This is not about...

Riots, Olympic misogyny, pseudo-feminists hating on other women, or new Plandemics!

This post is not about the latest health scaremongering.

(Above -"Grumpy Gargoyle Speaks” from my website, radicalcartoons.com )

It's not about the recent riots…

(But you might like this cartoon from my archives)!

It's not about the recent Olympic misogyny.

(Which I could say a lot about, as a lifelong boxing fan, but many other people already have).

OR the misogyny of a bunch of snobs, academics, and what we used to call “the Islington Set", hating on one of the most successful women's rights campaigners of our time, Kellie-Jay Keen.

(They are afraid to actually name the object of their hatred, because she's already won three defamation cases, and they are too cowardly to fight another one against her).

It's not about any of those, because in the last 4 weeks the news has been so uniformly stressful that I've taken the advice of one of my favourite “influencers”, and been trying to ground myself in Nature.

I highly recommend following Colette, of Bealtaine Cottage, on her website/other platforms and YouTube. https://bealtainecottage.com/

Colette O'Neil is a Pagan wise-woman who lives by the Celtic year. Twenty years ago, she started planting, on her own, a Permaculture forest on a 3 -acre patch of Irish bog. She has written several books and has inspired other Permaculture farmers worldwide.

She spoke at last year's Let Women Speak Dublin, at 1:08:00 in this video, saying ”I don't subscribe to fear”.

https://www.youtube.com/live/wV8uTh1Pq7s?si=dWppvPJUBv4BuDrq

So I want to tell you about a strange, but encouraging encounter I recently had with an apple tree.

Yes, an apple tree.

On the second day of the first month of Lughnasadh (August), I went on one of my healthy walks on the Somerset Levels.

Somerset is all about Apple Orchards, with cider-making still an important industry. The huge Thatcher's cider complex, with its miles of orchards, is a big employer. It sits right in the middle of the Strawberry Line walk - the old railway line which historically brought fresh fruit from Cheddar and points along the route, to Bristol in the early morning, to be transported to cities around England on the same day.

And many other smaller cider makers too, of course - before I stopped drinking (6 years sober) I was a cider nerd, and knew most of their products, even visiting their sometimes obscure premises to buy it in gallon plastic containers, straight from the barrels!

Since you ask (you haven't), my favourite Somerset cider was always Wilkins, made at Wedmore!

http://wilkinscider.com/

(Don't ask about the rats)!

On 2nd August I took the Severn Beach line train down to Yatton, not to walk on the Strawberry Line, for a change, but to visit Cadbury Hill Fort. There are several Iron Age camps called Cadbury dotted around Somerset, this one is a mile and a half from Yatton station.

This map is from the Yatton and Congresbury Wildlife Action Group (YACWAG) website: https://yacwag.org.uk/our-reserves-cadbury-hill/

Lughnasadh was already well underway.

On the way down on the train, I saw the first hay being rolled up in bales. And when I got to the Camp, the blackberries were already ripening.

It's a good mile walk out of Yatton, all the way past the historic Butchers Arms pub (dating from 1300) and the War Memorial. (You can wait for a bus near the station if you prefer).

https://yattonlocalhistorysociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/YLHS-Yatton-Village-Trail-1990.pdf

I went up to the Camp from the lane to the car park, past the Cricket ground. As soon as I entered the Nature Reserve I felt that strong, heavy sense of history you get in our ancient sites.

Not an oppressive feeling, but a sort of watchfulness.

Now I know very well that no place in England is untouched. These hill forts have been mauled about by “conservationists”, burrowed into by archaeologists, and had their stones removed by the locals, for use in walls and houses, for hundreds of years.

But this one is sufficiently obscure, and quite a hard climb, that there were only a couple of other visitors, even in the height of the school holidays. It doesn't look as if it's being micro-managed either, no one is mowing it for example, which is very welcome.

There are benches at a viewing spot. Apart from them, and noticeboards at the entrances, the site has been left to itself. There wasn't any litter, thankfully.

Or is there something about the atmosphere of the place that makes visitors respectful enough to take their litter away with them?

As I walked in, I couldn't see at first which way to go. Signs directed horse riders down Bridleways, but large stones had been placed blocking an overgrown path, and it wasn't clear which one walkers were supposed to use. I even walked back to the sign board in the car park, but still wasn't sure.

I sat down on the stones to have my lunch, a sandwich, oat bar and apple juice from the popular little cafe at Yatton station. (It gives employment to people with Learning Disabilities). Then I would consider which trail to take.

But I didn't eat it all, I decided to wait until I got to the top. I always take a compass with me on walks, so knew that South East was the way to the fort itself. As I stood up, I saw, on the top of the stone to my left, there was a perfect ripe blackberry sitting, right in the centre.

It hadn't been there before - must have simply fell off a branch. So I accepted it as a sign that it was ok to use this path. I stepped carefully between the narrow gap in the stones, and went up between overgrown briars - and yes, I ate the blackberry, and a few more!

I then climbed a long grass ride, up to an amazing viewpoint over the Bristol channel. You can really appreciate how beacons lit on these hill forts would have guided ships in the channel and the Congresbury Yeo river, as well as travellers on foot or horse in the surrounding Levels (probably swampy and difficult to navigate, back then).

From the benches at the top the way on to the Camp was still uncertain. I found myself going round and round woodland trails. Not lost, just not getting anywhere. Finally, when I started going downhill again and had almost given up, I came to the entrance on the South side.

(Note to YACWAG - please put a “you are here” note on your noticeboards)!

By this time I may have been a little disoriented. I went up into the Fort itself, circular ramparts overgrown with tall waving grasses, and scrubby trees, like on a Savannah. I met a middle-aged couple at this point who were on their way out, and we had a brief chat about the difficulty we'd had finding our way around the site.

I got to a point where I had sat down years before on a previous visit, with a view South towards the Mendips.

And while I sat there and finished my sandwich, I again had that powerful feeling that all the thousands of people who once called the place home, who defended it against their enemies, or lit beacons to show the way for their friends, were all around me.

Looking at the walking stick beside me, I thought “This may be the last time I ever come here". And although I'm not really a practicing Pagan, just someone who is following the Celtic year, I wanted to leave an offering to the site.

I had half the oat bar and half the can of apple juice - no matter how processed they might be, it's the symbolism that counts!

I'm not someone who normally does this sort of thing. I just wanted to say “Thank you” to the ancestors, or entities, or whatever, for welcoming me.

I got up and looked around for a Hawthorn tree, which would be my first choice, but there didn't seem to be one. Wrong kind of soil, perhaps. But as I started walking round the site, just off to my left, a few feet off the trail, something very strongly called me to pay attention to it.

It was a lovely, tangle-trunked, rough-barked apple tree, on it's own, not much taller than me, and completely covered with tiny green, but ripening, apples. I don't know what type they were - not crab apples. There were so many, the branches were weighed down to the ground.

I can only describe this as an encounter with a sentient creature. I felt that the tree had noticed me, and called me over to it.

I don't remember seeing it the last time I was there, which must have been over ten years before. I very carefully (I'm not so good on rough ground at my age) trod through the long grass to the shelter of its branches.

As I stood there thoughtfully, holding a handful of its little apples, a young couple walked by on the path, deep in conversation. They either didn't notice me at all, or thought I had stepped off the path to take a piss! Or were they just of an age that takes no notice of eccentric older people?

Whatever, I was invisible to them. Maybe I really was.

I took the fact that the only other people I had come across on the site were also a couple, but older, as a good sign - a sign of humanity surviving, and this fort as an anchor-place in our landscape, where humans had survived in the past.

And thrived, with the help of the apple trees.

I stepped up to the tree's braided trunk, and tucked in the remaining half of the oat bar, and poured the rest of my (processed) apple juice on its roots.

That was all, I said goodbye to it. That tree will hopefully live in the protection of that fort, for hundreds of years after today's visitors are dust.

I found my way out, Northwards around the ramparts and back to the car park, a much easier walk than coming in.

I decided to leave three blackberries on the stone by the entrance to the trail, to show the next visitors the way.

Enjoy Lughnasadh, it's a beautiful Season.

You can see my artwork at: radicalcartoons.com and follow me on spinster.xyz and GETTR (both as @radicalcartoons)