Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“The road uphill and the road downhill is one and the same.”

—Heraclitus, Fragment 69

Some of you may remember my story of The Wyrd Woman of Chysauster:

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I just posted more photos of The Trip [old link no longer works: GO HERE.], some more of our day on the moors in Cornwall visiting the ancient stuff. Of course that's got me reminiscing. That was a jam-packed day. And lots of German speakers on the road, for some reason. We ran into the same group repeatedly, all apparently doing "the megalithic thing."

We started off at Chysauster, the 2000 year old village, then went to St. Grada and Madron Holy Well. Next up was Lanyon Quoit and Men-an-Tol out on the moors, lunch and "arting" around at the galleries and shops in St. Just, wandering lost through hedgerows in search of Carn Euny (another ancient village), zipping across Slaughter Bridge and "Hey, I think that was something significant" but the road was way too narrow to turn around in and by the time we found someplace, we decided we'd had enough and headed back to our hotel in Marazion (and dinner). Actually, all this stuff was within about a ten mile radius so even though we saw a lot it was mostly a ramble rather than a rigid schedule. But the stuff that day was so intense, so groovy, it does kind of feel like we visited them on separate days.

I've dealt with our adventures at Chysauster here, and St. Madron's rhapsody waxing here, so I won't inflict that on you again. Lanyon Quoit, one of those ancient megaliths, was really cool because it's just out in the middle of a field beside the road. You pull over, climb over a stile, and there you go. Massive stones holding up another massive stone slab, about six feet tall I guess, and there's nothing but rugged moorland all around. This area was one of the few places in Cornwall that looked like I'd pictured it in my mind's eye. I was thinking Hound of the Baskervilles whenever I pictured Cornwall, but it's mostly rolling green hills and the sea. Though I guess there are parts, deeper inside Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor that are more rugged and quite dramatic.

What we saw was beautiful, just not what I expected—and it didn't take long for us to get tired of quaint little seaside villages. How jaded that sounds, but...seen one, seen 'em all, basically. And that's where the tourists hang, so they tended to be more crowded. The things we saw on this trip that stayed with us (and I'm not just talking for myself here) were all inland, away from the tourist rim. Well, okay, the little village of Tintagel was pretty touristy (and by the sea), but that was different. There was the tourist part—the Merlin’s Cave Inns and the King Arthur Lounges and the like—then there was the real part where you had to do some serious climbing and communing with nature. That last bit was totally exhilarating. As I rhapsodically waxed here.

After Lanyon Quoit we went in search of Men-an-Tol. Funny thing about M-A-T. I'd been seeing pictures of it for years. In fact, a picture much like this. These pictures always gave the impression of a sweeping, impressive monument—gigantic in scale and mind-blowing thinking of how the ancients engineered it and erected it. Well, I'm here to tell you, Men-an-Tol is seriously lacking in the sweeping department. In fact, whoever took this picture had to be laying on their belly to get this perspective. M-A-T is a wee bit of a monument, a dinker, no more than waist high. And we walked miles to get to it! All right, maybe it was only a half mile or so, but it felt much longer. Even longer on the way back because bathroom issues were added to the mix. (I swear, these kinds of circumstances are the only ones in which I have penis envy.)

So, back in the car with bladders taken care of, we decided we were starving and meandered towards St. Just for lunch. This is a lovely village out in the middle of the moors which has seen quite an influx of artists and artisans. It hasn't been discovered in a big way like St. Ives and doesn't have seaside vistas, so it was actually rather pleasant. The folks were friendly, the arts less touristified, but more importantly—they had really good coffee , tea, and chow. We wandered into one arty store where I managed to drop a bundle of cash. I didn't spend much on this trip, but I think I spent about a third of my entire knickknack budget there. We also struck up a conversation with the cute, funny young man minding the store. He had a lot of keen observations about the local sights. He wanted to know which part of the States we were from because his wife came from New York. "From that big island there. I can't remember what it's called." "Long Island?" we suggested. "No, that doesn't sound familiar. It's that really big island there." After much hemming around he finally remember the name of the big island: Manhattan.

Afterwards, we wandered down to the bakery because we had our eyes on some brownies we'd glanced in the window. We struck up a conversation with the nice lady behind the counter who seemed very local to us, with a real Cornish accent. She also wanted to know what part of the States we were from. Turned out she was from New York. "Oh, are you married to the young man down at the shop?" "Him? No, he's married to my niece." She'd lived in St. Just twenty years and had become quite local after meeting (in New York) and marrying a young Englishman, who introduced the niece to his buddy, who..."Love is a many splendored thing," as the lady at the bakery said.

We tried to follow the directions to Carn Euny given to us by the nice young man, really we did. Everyone agreed that it's one of the more interesting ancient sites around, and you can actually go down into the fogou there, unlike Chysauster. But it had rained heavily the day before, see. And the road leading to Carn Euny was wide enough for our van, but all muddy and rutted and it looked like one would need a tank to traverse without getting stuck. And I think the site was three or four miles up that road and we'd already done so much walking! It was getting on towards late afternoon and we'd eaten too much, okay? We decided not to. I've regretted not going up there since, but what are you going to do? I don't think vacations should be endurance tests, frankly. We were tired and bilious. Some of the Germans were heartier, though. They parked their van and took off hiking up the muddy, rutted road. We felt shame and hung our heads, then leaped gleefully back in the van and drove away.

I think we decided to look for a church along the way, maybe Sancreed, or maybe it was when we were driving up and down the road looking for the minimal signage pointing to Carn Euny, but we zipped across a little bridge and I noticed a sign saying, "Slaughter Bridge." It rang a bell, but I couldn't place it until we were back in Marazion and I was looking through my Green Guide. It turned out to be a legendary Arthurian site, one of the gazillion places in the British Isles claimed to be the place where Arthur fought his last battle, Camlann. As legend has it, A & His Boys fought here and managed to hold off the enemy and keep them from crossing the river Camel. Now, this was not such an imposing bridge, nor was the river much more than a wide stream. In fact, I could have probably stood in the deepest part of that river and still been nearly as tall as the top of the bridge. (Although I will admit we drove rather quickly over it and my memory has hazed a bit in the last four months.) Taking into account that I would have been tall by Medieval standards (at 5'7"), I'm still hard-pressed to see anyone being stopped at this bridge when they could so easily walk around it to get to the other side. Unless the river was a roaring cataract in those days, but in that case they would have needed a much bigger bridge.

Then I remembered Men-an-Tol and a possible answer came to mind. Maybe the ancient Cornish simply suffered from a severe lack of proportion. It would explain so much.