011 having been the driest in the UK since reliable records began in 1910, chalk streams like the Kennet are suffering from low flows of record proportions.  In November 2011, fish started dying in their thousands as stretches of the river near Marlborough dried up, and Thames Water have launched Care For The Kennet, the UK’s first awareness campaign aimed at reducing water usage to protect water supplies and the local environment.  Perhaps hard to keep drought in mind on a rainy New Year’s Day… Yet water has become another resource in high demand and suffering from subsequent supply issues.

Here and there on the trees’ twigs people have knotted ribbons and scraps of cloth, some carrying wishes whilst others are simple offerings.  Whilst being cheered that people still have a relationship of sorts with natural magic, there is a big part of me that hopes that in future folks will tie on something that will decay and disintegrate, e.g. woven grass or leaves, rather than the random oddments of cloth and plastic that seemed to be most people’s choice.  Thus the trees’ branches will be free to grow unfettered.  Like leaving burning candles in ancient stone shrines (a practice which is known to be damaging to the stone), leaving offerings of any sort at natural places could be done with sensitivity and environmental mindfulness.  Groups such as SOSS (Save Our Sacred Sites) and ASLaN (Ancient Sacred Landscape Network) as well as individuals have been working quietly to ensure that less ritual ‘litter’ is left at sites such as Avebury and West Kennet.  It is wonderful to be able to visit such places and experience them in a way which is meaningful to me: hopefully increasing numbers of visitors will consider the cumulative impact of their footfall and leavings, treating these sites with the respect they deserve.

Darkness came on as we gained the Ridgeway, heralded by the cawing of hundreds of rooks gathering in pre-roost flocks in the damp Wiltshire fields.  Cold rain set in again as our boots trod over the chalk soil, much as travellers 5,000 years ago along this same track may have turned their footsteps towards shelter and warmth as winter dark descended.  We were wet, muddy and cold… but energised by our new year sojourn.  The January wind had blown all of the last year’s cobwebs away and we feel ready to encounter what 2012 will bring.